
Vendée Globe Finishers Face Light-Air Upwind Sailing
Have you been following along? The leaders in the Vendée Globe, Charlie Dalin and Yoann Richomme, are counting down the final miles of the 24,000-mile solo circumnavigation as they approach Les Sables-d’Olonne. They started on November 10 and, after the initial slow start, have been on a blistering pace with the chance to take almost 10 days off the current 74-day record. As of this morning Charlie Dalin is 140 miles ahead of Yoann Richomme, with both facing steady, upwind work as they approach the Atlantic coast of France.

Sébastien Simon (GROUPE DUBREUIL) is sailing in a very solid third place, despite lacking his starboard foil since Australia, and is about 900 miles behind the leaders. That sounds like a lot until you realize the fourth- through 10th-place boats are almost 2,000 miles farther back. Thirty-four of the original 40 starters are still racing, with the potential to make this the highest finishing percentage of 10 Vendée Globes. Historically, 40–60% of the starters have finished. The first race in 1989 finished in 109 days, with seven out of 13 starters finishing. Now, improvements in boat design and build appear to be lowering the time to around 65 days and the finishing percentage above 75%.
These last few miles will be tiring for Charlie Dalin and Yoann Richard as they pace themselves for the finish. Dalin has a solid lead, but there are still over 100 miles to go, and neither has had a good night’s sleep for 64 days!
Have been following this amazing race for some time, daily. Both on English speaking channels and on the French one. Great one on one video interviews with the skippers. Great info was to be found besides this when following the individual stories of skippers about boat design, etc… The technology in France is really fantastic. Highly recommended.
my understanding is that this is a OD fleet? how come foiling Boats and non are not divided in two
classes? The Boat that I favor, is a non foiling Boat and is approximately 10’000 miles behind!
18’000 KM!!!! That is a distance 3x NY to LA!
The IMOCA 60 is actually a development class so all boats are designed and built to the same rule but they do vary within the rule. Per the introduction to the rule: “The IMOCA Class Rule is an ‘Open’ rule, which means that anything which is not expressly forbidden, restricted or enforced is permitted.” The boats are similar but not the same. You can read the 52-page rule here: https://www.sailing.org/tools/documents/IMOCACLASSRULE2021V.1.5-%5B25918%5D.pdf