Fast and Alone — The Vendée Globe Starts on Sunday
Singlehanded, nonstop and unassisted. Those are the basics of the world’s most challenging offshore yacht race, the Vendée Globe. It happens every four years, and the 10th edition starts this Sunday, November 10. It was founded by French singlehander Philippe Jeantot, who launched the first Vendée Globe in 1989 with 13 sailors starting and seven making the finish line in 1990 after three months of sailing.
The race takes competitors from Les Sables-d’Olonne, on the Atlantic coast of France, south around Antarctica in the Southern Ocean and back north to the finish. In the nine previous editions of this “Everest of the Seas” there have been 200 competitors starting this extreme race. Only 114 of them have managed to cross the finish line.
It has been dominated by the French, with the past winners being Titouan Lamazou in 1990, Alain Gautier in 1993, Christophe Auguin in 1997, Vincent Riou in 2005, François Gabart in 2013, Armel Le Cléac’h in 2017 and Yannick Bestaven in 2021. Armel Le Cléac’h remains to this day the record holder for the event, completing it in 74 days. Only one sailor has won it twice: Michel Desjoyeaux, in 2001 and 2009.
This year there are 40 skippers, with the majority of them again being French. There are six women, including veterans Sam Davies (with five prior circumnavigations) aboard Initiatives-Coeur and Pip Hare, sponsored by San Francisco company Medallia. There is one American, Conrad Colvin, who was born in Auckland but went to school in Colorado and is returning aboard his boat MS Amlin.
The boats are very extreme, foiling IMOCA 60s, which will attempt to get around the world nonstop and undamaged in 70 days. The foils, keels and rudders mean there are lots of appendages going through the water at 20-30 knots around the clock while the skippers attempt to find time to eat, sleep, navigate, trim, change sails and tend to personal care. Getting around the world at top speed and avoiding damage from a UFO (unidentified floating object) is an enormous challenge.
It’s an enormous event for the French, with hundreds of thousands of fans visiting the race village in advance of the start.
You can learn more and follow it on the tracker here.
Have you listened to this week’s Good Jibes podcast with Morgan Larson?
What an amazing race with fantastic daily coverage by the race organization! Extreme sailors pushing the limits of their boats and themselves…truly amazing to follow and watch! Any of the extreme four wheel racing I have ever done, compares nothing to what these sailors endure!