Ronnie Simpson—brimmed hat ­backward, eyes forward, a light touch on the tiller extension of his borrowed Open 50 Sparrow—is in his element. It’s a radiant September day with a pumping south­westerly raking Rhode Island Sound, and I’ve joined a pickup crew for a shakedown sail aboard the spartan 50-footer that he is just starting to get a feel for. “Learning,” he says repeatedly. “That’s what we’re doing here today. Learning.”

Sparrow is the latest handle for the well-traveled 50-footer, which began life as Newcastle Australia when Aussie Alan Nebauer commissioned it for the 1994‑95 BOC Challenge; it was rechristened Balance Bar after American Brad Van Liew took it for a second around-the-world spin in the Around Alone race four years later; it became Pegasus when tech mogul and sailing enthusiast Philippe Kahn took command shortly thereafter; and, ultimately, it was dubbed Sparrow after Simpson’s friend Whitall Stokes acquired it. Stokes still owns it, but he has basically given the keys to Simpson; the pair met while competing in the 2012 edition of the Singlehanded Transpac Race from San Francisco to Hawaii.

With Stokes’ blessing, Simpson has launched a bid to race Sparrow in the upcoming Global Solo Challenge, an eclectic, nonstop, singlehanded around-the-world contest scheduled to begin from A Coruña, Spain, in September 2023. For Simpson, however, racing in the GSC is hardly the point of the exercise—far from it. No, he is very clear this is a steppingstone to a much larger goal: to fulfill his longtime dream of nailing significant sponsorship for a full-on Vendée Globe campaign on a competitive IMOCA 60.

“If I’m being honest, I’m in way over my head financially,” Simpson tells me before we set sail. “I’m rolling the dice in a really huge manner. If doing (the GSC) on an Open 50 was the endgame, I probably wouldn’t be here. I consider this my shot for the Vendée. I don’t know why I’m so driven to do that race, but I wake up every day and I want to do it, and I go to sleep every night and I want to do it.”

Sparrow has a long and well-traveled history, but it pales to Simpson’s personal odyssey. Now 37, he has sailed more than 130,000 nautical miles and worked professionally as a racing sailor, delivery captain, charter captain, sailboat rigger and race-boat preparateur. Which is saying something, since he admits, “I never sailed a boat a day in my life until I was 23.” Which may never have happened had he not joined the Marine Corps and been nearly blown to bits in the Iraq War.

Which, indirectly, is how and why I met the man. A talented writer, long after his service he began submitting sailing articles to the magazine I was then working for, Cruising World, and I became his editor. His early submissions were pretty straightforward voyaging yarns, but his first major feature was a blockbuster, flagged on the publication’s November 2015 cover with this title: “From Fallujah to Fiji: An Iraq Veteran’s Odyssey of Redemption.”

A summary: Caught up in the patriotic fervor following 9/11, nine days after graduating from high school in Atlanta, Georgia, Simpson enlisted in the Corps, and on June 30, 2004, he was riding in a Humvee outside Fallujah when it came under heavy fire and a rocket-propelled grenade detonated just yards away. Simpson sustained major impact injuries to his body, brain and eyes, and inhaled enough of the explosion’s rapidly expanding gas to shred his left lung. He was put into a medically induced coma and woke up 18 days later—in San Antonio, Texas. He spent the next three years there, more or less recovering, but also feeling aimless and “unfulfilled.”

“I was rolling the dice in ways they should not be rolled,” he wrote. “Then one night, I discovered sailing on the internet. Within 90 days, I’d dropped out of college, quit my job, sold my house and, for $30,000, bought a 41-foot bluewater cruising boat in San Diego and moved aboard. I’d never before set foot on a sailboat, but I was resolved to sail around the world.”

In October 2008, he set forth by ­himself, bound for Hawaii. A little over a week later, he was rolled by Hurricane Norbert. He abandoned the boat and was picked up by a freighter that deposited him in the Chinese port of Shanghai. (“Twenty-one days across the Pacific!” he said.) He was out a boat, but he was also outward-bound on a cleansing adventure, which continued over the next seven months on a 9,000-mile bike trip through nine countries in Southeast Asia. For much of it, all he thought about was the Vendée Globe.

In August 2009, he flew back to California with $500 in his pocket and a single obsession in his mind: to race across oceans alone.

For $1,000, Simpson found a Cal 25 for the 2010 Singlehanded Transpac. Fatefully, a Vietnam veteran named Don Gray, who ran a nonprofit for wounded vets called Hope for the Warriors, offered him the use of his Mount Gay 30 for the race, which Simpson gratefully accepted. A repeat arrangement on a second boat called Warrior’s Wish, this time a Moore 24, was procured for the 2012 race (where he met Sparrow’s Stokes, then sailing a Tartan 10), aboard which Simpson won his class by a mere 90 minutes.

Next, he wrangled a writing assignment to cover that year’s start of the Vendée, and afterward traveled to Switzerland in hopes of making contacts to at least score a used Open 60 for the event’s next running. But he realized for the time being that raising the funds was a bridge too far, and he was itching to keep sailing. Returning to Hawaii, he landed a gig delivering a cruising boat back to the mainland, and then plonked down four of the five grand for a Cal 2-27 he found in Seattle that he named Mongo. He slapped on a solar panel and wind vane, and pointed the engineless 27-footer into the Pacific.

On his approach to Fiji in that summer of 2014, he notched an important anniversary. Precisely 10 years earlier, he had nearly lost his life in the desert. From Fallujah to Fiji indeed.

For the next several years, Simpson used both Fiji and Hawaii as bases of operation, surfing as much as possible. He upgraded his ride to a Peterson 34 called Quiver and continued to cruise the Pacific. Using the GI Bill, he earned his undergraduate degree in multimedia from Hawaii Pacific University. He handled press duties for events like the Pacific Cup and Transpac, and continued delivering yachts and racing offshore. Most importantly, he launched a business in Fiji running day charters and offering other watersports for the tourist set, which looked like a long-term plan for funding a Vendée campaign.

Until COVID-19 hit, and that scheme came to a sudden, crashing halt.

Simpson’s one tangible asset was Quiver, which he described as “all my eggs in one basket.” There was, however, no possible way to sell it in Fiji during a pandemic, so he hopped aboard, sheeted everything home, and spent 29 days hard on the trade winds to reach Honolulu, where he sold the 34-footer for $30,000. After yet another delivery to the mainland and a stint back in Hawaii running charters and earning his captain’s ticket, he flew to Los Angeles. There, he purchased a Peterson-designed Serendipity 43 cruising boat and signed up for the Baja Ha-Ha Cruisers Rally from San Diego to Mexico. His new plan was ultimately to return to Fiji and employ his new boat to relaunch his charter business.

And then he got that fateful call from his old mate, Whitall Stokes, and everything flew out the window.

Stokes had spent a good stretch of the COVID-19 years on his own excellent solo adventure, sailing Sparrow from the Pacific to the Atlantic via Cape Horn, a 17,000-­nautical mile voyage that concluded in Portland, Maine, at the Maine Yacht Center, a boatyard well-known in shorthanded circles for its exceptional refits and maintenance work. Stokes then put the boat up for sale. But finding scant interest, he decided to see if one of his mates might be interested in campaigning it. His first call was to Ryan Finn, fresh off a record-setting trip from New York to San Francisco on his proa, but he was already involved in another project. The second call was to Simpson, who did not need to be asked twice. “I immediately just said, ‘Yeah, I’m into it,’” he said.

Hasta la vista, Ha-Ha.

Right off the bat, Simpson sold the Serendipity 43 and launched a GoFundMe page that raised nearly $15,000 in a matter of hours, money that went directly into promotion and a website (ronnie​simpson​racing.com). He sailed to Newport, where we spent that epic afternoon putting Sparrow through the ringer, and then on to Annapolis, Maryland, for the US Sailboat Show, where he again put the boat on display. He scored some important sponsorships with New England Ropes, Ronstan and Wichard. He caught a plane to Amsterdam for the gigantic Marine Equipment Trade Show, the necessary hustle now in full flight.

What’s next? On to the Caribbean for a fully crewed entry in the Caribbean 600, then a qualifying Transatlantic sail to France, and the GSC in September, a unique event with a rolling start over 11 weeks for singlehanded boats from 32 to 55 feet. Hopefully, a tremendous race result attracts the notice of a deep-pocketed sponsor wishing to back a tenacious American competitor.

“I’m going to really try making this into a professional campaign,” he tells me. “I want to take everything I’ve learned from the French professionals and try to emulate that. I’m so incredibly grateful to Whitall for giving me this opportunity. Sometimes I curse him because it’s so stressful, but I’m just joking around. I’m so grateful.”

You could certainly say, in this latest chapter of what’s already a remarkable life story, Ronnie Simpson has hit the ground running. But the truth of the matter is, from the moment he landed at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune as a raw teenage recruit, he’s never, ever stopped pounding the pavement. That is a good thing because he has now stepped off on the ultramarathon of his life.

The post Simpson Spreads Sparrow’s Wings appeared first on Sailing World.

The final results of the 2020‑21 Vendée Globe will forever have Yannick Bestaven as champion of the most competitive singlehanded round-the-world race—ever. One position below Bestaven in the rankings sits 36-year-old Charlie Dalin, the first of 33 starters to cross the finish line in Les Sables-d’Olonne, France. He could have won. He should have won. But he didn’t. It was one cruel and unexpected windshift—mere miles from the finish line in Les Sables-d’Olonne—that denied him his holy grail of solo sailing.

Dalin’s ascent to the top ranks is an amazing example of the opportunities available to France’s elite singlehanded sailors. Dalin, as a young and eager sailor long ago, once helped me prepare for my Mini Transat ­campaign in 2003. I had no idea then that he would someday race an IMOCA 60—on foils even—in the Vendée Globe. We hadn’t spoken since the Transat, but when connected by Zoom a few weeks after the finish, he was rested and eager to share his story.

Q: How did this Vendée Globe opportunity come your way?

A: I had been working really hard for some years and having some success. I was involved with Ericsson, the winning Volvo Ocean Race team [in 2009], and that was a really great experience. Then I was in Australia helping to build a 100-foot ­racing trimaran. I raced primarily the Figaro from 2011 to 2018. I got pretty good at that game, and when Apivia decided to mount a Vendée Globe ­campaign, they chose me to skipper.

Q: What an incredible opportunity.

A: Yes, nobody would ever pass up that. They chose me even though I had never been on an IMOCA before last year. They let me be really involved in the design and development of the boat, and they had a lot of faith in me from the very beginning.

Q: I would say their faith was well-justified. I imagine your being a naval architect allowed you to influence and be involved in the design process?

A: I was quite involved in the design of almost every detail of Apivia. With Guillaume Verdier as lead architect, we were one of the first designs of the new-generation larger-foil IMOCAs. It was really exciting, with a lot of unknowns. There were so many decisions to make. Sometimes the VPP would say one thing, but we did not always trust that to be 100 percent true. For example, at the last possible moment, we decided to move the foils farther forward. It turned out to be good, but at the time, we did not know. I was really involved in the cockpit but also the deck plan, the sail plan, and really, everything.

Q: Right out of the box, the boat performed well, and you won the Transat Jacque Vabre.

A: The boat had only been in the water less than three months, so it was a very busy time. I sailed as much as I could, but we also needed some time for the team to really finish the boat. I would sail on the weekend, so the shore team could rest, then turn the boat over. Sometimes I would sail at night so they could work on the boat during the day. But everything went really well. What is the opposite of a viscous cycle?

Q: A virtuous cycle?

A: Yes, that’s it. We never had any major breakages, so we could keep on sailing and improving the boat. We still had a few issues in the TJV, but we had a kind doldrums passage and managed to win the race.

Q: There were two major storms that knocked out a lot of the newer boats early in the race.

A: Yes, it all happened quickly. I had a few issues but nothing major. By the time we got to the equator, there were only three new-generation boats near the top: Hugo Boss, LinkedOut and Apivia. Soon after Seb Simon and Alex Thomson were out, it was Thomas Ruyant and me. I was first into the Indian Ocean, and I started to go into more of a preservation mode, especially after Thomas had a problem with his port foil. Normally it is a big advantage to be first here.

Q: Not this year.

A: No, it was never good to be leading this race.

Q: Where were you when you heard about Kevin Escoffier sinking?

A: I was just about to go on video chat to celebrate being first into the Indian Ocean. Then we heard about Kevin, and nobody wanted to talk about that anymore. I was 350 miles downwind, so I was not in a position to help. But it was a super-stressful time, and finally we got news that Kevin had been rescued from his raft. But that incident really shocked me. I think it shocked the whole fleet.

Q: What an incredible rescue, so well-managed by the race officials and sailors standing by, and especially the actual ­rescue by Jean Le Cam.

A: Yes. Everyone did their job well. It took me a couple of days to really get back to full racing mode after that.

Q: And then disaster struck you.

A: Yes, it did. I started noticing some water leaking into my line tunnel, then I noticed it was coming from where the port foil bearing should be. It was gone. I sent a message to my shore team (legal under race rules for technical issues), and they got to work coming up with possible solutions. I had to slow the boat right down.

Q: Could you have sunk?

A: Yes, that was a possibility, but most likely I was out of the race. It was really devastating. But then my shore team came back with these intricate instructions, like a hundred steps, for a possible repair. I got to work and started building parts. I had to laminate a new bearing, using bits of foam, epoxy and carbon flat stock. I had to cut it with a crappy cordless grinder. It took forever. And I had to custom-fit each piece. When I had the parts made, I tacked onto port (away from the finish), heeled the boat over, and went over the side using a halyard. I had to fit all the parts pretty precisely. I was getting hammered by the waves. I nearly gave up. Finally, just as it was getting dark, I hammered in the last piece. Then I tacked back and rejoined the race.

Q: At this point, you are now behind Bestaven on Maitre Coq and Ruyant on LinkedOut, and your port foil is compromised.

Yes, but I was still racing, and there was 15,000 miles to go. I was not sure if the repair was strong enough, so we tested it hard that next day, and it seemed to hold.

Q: That is an unbelievable bit of seamanship.

A: It took every bit I had. I slept pretty hard for a couple of hours afterward.

Q: What is life like on board Apivia?

A: The biggest challenge when it is windy, or a challenging sea state, is to know how hard to push the boat. There is this constant desire to push harder, to go faster, to put up more sail. But if you break your boat, it is all in vain. So I am constantly asking if I am pushing too hard or too close to the limit. You have to be really disciplined because one mistake can be really costly. The motion of a semifoiling IMOCA 60 is also really hard at times. Because of the foil, the boat does not behave as you are used to with a normal boat. The timing of the hard crashes is really hard to predict, so you are always hanging onto something. Otherwise, you can get hurt really easily. The only safe place is in the bunk.

Q: Tell me about your routing? It looked like you were trying hard to minimize distance and tactical risk.

A: Yes, I spend hours in front of the computer—eight hours a day—running different routes, looking at different weather models, and evaluating the options. I mostly tried to sail my own race and not worry too much about the other boats. I started using a lot of ensemble routing so I could graphically see the range of options and assess the ­probabilities. I really got into it.

Q: What was it like to essentially restart the race with 4,000 miles remaining?

A: The race up the Atlantic had some very unsettled weather. After Cape Horn, Maitre Coq escaped with good wind and built a 450-mile lead off the coast of Brazil. But then he got trapped in light wind, and I was able to catch right up. However, six other boats did the same, so off Cabo Frio there were eight boats very close to each other. It was like a Figaro race. So I told myself to just sail it like a coastal race, and keep on pushing and make the right moves.

Unfortunately, my port foil was not fully working, so I was a lot slower on starboard tack than I should have been. And we had 14 days of starboard up the Atlantic. I had to find a whole new way to sail the boat. I figured out I could sail with a lot more heel, and change the stacking ballast completely. So I was able to find a way to go pretty fast, but I still gave up about 400 miles because of my limitation on starboard. It was frustrating, but I kept telling myself, All the boats have issues. Just keep going as fast as you can.

I had a good doldrums passage and got into the northeast trades, essentially even with Louis Burton on Bureau Vallee. He could not use full main, so he ended up farther north, which turned out to be OK. But I also had five boats right behind me and pushing hard.

Q: What was it like getting past Cape Finisterre?

A: That was probably the most intense 24 hours of sailing I have ever done. I decided on a routing that took me very close to the northeast corner of Spain. As I got closer to the coast, there was a lot of ship traffic and unlit fishing boats. The Bay of Biscay felt really small. My ­collision-avoidance system was not working, and my radar was also down, so I had to be very alert. I had to perform a series of jibes to take advantage of the wind bending around the coast. Each jibe takes about 40 minutes and uses a lot of energy, so I was getting pretty tired. Of course, I was passing through the most crowded part of the course at night. Then it started to get foggy, so that was really stressful as well. I did not sleep at all for 36 hours. I knew if I did this well, I could still win the race.

Once I got onto port tack and I was headed right for the finish at 20 knots, things were looking good, and I thought for few hours that I would win. But partway across Biscay, the wind shifted 10 degrees left, which favored the boats to the north, and meant I would still have to jibe for the finish. That wind shift cost me the race.

Q: How was it to cross the line first, but not win?

A: I said before the start that my goal was to cross the line first, and I achieved that. I know I sailed a good race. But Yannick Bestaven on Maitre Coq also sailed very well, and with the 10-hour time allowance he got for helping to save Kevin Escoffier, he beat me by two and a half hours…after 80 days.

Q: After he got ashore, Yannick came to you, and you had a long embrace. He said, “This year there are two winners of the Vendée Globe.”

A: Yes, those were kind words from him. I know we put together a very good campaign, and I sailed my boat as well as I could. I am happy with my race. But now I really want to go back in four years and win!

Q: And what’s until then?

A: It is a very exciting time to be a sailor. There are so many cool things going on that I really want to be a part of. My focus will continue to be the IMOCA for the next few years. I want to win the Route du Rhum. And I want to build a new IMOCA and come back and win the Vendée in 2024. After that, maybe multi­hulls. But who knows? I am very lucky to have these opportunities. I still love sailing as much as ever.

The post Interview with Around the World Racer Charlie Dalin appeared first on Sailing World.

Gone is the idea of skippers disappearing over the horizon and then finishing hundreds, if not thousands, of miles apart, having surfed entirely separate weather systems in the Southern Ocean. From now on, we can expect sailors to prepare for the Vendée Globe as a sort of giant fleet race when the great capes—Good Hope, Leeuwin and Horn—function as little more than buoys on the course. This pandemic-era Vendée Globe ­featured not only revmarkably close racing all the way around the world, with a front grouping of 10 boats each in contention for the podium for three months, but it also set a new precedent with a finale that was easily the most dramatic in the event’s 32-year history.

Those closing stages, on a breezy and cold Bay of Biscay, saw five boats capable of winning right up until the last 24 hours of the 28,000-mile race. In the end, the first eight boats finished within 19 hours of each other after 80 days at sea. And for the first time in the history of the race, the line honors winner, Charlie Dalin on Apivia, lost on corrected time—by only two and a half hours, to Yannick Bestaven on Maître Coq IV, who was third across the line.

This was a race that was supposed to offer a showpiece for the latest foiling designs, but predictions that they would storm away from the older-generation boats with foils, and the even older ones with ­daggerboards, proved wide of the mark for a variety of reasons.

Among them was the fact that the ­newest boats seemed to disproportionately experience collisions with debris or structural failures. Of the seven new rocket ships aiming for glory, two dropped down the fleet after repairs or restarting, including Jérémie Beyou’s Charal and Armel Tripon’s L’Occitane en Provence. Three retired with damage: Nicolas Troussel’s Corum L’Epargne, Alex Thomson’s Hugo Boss and Seb Simon’s Arkéa-Paprec. The two that made it all the way around were both handicapped by losing the use of one foil: Thomas Ruyant’s LinkedOut and Dalin’s Apivia.

Alongside the damage and retirements, weather conditions seemed to work against the latest foilers. They struggled to show their paces because either wind angles or sea states were not ideal. When in the Southern Ocean, those skippers with lifting foils found them too dangerous to use in big seaways and strong winds. The result was the foilers from 2015 were more than just in the mix in a race, when for only the second time in Vendée Globe history, the winning skipper did not break the previous record. Bestaven took the spoils on corrected time on the 2014 vintage Maître Coq IV; Louis Burton finished third overall in a 2015 boat, Bureau Vallée II, and Boris Herrmann, the only German sailor and highest-placed non-French skipper, finished fourth after surviving a nighttime collision with a fishing trawler in the Biscay, on the 2015-built SeaExplorer-Yacht Club de Monaco.

While the earlier-­generation designs were in contention, even more remarkable were the old daggerboard-configured boats, some of them ancient warhorses that had been cleverly optimized with weight taken out, ballast capacity augmented and new sail plans added. Among the best performers in this category were Jean Le Cam, fourth on corrected time in the 2006 vintage Yes We Cam!; Damien Seguin on board Groupe Apicil, which was built in 2007, who finished seventh; and Benjamin Dutreux in the 2007 vintage OMIA-Water Family, who finished ninth.

The sheer competitive intensity of the race underlines just how far the IMOCA class has come. There is now a solid calendar of short-, medium- and long-distance events leading up to the Vendée Globe, a rule that combines one-design aspects with scope for innovation and entry requirements that ensure that both boats and skippers are up to the job. By the time the first 12 boats had finished, it is to the class’s credit that only eight of the 33 starters had retired, far fewer than the norm in the Vendée Globe.

The race also indicates that the all-­important autopilots on IMOCA yachts, which steer not just to wind angle but heel angle as well, are now superbly nuanced bits of durable kit that can drive the sport’s most powerful 60-foot offshore monohulls in any conditions, 24/7, far better than any human could manage.

This ninth Vendée Globe did not lack human drama either. This time it was the rescue of Kevin Escoffier after his much-strengthened PRB broke up and sank in the South Atlantic. The popular Volvo Ocean Race winner had just minutes to deploy his life raft, having sent this text to his shore team: “I need assistance. I’m sinking. I’m not joking.”

After three skippers were diverted to search for him, it was none other than “King Jean” Le Cam himself who succeeded in finding him and safely getting him aboard, before dropping him off five days later after liaising with a French naval vessel. The incident made worldwide headlines and introduced a note of uncertainty about the final podium, which only increased the ­tension as the race reached its climax.

But whom to pick out in a race where—to coin a phrase—everyone was a winner for just getting round the world, alone, and in one piece. Should it be Dalin, who sailed a mature and controlled race, much of it from the front to take line honors? Or the hard-driving, ebullient and unfancied Bestaven, who led throughout the Southern Pacific, then dropped back while climbing the Atlantic, but never gave up and swooped in to take the glory at the end? Or perhaps Le Cam, the senior sailor in the fleet at 61, a living legend and gnarly old French sailor who happily refers to himself in public as an “asshole” and who appeared in his onboard videos looking like Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones?

It could be any of them. But my choice for MVP in this epic is the only competitor in the fleet who you might call a genuine singlehander. Damien Seguin was born ­without a left hand, yet he managed not only to take part against the best solo racers in the world, in a very old and poorly rated boat, but also race right up there in contention almost all the way around the world.

With a modest budget from French ­insurance company Groupe Apicil, Seguin sailed around the planet 19 days quicker than his boat’s time in the previous race in 2016 and, most impressive of all, he was the first nonfoiling skipper to finish on the water, in sixth place. He dropped one place once Le Cam’s 16-hour-and-15-minute time compensation for rescuing Escoffier had been factored in.

A 41-year-old married father of two kids with a wife, Tifenn, who backs him all the way, Seguin was one of the plucky early nonfoiling leaders alongside Le Cam as the boats split at Cape Finisterre. He was inside the top 12 all the way down the Atlantic, but it was in the Southern Ocean that he started to impose himself and establish Groupe Apicil as a regular top-five contender. He was fourth crossing the ­latitude of the Cape of Good Hope, fifth at Cape Leeuwin and then fourth at Cape Horn.

A big man with a big heart who sometimes struggles to pace himself, Seguin brings an intensity to his sailing that marks him out even in this Vendée Globe. It was born out of his early experiences in the Paralympics, where he won two gold medals, and he has the Olympic rings tattooed on his arm to remind him of it. What is fascinating about him is that he manages to execute the myriad tasks of a solo racer on a powerful monohull, even though there are only two pieces of specially adapted kit on his boat to compensate for his lack of a hand. One is a device that he designed to help him empty a packet of freeze-dried food; the other is the cockpit pedestal grinder that has a socket into which he can place his left forearm when spinning the winch. In all other respects, Seguin has adapted himself to his boat and to the requirements of an elite solo racer.

Anyone who has sailed inshore or ­offshore, solo or as part of a crew, knows how often two hands aren’t enough and the importance of the old adage “one hand for you, one hand for the boat.” The enduring mystery in my mind is how Seguin manages. His great friend and sailing partner Yoanne Richomme says it is important to understand that Seguin has a wrist on his left arm, and that gives him some articulation. When you sail with him, Richomme says, you barely notice that he is missing any facility. “He can tail a halyard, as if hand-over-hand,” Richomme says. “He does a half-turn around his wrist and, when you are with him, you can barely see it when he is doing it. That is a good example of how smart he is with what he’s got. It is hard to see a difference compared to a sailor with two hands.”

All finishes of a Vendée Globe nonstop unassisted circumnavigation are emotional occasions, but none more so than that of Seguin, who achieved a final ranking that few foresaw. He had also demonstrated that people with disabilities can compete with the able-bodied on the same playing field without any special compensations, an example that underpins his work with his own charity, Hands & Feet, which helps young people with disabilities.

Standing on the foredeck of his boat, dressed like Captain Hook in a red tunic with a stuffed parrot on his shoulder and his left arm bearing a pantomime hook, a beaming Seguin breathed it all in as French race fans lining the canal into the harbor at Les Sables d’Olonne applauded his outstanding voyage.

“There is nothing simple, nothing given in the Vendée Globe. You really have to push yourself in all areas,” he said after he stepped ashore. “You have to earn it. Every step you take, every day you take is a small victory. In the end, it’s a great reward for everyone.”

Look out for him next time because Seguin is not finished with the Vendée Globe. He is already planning his second tilt at the world’s toughest yacht race and wants a newer foiler to enable him to ­compete for the top prize.

If Seguin takes my MVP nomination, a close second is Seguin’s fellow Frenchman Louis Burton, another relentlessly determined individual who pushed himself and his boat from one position schedule to the next, with an intensity few others in the fleet could match.

Burton was sailing the yacht that won the previous race under the colors of Banque Populaire, in the hands of Armel Le Cléac’h. With relatively little upgrading work since that race, the boat still proved a potent weapon, with sponsorship from French office-supplies company Bureau Vallée. A laid-back character ashore, Burton was not particularly rated going into the race, his third Vendée Globe, after finishing seventh last time. But he should have been.

Once the fleet got into the Southern Ocean, the sailor based in the English Channel port of St. Malo put his foot down and dropped right onto the border of the ice exclusion zone. Throughout the big south, he was often the southernmost of the leading boats. But his race seemed to be over as a contender for the podium when ­autopilot trouble culminated in him blowing off the top section of his mast track in an ­uncontrolled jibe. He also had a major issue with a jammed halyard lock.

Burton tried to climb his mast while underway south of Australia, but he got bashed around and realized he needed shelter. He sailed into the lee of the lonely east coast of Macquarie Island, 800 miles southeast of Tasmania, and set up the boat under a J3 staysail, sailing on a north-south axis under his misbehaving autopilot. Burton climbed the mast several times to execute a complex repair but emerged triumphant, even though his race was effectively over, with the leader nearly 940 miles ahead of him.

But the 35-year-old, who is married to French round-the-world sailor Servane Escoffier, did not know he was beaten and set about catching up, once again hugging the southerly limit of the course. By Cape Horn he was sixth, and going north up the Brazilian coast, he was again vying for the lead in a boat that was back in almost mint condition. “I can’t quite get over my whole journey,” he said at that stage. “When I look at what I’ve been through since I left Macquarie Island, I feel like it is surreal. I had not thought I would get back to the group I’m in. I am extremely happy—it feels like I am in a daydream.”

Burton continued pushing hard to the ­finish, taking a northerly option into the Bay of Biscay that could have brought him overall victory. In the end, he arrived in second place—just four hours after Dalin—and was corrected to third, an astonishing achievement given what he had had to contend with.

At Les Sables d’Olonne, there was some nervousness in the air about how it might look if a sailor raced around the world, then crossed the finish line first but was not adjudged the winner, a routine occurrence in handicap racing but unprecedented in the Vendée Globe. The sailors themselves ­diffused that issue.

Dalin made it clear that he was happy to have taken line honors as he waited for Bestaven to come steaming in to take the win. Then, when the Maître Coq IV skipper reached the finish, he chose the perfect formula to sum up what so many others were feeling. “There are two winners of this Vendée Globe,” he said, capturing the spirit of a race between sailors whose respect for one another is one of its hallmarks.

The post Sailing Alone Around the World in the Vendée Globe Race appeared first on Sailing World.

The elapsed time for Ari Huusela is 116 days 18 hours 15 minutes and 46 seconds and he closes the Vendee Globe finish line 36 days after winner Yannick Bestaven and Charlie Dalin crossed.

Huusela’s low risk ‘one chance only’ race round the planet has been executed with all the prudent weather routing precision and safeguards that might be expected of a long-haul airline pilot who, while competing in his own ocean racing pinnacle event at the age of 58 always wanted to give himself the absolute best chance of finishing the course.

An airline maintenance engineer turned career pilot who has been a keen amateur ocean racer since 1999 when he first raced the Atlantic in a tiny Mini650, Huusela becomes the first skipper from a Nordic nation to start and complete the Vendée Globe.

He may be the last finisher to break the finish line, 25th from a record entry of 33 skippers, but it is doubtful there is a sailor on this race who has taken more pleasure nearly each and every day of his race.

A skipper who has built a huge, respectful following for his safety-first approach and his regular, relaxed communication, as the last finisher into the Les Sables d’Olonne channel an emotional Huusela was given a huge welcome back.

“I was crying most of last night, I have been thinking about this for so long. I am so thankful to my team. Without them I would not be here, and to Alex Thomson who was the first one who pushed me and helped me a lot to start the project. And this welcome here today is so touching. To have been to all the starts of this race since 1996 and now to finally have finished today seeing all these people on the sea, in the Channel and now on the land is just amazing, to be able to enjoy it myself. I am so happy Les Sables d’Olonne and the Vendée region arrange this race, and so to see these nice people from Les Sables d’Olonne taking care of us and being out here this morning is just lovely.”

And while he quickly built his reputation as the race’s ‘super happy sailor’ he had tough times too, particularly beating back up the Atlantic ocean in big, confused seas.

“The hardest bit was when the boat was slamming when the sea state was so terrible and confused, the boat was slamming, slamming at the time. I thought the boat would break into pieces. And it was so uncomfortable to be in the boat at that time, that lasted two or three days and I called Niina (his partner and project manager) and I said had reached a point where I hoped the boat would break in two pieces and I could be rescued by a cargo ship, saving me.”

Both technically and mentally he suffered his biggest setbacks very early on in the race, in the first couple of weeks. But having overcome these minor issues himself, since then Huusela’s two primary modes have been either ‘Happy’ or ‘Super Happy’.

As he closes a Vendée Globe which sees the highest ever number of finishes – 25, seven more than 2016-17′s previous best when 11 of the 29 skippers who started abandoned, Huusela can also reflect that he was in the race almost all of the way round.

Only in the last two weeks of the course did he finally lose contact with his nearest rival when Alexia Barrier escaped out of the zone of high pressure south of the Azores to move several hundred miles ahead of the Finnish skipper, who suffered three frustrating days crawling at sub 5kts speeds and making only around 50 miles a day.

Speaking a few days before his arrival, Huusela confirmed again that his only main goal was always just to finish. Were he to be in last position that was not going to be a concern for him. “I am not worried at all. I am just super happy to be in the race and to be where I am. When I started the race, I would have been happy to do it in 110 days but to me, it doesn’t matter if it is 150 days; that’s fine as long as I do finish. I knew I would be far away from the others. The most important thing is to finish with a solid boat in a good condition.”

Completing the Vendée Globe is the high point of an ocean racing career which really started in the Mini Class at the back end of the 1990s. He completed the 1999 MiniTransat on a Finnish boat designed by Kamu Strahlmann which was previously sailed on the 1997 race.

He placed 13th of 16 finishers, one place behind French skipper Yannick Bestaven. In the intervening years he purchased the Andrew Cape designed former Aberdeen Asset Management which was sailed to 11th in the 2001 race by Sam Davies.

For reasons that he still does not fully comprehend he was not allowed to start the 2003 MiniTransat race – because the organizers said he had not accumulated enough miles on his ‘new boat’. Undaunted he sold the boat on to Isabelle Joschke and helped her start in the class before locating his previous Mini which was in a state of disrepair in a field in Ireland. So, he completely refitted the boat and raced the 2007 Mini-Transat on it, finishing 37th.

Seven years later, after a spell sailing F18 catamarans he returned offshore to progress his Vendée Globe dream and took on the solo Route du Rhum on a Pogo 40 in the Rhum class, sailing a steady race to ninth position. But the Vendée Globe was always his goal and in April 2018 he purchased the Owen Clarke design which had started life as Dee Caffari’s AVIVA for the 2008-9 race and which she also raced on the 2010-11 Barcelona World Race with Anna Corbella.

In the time available to him away from flying Airbus 350s for his job, he prepared his campaign doing the 2018 Route du Rhum to Guadeloupe on which he finished 2018 and the 2019 Transat Jacques Vabre with Mikey Ferguson finishing 26th.  His goals were always modest as were his budgets, simply building enough miles and experience towards his Vendée Globe challenge.

In the summer before the start he secured the sponsorship of STARK, one of Finland’s biggest building materials groups. While he was racing their program won three national sponsorship awards in his native country, where Huusela has become a national hero with a huge following.

When he left the dock for his Vendée Globe on November 8th it was an emotional moment. It was the fifth time he had been to Les Sables d’Olonne for a start and this time he was crossing the line.

In fact, he settled into his routine early, even if he felt slightly more nervous than on his ‘normal’ Transatlantic races that he had become used to. His confidence was knocked when he was flattened in the first big frontal system. Followed by an electrical problem – his batteries overcharging from the hydrogenator causing a complete system blackout – Huusela became concerned that his race might be plagued by daily problems.

“At first it was like the Route du Rhum or the MiniTransat or the Transat Jacques Vabre. But I had a bad time in the Doldrums with lots of thunderstorms and rain like I have never seen before, I thought I was going to drown in the rain. And then after that it was annoying to be upwind for the first while I did not like that.” He recalled recently, “Afterwards it was so nice sailing all the way to under South Africa, I really got into it then and enjoyed sailing under my A3, my biggest Code sail. At one point under South Africa we had three boats within a mile, Clement Giraud, Séb Destremau and I, and I took pictures and it was really cool. It was sunny, with beautiful days of easy miles. It was not really like the big south.”

He set himself strict wind limits downwind for his routing – 30 knots maximum downwind – to minimize the stress on himself and the boat, which he has a significant finance loan on and which he therefore needed to sell in good condition on his return.

“I am sticking to my comfort zone, a slower, longer route but I am always so happy to be here. I feel safe and felt the boat was safe, this is the way I can stay in the race.”

At Cape Leeuwin he stayed north out of a nasty low-pressure system which his nearest rival and running mate Alexia Barrier sailed through.

“I just did not want to be in those areas. I enjoyed the stable conditions and easy miles and I was sure I could keep the boat in one piece. The main thing has been finishing the race for me. I don’t think I will ever have the chance to make a big project like this again and so I have to make it to the finish.”  He said a few days ago.

His toughest days were the wipeout a few days after the start and when he was obliged to route through a 40- to 50-knot storm to get to Cape Horn.

“The boat was knocked flat and the mast was in the water, I have never experienced that before, so that night was really, really bad, just a few days into the race.” he recalls.

“The heavy downwind coming to Cape Horn was so bad with the waves, I had two wipeouts with the waves, but they were not so bad as the mast did not hit the water, but it was scary.”

In fact, at Cape Horn, rather than being very isolated and alone he rounded in close company with Alexia Barrier and Sam Davies – who was completing her Vendée Globe out of the race – and he enjoyed and profited from contact with them, and many other skippers, on the climb up the Atlantic.

“But the worst bits recently have been slamming in the horrible waves in the Atlantic, that has been really bad for me and the boat.” Huusela said just before the Azores.

The final days of his race, spring sunshine and flat seas have been a just reward for Ari Huusela who has become a huge national hero at home in Finland, just as he has become a treasured memory on this Vendée Globe for his seemingly endless good-humored Christmas advent messages and his daily video reports from the super happy sailor on STARK IMOCA Vendée Globe 2020.

The post Nordic Skipper Ari Huusela Closes The Vendée appeared first on Sailing World.

Race photo production Vendee Globe 2020

Kojiro Shiraishi, the 53-year-old Japanese solo skipper of DMG MORI, crossed the finish line off Les Sables d’Olonne at 10:52:58hrs UTC this Thursday 11th February to take 16th place in the Vendée Globe and in so doing become the first ever Asian skipper to complete the famous non-stop solo race around the world. Shiraishi’s elapsed time for his race is 94d 21hrs 32mins and he finishes 14d 17hrs 48m 10s behind Yannick Bestaven and 2hrs 56mins behind Arnaud Boissieres.

Completing the course is the culmination of a 34-year dream, a major triumph for Shiraishi who spent more than seven days completing major repair to a potentially race ending tear in his mainsail which occurred just six days after the start on November 8th.  Since then, the Japanese skipper has had to sail cautiously to look after his fragile mainsail, always sailing with one reef in the mainsail.

But his patience, positive outlook, mental strength, as well as his 20 years of ocean racing experience, have all contributed to an accomplished race during which he has grown in confidence in his new generation VPLP IMOCA monohull which is a hull sistership to Jérémie Beyou’s Charal.

Like others in the fleet, Shiraishi started his Vendée Globe, short on solo training and preparation miles, his only solo race completed pre-start being the Vendée-Arctique- Les Sables d’Olonne race in which he finished 10th.

“It was truly wonderful, and a longer adventure than originally planned! But arriving and seeing all these familiar faces and people here is really very heart-warming” says an elated Kojiro.  “It is a miracle; I really did not think that my mainsail would hold, and it is truly incredible that it pulled through and I have been able to complete this wonderful adventure. To finish was my primary object objective, but to also please my sponsor, my team and all the fans who have encouraged me throughout is what makes me the proudest.”

Shiraishi’s success today is inspired by the memory of his mentor, Japanese ocean racing pioneer Yukoh Tada, who won Class 2 in the BOC Challenge round the world race between 1982-1983.

As a youngster Shiraishi was so moved by Tada’s exploits after finding his number in the phone directory he spent weeks trying to contact him whilst Tada was working nights as a taxi driver to pay off his racing campaigns.

Shiraishi was invited to Tada’s house, the pair shared some sake and Koji’s first sail was with Tada after which he went on to work as his preparateur.

But during the next BOC race after repeated capsizes and technical failures left him a long way behind the leaders. the 61-year-old Tada took his own life in Sydney in 1991. It was the young Kojiro Shiraishi who was charged with taking Tada’s Okera VIII back to Japan.

This IMOCA 60 is Shiraishi’s fifth Spirit of Yukoh, each named in the memory of his mentor who had dreamed of taking part in the Vendée Globe.

“For over 30 years I have been dreaming of doing this Vendee Globe, ever since Philippe Jeantot invited my master Yukoh Tada to compete in it. It has taken thirty years to complete the circumnavigation and I am proud to have been able to fulfil what Yukoh Tada wanted to do..” Explains Kojiro upon arrival.

Shiraishi is delighted to today have completed the race which Tada had so wanted to do but which he could not find the funding for. Today Koji fulfils a lifelong desire to not just honour but extend Tada’s legacy.  But this successful Vendée Globe skipper is also deeply happy to have massively increased awareness and interest in the race in his native Japan.

Kojiro’s first Vendée Globe ended prematurely on December 4th, 2016 when he lost the top of the mast of his Spirit of Kukoh and had to retire into Cape Town. But even then, he had pledged to return and complete the Vendée Globe.

With the backing of DMG MORI Shiraishi built a new IMOCA from the moulds of Charal, the programme managed by Charles Euverte’s organisation. In the early days of the programme Kojiro’s training dovetailed with Yannick Bestaven on the Maître CoQ with the help of Roland Jourdain as coach.

With his new boat only launched in September 2019 the only IMOCA Globe Series race that Kojiro Shiraishi could compete in was last summer’s Vendée Arctic race. Finishing tenth he qualifies for the Vendée Globe but starts the race knowing he is short on hard racing miles and experience with his boat and so remains conservative in his approach over the first week of racing.

But the damage which will affect all of his race occurs on the fringes of the tropical storm Theta. A failure of his wind sensor caused his autopilot to stall, causing a series of unexpected gybes. His mainsail tears across the upper leech area and four battens are broken. He spends nearly six days at crawling speeds in light winds repairing the mainsail and the battens.

“It was a small feat to have managed to repair this sail,” says Kojiro “Now I will always have to protect it and look after it carefully until the end. But I am determined to make to the finish.”

The delay and the compromised speeds because he is forced to always sail with a reefed mainsail mean he finds himself deep in the second half of the fleet coming into the southern oceans, but first of all he is delighted to pass into the Indian Ocean and then sails a smart, steady and intelligent Pacific, never complaining and nearly always smiling.

“I’m glad the repairs are holding. It’s almost a miracle. On board DMG-MORI Global One, miracles happen every day. It holds up well in squalls, storms and other hazards… Every day I am on the water and sailing, I am the happiest person in the world,” he smiled at the end of January.

And for his patience and dedication Shiraishi is rewarded with an increasingly close and exciting match within a group of five, tussling with Arnaud Boissières, Alan Roura, Stéphane Le Diraison and Pip Hare, a race within the Vendée Globe which engages and inspires the experienced Shiraishi until the finish line. In so doing the pupil, Shiraishi, overtakes his mentor and becomes the first Asian sailor to complete the solo non-stop round the world race, adding to his own sizeable reputation.

THE STATS OF KOJIRO SHIRAISHI (DMG MORI GLOBAL ONE)

He covered the 24,365 miles of the theoretical course at an average speed of 10.70 knots.

Distance actually covered on the water: 29,067.67 miles at 12.76 knots average.

KEY TIMES

Equator outbound

31st on 27/11/2020 at 05:43 UTC, after 18d 16h 23min of the race, 8d 16h 24min after the leader Alex Thomson (HUGO BOSS)

Cape of Good Hope

25th on 12/11/2020 at 10h53 UTC, after 32d 21h 33min of race, 10d 11h 42min after leader Charlie Dalin (Apivia)

Cape Leeuwin

22nd on 12/24/2020 04:43 UTC, after 45d 15h 23min of race, 10d 17h 17min after leader Charlie Dalin (Apivia)

Cape Horn

21st on 01/13/2021 17:03 UTC, after 66d 03h 43min of the race, 11d 03h 20min after the leader Yannick Bestaven (Maître CoQ IV)

Equator (back)

18th on 01/27/2021 21:48 UTC, after 80d 08h 28min, 11d 02h 36min after leader Louis Burton (Bureau Vallée 2)

His boat

Architect: VPLP

Site: Multiplast, Vannes

Launched: August 2019

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“My boat is sinking. This is not a joke! MAYDAY.”

This text message from PRB skipper Kevin Escoffier to his shore team was made seconds before he was forced into his survival suit, then his life raft, after his IMOCA 60 racer folded in half 640 miles southwest of Cape Town. Not good, and potentially very bad. Escoffier later said he never doubted he would be rescued from his raft, but there was a lot more doubt in the mind of the legend Jean Le Cam. Racing his fifth Vendée Globe, Le Cam was the most experienced racer in the fleet. As it happened, he was the closest of the four boat that were summoned by Race Control to PRB’s last know position, after calculating for drift. Le Cam sailed 40 miles to the spot, and actually made visual contact with Escoffier’s orange life raft. He managed to tack and pass close to the raft, but it was very rough, and getting dark, and Le Cam did not yet have a clear plan of how to execute the rescue. Over the next 6 hours of darkness, he made a plan in his mind for how to approach the drifting raft. The only problem; nobody knew exactly where the raft was anymore, probably because Kevin had turned off his AIS to save battery. Again, the calculations for drift from France helped Le Cam eventually find the raft again at 2AM in the morning, with the help of a full moon.

By his own admission, Le Cam did not judge the timing exactly right as he luffed up next to Escoffier, but he managed to throw a heaving line, and incredibly the rescue was a success. Le Cam pulled Escoffier to his boat and helped him over the transom, after 12 hours in his life raft.

Le Cam resumed racing his “Yes We Cam” IMOCA 60, and Escoffier went down for a meal and sleep. Four days later, Escoffier was transferred to French Navy frigate, then to Reunion Island, and eventually halfway around the globe and back to Paris. He is plotting his revenge with his sponsor, hoping to come back and win the Vendée in 2024.

As the fabled Vendée saying goes, “In order to win, first you must finish,” which is not a trivial statement of this race. The typical attrition rate of around 50 percent over the 27,000 miles. Jean Le Cam’s “Yes We Cam” finished the race in fourth place. Not bad for an older boat, sailed by a 61-year old timer, who completed a heroic rescue in the deep Southern Ocean. This may be his last go around. But then again, maybe not.

A week later, it was Charlie Dalin’s incredible emergency repair that was big news. At the front of the pack with Thomas Ruyant and Yannick Bestaven, Dalin’s yellow Apivia was literally flying through the deep Southern Ocean when a loud crack meant trouble. He immediately slowed and was able to determine that the bearing that supports his port foil where it exits the hull was missing. This would be an immediate race ender and possibly a deploy-the-raft situation for most normal humans. But Dalin managed to stop the leak and continue limping along while he consulted his shore crew (legal for technical issues). Together they devised an elegant but very hard-to-execute plan that could possibly save their race. Using a battery powered grinder and a pattern sent electronically to the boat from France, Dalin cut out carbon shims to shove into the space where the bearing used to be. He would have to retract most of the foil, but maybe it would be secure enough to hold it in place? It seemed an incredible long shot.

The next morning, Dalin tacked to port (away from the finish) to get the port foil mostly out of the water. Over the next five hours, he suspended himself over the topsides to the waterline with a halyard, and attempted to jam the shims into position. Dalin estimates he made between 20 to 30 trips over the side. Finally, he had done all he could, and he tacked back to resume racing, now 170 miles behind the leaders. Amazingly, the repair held, with some later tweaks, for the next 15,000 miles to the finish, surely a notable chapter in the history of maritime McGyverism.

Fortunately for Dalin, there were minefields ahead for the leading boats and he was able to get back in touch. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the race was starboard tack, where he was hampered with a faulty foil. But he sailed an incredibly disciplined course, always going as fast as he safely could, while managing tactical risk, even when he could be going 3 knots faster at times with a working foil. You have not heard the last of Dalin, he is now a household word in France and throughout the ocean sailing world.

Sam Davies’ Vendée story is both sad and inspiring. She has steadily worked for years to create a top IMOCA program, and this year she had shown promise. Again, the cruelty of the South Atlantic showed its ugly face. While blasting toward the roaring forties off Cape Town, Davies’ keel hit a UFO and her “Initiative Coeur” came to a stop. “It was like hitting a rock” Davies later said. She broke some ribs from the collision, but worse news were the cracks in the longitudinal bulkhead supporting the keel. Race over. I cannot imagine the feeling of disappointment in the moment. But of course, she effected emergency repairs and made arrangements to meet her shore team in South Africa. Three days later, she arrived, and the technicians were ready to start the repair. The Vendée Globe rules are very clear: no outside assistance is allowed. So, once her shore team stepped on her IMOCA, her race was over. But wait. Davies’ sponsor is a children’s charity, and they were raising money based on how many miles she sailed. So, she made the bold decision to go back to sea, sailing “hors course”, back to the Southern Ocean with all its charms, on to Cape Horn and up the Atlantic to France. Davies was out of the race, but she would finish the course anyways, for her sanity, for her sponsor, for the spirit which is the Vendée. She is still at sea as I write this, winning hearts and helping kids. “At first I thought I was going to die, then that I have to stop sailing in Cape Town”. But then I thought, “This is stupid, this is nonsense to stop sailing, I don’t want to do that!”.

Yannick Bestaven is not a familiar name American sailing household, even though he has won the Mini-Transat in 2001 and twice won the Transat Jacque Vabre. He dreamed of being a Vendée sailor, and he fought hard to develop the skills and the money. It all seemed to come together for Bestaven before the 2008 Vendée, where he arrived at the start with a good boat and ready to go. But on the first night of the race, Bestaven’s mast broke, and with it all his sailing dreams. He limped back through the heartless Bay of Biscay to home, vowing to quit sailing and get a normal job. He was an engineer and entrepreneur for a few years and settled down in his home of La Rochelle. But something was missing, and in 2016 he started to sail again, now in the Classe 40. Quickly, he got back to speed, and within two years was atop the Classe 40 scene. Then, the opportunity came from sponsor Maitre Coq to race the Vendée again, and Yannick had to say yes. It was a 2015 boat, so not the newest, but a proven design with smaller “Dali” foils. In this year’s race, “Maitre CoQ IV” sailed pretty cautiously through the early storms, but was not far from the front peloton. Bestaven was asked by Race Control to stand by in the rescue of “PRB”, and after all that he was 400 miles behind the leaders. As the action moved to the Southern Ocean, Bestaven started to really catch fire. He made 2 brilliantly timed jibes while the leaders were experiencing light air. Then he navigated very close to the Antarctica Ice Exclusion Zone and made further gains by pushing very hard to stay ahead of a big westerly front. He took the lead and never looked back, all the way to Cape Horn, where he rounded 15 hours ahead on Dalin, and 22 hours ahead of Ruyant. Then he made what seemed a brilliant move up the coast of Argentina, stretching out to a 434 mile margin. Then, all the effort fell apart. He sat becalmed while all his rivals sailed right up to him. A complete restart with 8,000 miles to go! 5 boats were within 30 miles, with another 4 a further 80 miles back.

But far from done, Bestaven continued to attack the course tactically, and push hard on his older steed. He initially lost with his westerly position through the doldrums, but made a bold move north after that, passing north of the Azores. This set him up to be the first to catch a big North Atlantic front, which he rode all the way to the finish. After all that, “Maitre CoQ IV” crosses the line third, eight hours after Dalin and four hours after Louis Burton. But because Yannick had diverted course and slowed to aid in the rescue of Escoffier, the jury had previously awarded him 10 1/4 hours credit, which was enough to give him the win by 2.5 hours. Incredible. Onshore, he hugged Dalin, and suggested that this time there were really two winners of the Vendée!

These are the modern seafarers, exhibiting a level of skill, seamanship, and preparation that actually makes the Vendée not crazy. Just imagine, sailing along at 20 knots on a foiling roller coaster, trying to find the right sail plan, the right trim, the right angle, to go fast but not so fast that you break the boat. This is stressful in the best of times, but these men and women are navigating around the world singlehanded. They sleep when they can, sometimes not much when conditions are tough. They do their own weather analysis and their own routing, plus they have to do all the sail changes and reefing solo. Not to mention the inevitable repairs and jury rigs.

Yes, having a good autopilot helps tremendously, in fact it allows the sport to happen at this level. But the stress is ongoing and sometimes extreme. The sailors are trying to find that balance of top performance and sustainability, being able to keep going day after day.

Why do I idolize these crazy offshore argonauts? I have asked myself this question for years, without a good answer, except that they represent a sort of human ideal as expressed through a sailboat. An ultimate manifestation of sailor and sailboat coming together to cross the ocean, to race across the ocean, that I find compelling and somehow reassuring. Yes, there is risk, and sometime bad things happen. None of these sailors seek out risk for its own sake, but as a price that can be managed, part of the task of efficiently sailing the boat around the world.

The stress is often evident in the communications from the sailors during the race. You can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices. But as the race goes on, a certain calmness and peace also seems to find the Vendée sailors. They become one with their boat, but they also become one with their environment, and it seems that some find a peace that comes from doing the very best you can, day after day. But I have to think that the first steaming shower back on shore feels pretty good too!

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US Sailing Team’s Paige Railey, Dane Wilson and Leandro Spina get us up to speed on the new West Marine US Open Sailing Series. Plus, a look at Emirates Team New Zealand trip down the mine, the epic battle at the front of the Vendée Globe and finally one slick mark rounding from the Newport YC’s Turnabout frostbite fleet.

The post Around the Sailing World, Episode 27 appeared first on Sailing World.

Reconvening for the first episode of 2021, the Around the Sailing World panel revisits the 36th America’s Cup and how teams manage the final days before the Challenger Series. Plus, what’s happening around the country and at Cape Horn with the Vendee Globe leaders.

The post Around the Sailing World, Episode 26 appeared first on Sailing World.

Race photo production Vendee Globe 2020

According to Vendee Globe officials, Kevin Escoffier had to abandon his IMOCA 60 PRB following damage in afternoon of November 30 afternoon. He took to his life raft some 840 nautical miles southwest of Cape Town. He was third in the rankings at the time.

The rescue mission was coordinated from Les Sables d’Olonne by Vendée Globe Race Direction in collaboration with CROSS Griz Nez and MRCC South Africa. The President of PRB, Jean-Jacques Laurent was at the Race HQ with race director Jacques Caraës and the race direction team assisting through the entire process.

In a press statement, Vendée Globe race director Jacques Caraës explained the effort in detail: “We sent Jean back to a position received by the CROSS Gris Nez, the position sent by the onboard EPIRB distress beacon. Météo France’s drift simulation also delivered a trace. Jean set off at 00h15 UT (1h15 French time) on our request to reach this point at reduced speed. He found no one at the given location. He then resumed its journey southeast for three quarters for between 45 minutes and an hour. As he was making headway at 1.5 knots in a 20 to 25 knot wind under very reduced sail (3 reefs in the mainsail and no engine), he disappeared from the screen when suddenly we heard him talk. We no longer saw anyone. Then, a few minutes after 1:06 UT or 2:06 French time (time at which he had precisely to retrieve Kevin on board), Jean went back down to the chart table and then we saw Kevin arrive behind his back in a survival suit. They both appeared fit seconds before the video cut. He is fine. Everyone is well. They are recovering\!”

Today, Escoffier described his ordeal in an interview with the PRB press service, from the interior of Le Cam’s yacht.

“It’s surreal what happened,” Escoffier says. “The boat pulled back on itself. I heard a crack but, honestly, you didn’t need the noise to understand. I looked at the bow, it was at 90 degrees. Within seconds, there was water everywhere. The stern of the boat was underwater and the bow pointed skyward. The boat broke in two, forward of the mast bulkhead. I assure you, I am not exaggerating anything… there was an angle of 90 degrees between the back and the front of the boat.

“I didn’t have time to do anything. I was just able to send a message to my team; ‘I’m sinking. This is not a joke. MAYDAY.’

“I got out of the boat, I put on the TPS \[survival suit] as best I could. I saw smoke, the electronics burning. Everything was extinguished. The only instinct I had was to grab the phone to send this message and take the GST which I never switch on. I wanted to take the grab bag, but I couldn’t because the water was rising. I took the bib \[life raft] at the back. The front bib was not accessible, it was already three meters below the water. The water was in the cockpit up to the door.

“I would have liked to have stayed a little longer on board but I could see that everything was going very quickly and then I took a breaking wave and went into the water with the raft. At that time, I was not at all reassured…You are in a raft with 35 knots of wind. No, it is not reassuring. I was only reassured when I saw Jean. But the problem was how to get on board with him. We said two to three words to each other… He was forced to move away a little then afterwards, I saw that he was staying in the zone. I stayed in the raft until the early hours.

“I didn’t know if the weather was going to soften enough to allow a maneuver. He was 2 meters from me, he sent me the \[life ring] with a link but it was hard to stop the boat. Finally, I managed to grab a tube, a bar to get on board. There was still sea, about 3.50 meters. It is a test in these conditions to board a 60-foot boat, all the more when you are constrained in your movements by the TPS. Honestly, luckily, I’m in good physical shape because I can assure you that it’s not easy.”

Escoffier’s abandonment follows the devastating news of Alex Thomson on Hugo Boss, retiring the race with rudder damage sustained after a prolonged effort to fortify a compromised section of the hull a week earlier.

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Fingers crossed — because the French government could yet intervene to stop it — it now looks reasonably certain that this year’s Vendée Globe solo round-the-world race will happen, starting on November 8.

The skippers and their boats are arriving at the start port of Les Sables-d’Olonne on the French Biscay coast. But the atmosphere is anything but normal with France in partial national lockdown and with the teams facing the very real — and terrifying prospect — that if their skipper tests positive for Covid-19 before the start, then he or she will not be able to join the race.

The one caveat is that if they are found to be clear of the virus within a 10-day window after the start then they can set off. But the Covid rule on participation — which to some seems absurd in a solo round-the-world race — is a sword of Damocles hanging over all 33 skippers from eight nations, whether they be superstars at the front of the fleet or those on limited budgets sailing older boats in the lower reaches of the field.

The dilemma in the next couple of weeks is that skippers still need to fulfill media commitments and to work as hard as they can for their sponsors — albeit behind face masks and Perspex screens — but they cannot afford to take risks that might compromise years of work to get to the start line of the toughest race in world sailing.

From an international perspective (and in a field with no American entry) the big story of this year’s race has to be the fortunes of the British IMOCA veteran Alex Thomson. He will start the Vendée Globe in his latest Hugo Boss-sponsored $7 million vessel among the hot favorites, alongside three French sailors, Jérémie Beyou on Charal, Thomas Ruyant on LinkedOut and Charlie Dalin on Apivia.

Thomson is a phenomenon not just in sailing but in sport. (His story, by the way, is a great sell to friends who may not be interested in sailing as such, but love a good sporting drama). The single most remarkable fact about him —given his high profile and his undoubted ability — is that in more than 16 years sailing in the IMOCA ranks, he has never won a race.

Not only that but his career has been a roller-coaster mixing moments of success and fulfillment with the most appalling dramas and setbacks. In the former category the 46-year-old married Briton who has two young children, has set distance records over 24 hours in solo and crewed formats; he finished the 2007 Barcelona World Race in second alongside Australian sailor Andrew Cape and he finished the last two Vendée Globes in third and second place respectively.

In the latter category it is hard to know where to begin. Thomson retired from his first Vendée Globe in 2004 after the boat developed a hole in the deck; he was rescued in the southern Indian Ocean by fellow Briton Mike Golding in the 2006 Velux Five Oceans round-the-world race; his 2008 Vendée campaign was visited by catastrophe when his then new HUGO BOSS was hit by a French fishing boat while anchored outside Les Sables d’Olonne. He subsequently retired from the race after 24 hours. He retired from the 2009 Transat Jacques Vabre after hitting something in the water and abandoned the same race in 2015 when another new Hugo Boss capsized when he and Spanish sailor Guillermo Altadill had to be rescued by helicopter off the north coast of Spain.

You might expect the pattern of disasters to abate as he got older but the last few years have been no different to those preceding them. In November 2018 Thomson suffered possibly the most humiliating of all reverses that have been inflicted upon him — or, in this case, that he has brought upon himself — when after leading the solo 3,500-mile Route du Rhum almost the entire way from the start in St Malo in France, he decided to take a nap 65 miles from the finish at Guadeloupe. His boat ended up on the rocks when he failed to wake up and although he crossed the line first, he was demoted to third place because he had used his engine to save his boat. To say he had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory on that occasion would be a massive understatement.

As if that was not enough, his build-up to this race has been heavily hampered not just by Covid-19 but by the fact that he and co-skipper Neal McDonald had to cut his new boat’s keel away in mid-Atlantic during last year’s Transat Jacques Vabre after they hit a whale at high speed. Ever since then the team has been playing catch-up to get the futuristic-looking VPLP/Pete Hobson-designed Hugo Boss race-ready for what will be his fifth attempt at the Vendée Globe.

Throughout it all Hugo Boss has stood by him, the German fashion house pumping millions into their British racer who has repaid the favor by running a disciplined and professional team whose ethos has seemed somewhat at odds with the results it has achieved on the water. And Thomson has been a good media property over the years, often in the headlines and scoring highly with his series of spectacular video stunts – his Keelwalk, Mastwalk and Skywalks – that have projected the sport well beyond the hardcore sailing audience.

“Charismatic, super-confident, fiercely competitive and a little bit flash,” as one profile described him recently, Thomson has remained remarkably level-headed, taking his setbacks and successes with equal aplomb. But there is no doubt in my mind that the weight of the load he carries — of not having won anything — is influencing what he does and what he says and what he might do on the racecourse this November. In the early years some of his disasters were blamed by critics on a reckless streak – something he denies, though he admits he pushes his boats hard – but an older and (possibly) more cautious Thomson is haunted by the sheer scale and repetitiveness of the setbacks he has had to contend with.

In the build–up to this race the psychology for him has been interesting. He has made no secret of the fact that there is only one result he is after. Having finished third and then second, only a win will do and that places its own very unique pressure on him — leaving a wide arc of potential failure — and it may well influence what he does on the racecourse.

“For me he has a target on his back,” commented the British team manager of Thomas Ruyant’s campaign, Marcus Hutchinson. “He’s here to win and if he’s not leading or makes a wrong call or a mistake and has to catch-up, that will be difficult psychologically — you wonder whether his motivation will be there to keep going.”

Thomson has chosen in the build-up to keep well away from his rivals, training and preparing in isolation in Britain from the team base at Gosport in Portsmouth. The first couple of days of last year’s Transat Jacques Vabre apart, he has not lined up his black foiling flyer against his rivals and has chosen to avoid all IMOCA events in the last few months — like the Vendée-Arctique-Les Sables D’Olonne Race and the Défi Azimut 48-hour race.

RELATED: Hugo Boss Skywalk

In France, this has made him look to the sailing public like an outside invader, plotting to take the prize from their French heroes and become the first Briton and first non-French skipper to win the Vendée Globe. Instead of joining in with the others, Hugo Boss has been out playing on its own as Thomson and his team push the numbers ever higher on the performance spectrum.

When you ask him whether he has put himself at a disadvantage by staying away from the fleet, he sounds confident enough. His argument is that the team knows where their starting point was — and that was a super-quick boat that finished second in the last Vendée Globe, despite losing one of its foils after just two weeks (that boat is now owned by 11th Hour Racing led by Charlie Enright and Mark Towill). He says that, with that base point, they have made huge strides. But they are gambling that the others have not made even more progress during a build-up in which all the teams have been hampered by lack of time on the water.

The lone wolf approach could well be replicated on the water in the early stages of the race when, in the past, Thomson has shown no fear about leaving the fleet and sailing off on his own. Sometimes this high-risk strategy has paid off, sometimes not, but it would be no surprise to see him tack away in the first week as the leaders head down the Atlantic.

For armchair sailors, the Thomson conundrum certainly makes for fascinating watching. It’s going to be like a global version of the first cross in Cup matches of old — who will be higher and faster? Right now we simply have no idea and it will depend on all sorts of variables in these super-sensitive foiling thoroughbreds.

“I’d love you to write that he’s going to win it and he’s going to put everyone to shame,” added Hutchinson. “The question is though, is he going to be quicker than the others and for how long and at what angles?”

One aspect that you notice when listening to Thomson talk is how technical and numbers-driven his mind is. This team is not dreaming; it is drilled by hard performance stats. Looking like a cross between a spaceship, a weapons system and a submarine, with its fully-enclosed cockpit and sleek black lines, HUGO BOSS is now sailing with its second set of foils and Thomson is confident they have optimized it in just the right way — by not being too ambitiou

He has never said it, but you have to think that this is likely to be his last Vendée campaign. It’s either a win now or he walks away (though I’ve thought he might throw in the towel earlier and been wrong). Not just as a fellow Brit, but as someone who has watched his trials and tribulations and occasional successes over 20 years, I would love to see him be handed a full deck of cards and romp his way round the world to make history. But I will be crossing everything until the very last mile on the last record-breaking day.

On his way to Les Sables in the new boat, Thomson summed-up his feelings as the moment of truth draws near once again.

“This is 20 years of my life,” he said, “So yes, this is what we’ve all been waiting for and what we’ve all been working toward. Obviously, the goal is to go out there and win it. But to get there, first you have to finish. And this race is very, very tough to finish. But, if we can get to that finish line, then I’m sure we’ll be in contention for the win. A win would certainly validate everything that we as a team, together with our partners, have put into this journey.”

I would only add that a win in this Vendée Globe would dramatically and completely transform a career that needs this one epic victory to give it the stamp of greatness.

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