The eighth Vendee Globe starts 6th November 2016. So far, 14 skippers (all French) have completed their registration and 13 others have completed their pre-registration. Three other non French campaigns have been pre-registered – including one Irish campaign – but wish to remain anonymous before officially declaring.
There may well be other contenders, no fewer than 27 sailors have officially said they want to take part. More than half of them (14) have already completed the required paperwork and are officially registered.
Four sailors will be competing for the fourth time in the Vendee Globe in 2016: Vincent Riou, Jean-Pierre Dick, Bertrand de Broc and Jean Le Cam. If they manage to complete the race around the world, Arnaud Boissieres and Armel Le Cleac'h will also have achieved something remarkable: completing three Vendee Globe races in a row.
Coincidentally, the 14 sailors already registered are all French, which is far from the case for the 13 pre-registered, where there are six Frenchmen, but 7 from six other countries: Britain (Alex Thomson), Hungary (Nandor Fa), the USA (Rich Wilson), Italy (Alessandro Di Benedetto). The first 14 officially registered in order
1. Jeremie Beyou / Maitre Coq
2. Tanguy De Lamotte / Initiatives Coeur
3. Vincent Riou / PRB
4. Morgan Lagraviere / Safran
5. Armel Le Cleac'h / Banque Populaire
6. Paul Meilhat / SMA
7. Sebastien Destremau / Face Ocean
8. Eric Bellion / Comme un seul homme-Stand as one
9. Jean-Pierre Dick / StMichel-Virbac
10. Fabrice Amedeo / Newrest-Matmut
11. Sebastien Josse / Edmond de Rothschild
12. Yann Elies / Queguiner - Leucemie Espoir
13. nc
14. Nicolas Boidevezi / adopteunskipper.net
The pre-registered
- Alex Thomson (GB) / Hugo Boss
- Nandor Fa (HUN)- Spirit of Hungary
- Arnaud Boissieres / Le bateau des metiers by Aerocampus
- Bertrand de Broc / MACSF
- Kito de Pavant / Bastide Otio
- Louis Burton / Bureau Vallee
- Rich Wilson (USA) / Great America IV
- Alessandro Di Benedetto (ITA) - n/a
- Jean-François Pellet / Come in Vendee
- Thomas Ruyant / Le Souffle du Nord
- Jean Le Cam - n/a
And two other sailors from outside of France: a Spaniard and a Dutchman. They will each be announcing their project shortly.