Irish solo round the world sailor Pete Hogan offers his view of the 2024 edition of the Vendée Globe Race that concludes next week
By Christmas Day, 43 days after the start, it seemed all but over. With the fleet spread out across more than 7,000 nautical miles, stretching across the vast expanse of the South Pacific Ocean and well into the Indian Ocean, the two lucky leaders have rounded Cape Horn and are headed for home. Yoann Richomme and Charlie Dalin, trade the lead heading up the South Atlantic. They are unable to establish an advantage over each other and barring gear failure, they can expect to lead the way up the channel into Sables D'Olion not long after mid-January. Glory among the French public and sailing cognoscenti awaits. Plus, at this stage, it seems a new record should be established.
There are no Irish contenders this time round. The Vendée Globe is not an easy race to enter, with a strict 40-boat limit and various financial and qualification hurdles to pass before crossing the starting line. The Vendée Globe is mainly a French affair. There are two German contenders. One of these, Boris Herman, with a new boat and a well-funded campaign could expect to be on the podium. There are three British, one of whom has a chance (Sam Goodchild) two Swiss, an Italian, a Japanese and a Kiwi.
I have been following The IMOCA Class now, on line, for many years as well as other sailing events and series. (America's Cup, Sail GP, Figaro etc.) What else is an ageing old salt to do in their leisure hours? Sailing has become a spectator sport in a wonderful way and the Vendee Globe is a good example of what is possible. A few years ago I made the pilgrimage to Les Sables-d'Olonne, the town in the Vendée of France where the race starts and ends. I was not there when one of the big events was happening but I inspected the marinas and walked to the end of the famous 'channel'. Would that Dun Laoghaire or Crosshaven could establish even a small version of the marine industry and base that this backwater which is Les Sables has become through hosting races such as the Vendée Globe.
Envisioning a thriving marine hub in Dun Laoghaire or Crosshaven, inspired by Les Sables' coastal success with events like the Vendée Globe. A dream for Irish maritime growth awaits?
The presentation of the race
As an event, the whole promotion gets into top gear a good two weeks or more before the actual start with the opening of the 'Race Village'. Events and promotions and the ability of the public to view the boats and skippers help to make the event more popular with the ordinary public. The ability to wander up and down a marina and look at boats doesn't exist in Ireland. Several times I have been asked to leave yacht club premises for simply wandering in and looking at visiting race boats. Similarly, with marinas, they are off-limits.
The Dock Walk, online, with some experts, has become a feature, and I enjoyed this edition by Pip Hare and her team leader, Joff Brown.
I check in on the race tracker about three times a day. Or more. The organisers also stream a TV channel for about half an hour daily in both French and English. This features many sailing personalities and experts. In this regard, there has been some Irish interest, with Tom Dolan, Damian Foxall and Marcus Hutchinson giving their opinions and expertise. Thanks to the magic of Starlink there are live link ups with various skippers which invariably go off without a hitch.
The Vendee Globe 2024 featured live stream from the boats in the Roaring Forties and Screaming Fifties Photo: Vendee Globe
But this live stream from the boats out there in the Roaring Forties and Screaming Fifties is surprisingly uninteresting. The boats are travelling at on average 20 knots and so each skipper is strapped into a sort of padded dentist's chair. They make their comments from a prone position while the boat crashes and bangs along. The cameras from multiple viewpoints on board show the action. To forward this consists of waves coming over the bow. The view aft, which seems most common, is of a beautiful streaming wake stretching back to the horizon, not unlike the view aft from a fast speedboat. It shows the incredible progress which these boats are capable of. But the view is invariably the same and repetitious and does not make for scintillating coverage of the race. When the skippers are talking, the view of the boat is usually of pre filmed shots of the particular boat. It's difficult for the skippers to make varied and interesting footage as they scream along at 25 knots. Some skippers resort to attempts at humour or views of the freeze dried food they are cooking that particular day.
Like car racing, everybody gets excited only when there is trouble or disaster of some sort. Luckily, there has been little of that this edition.
Routing
The race is all about routing, the weather forecasts and the computers. I am not an expert or even an amateur at the dark art of routing. But routing could be said to have killed the Volvo Ocean race, turning it into a dull procession of evenly spaced boats following each other round the world. The commentators and the audience prayed for a bit of variety, a split in the fleet and the odd lead change. It rarely happened. Now, these races have become a computer game of prediction, and the computers are always right. In this edition of the Vendée, the two leaders managed to get one weather system ahead of the rest, and it seemed the race was all but over.
The personalities
Who do I want to win? Because he has a chance of winning (new boat and well-funded team) is such a nice guy, and is not French, (underdog) I usually say Boris Herman. But I have other favourites. It's hard not to want Damien Seguin to do well with his handicap of only one hand and cheerful personality. In this race, he has been joined by another handicapped sailor - Chinese Jingkun Xu. Good luck to them both.
In the ladies, the star of the show and perhaps the obvious choice for everyone, has got to be Violette Dorange, the 23-year-old wonder child of French sailing. Which just goes to show where following your dreams in French sailing circles can lead. She is just a year younger than Ellen MacArthur when Ellen competed in the Vendée in 2001. (Mac Arthur finished second which is an incredible achievement in retrospect). Dorange, with an older, non-foiling, boat will not do that. Pip Hare seems to be popular with everybody for her happy clappy and can-do presentations. She was unlucky that the mast of her fancy new boat fell down following the glorious race she had the last edition in a much older boat. She has a well funded team this time round so has been unlucky. Such is life.
But the winner will undoubtedly come from one of the French hard men. In this case probably Charlie Dalin. I was expecting Jeremie Beyou to be doing better. He comes across as such a committed professional with such a well prepared and funded boat. He lay fifth rounding the Horn but is a good 1500 miles behind the two leaders.
A race of two fleets
Spread out as it is across the vast emptiness of the southern ocean this edition of the Vendée surely confirms the supremacy of the foilers over the other boats. The fact that it is primarily a downwind race, of course helps. There must be a case for dividing the fleet into two fleets and possibly giving starts separated by a day or two. Split the fleet into Foilers and Daggerboard boats. Or split the fleet into development boats (where design innovations are permitted) and non development. At present certain developments are not permitted to contain the cost of competing.
In the present Vendee Globe the first dagger board boat home will get a warm reception but I think it might be good for the sport and for boat design development to emphasize this. The famous old campaigner Jean Le Cam had the courage to build a new boat without foils. He is leading the non foilers but is stuck squarely in the middle of the fleet. The IMOCA organisation is very much sailor led and controlled. At present, as I understand it, the foilers are being hobbled by the fact that there are not foils on their rudders. This prevents them from fully foiling. This is to keep costs down.
Enclosed cabins
Foiling, with its increased speeds and spray, has logically led to completely enclosed cabins. This makes sense for the protection of the crew. They pound through the Southern Ocean sitting in their padded chair, wearing a crash helmet and looking at the various screens and cams scattered about, doing their computer calculations.
A wave rolls over the deck of a Volvo 70 during the 2017 Volvo Ocean Race, emphasising the fact that enclosed cabins of today's IMOCAs are a big advantage Photo: Ainhoa Sanchez
The forthcoming Ocean Race, successor to the old Whitbread and Volvo race is to be sailed using IMOCA boats. I just cannot imagine the conditions for the crew of five enclosed down below in an IMOCA 60 as it circumnavigates the world. Where is the fun in that? There would be more space and comfort for the crew in a World War U boat.
Heating
It's blooming cold down in the Southern Ocean, bouncing along the ice exclusion zone while somebody hoses you down with an ice-cold shower. In the last Vendée, there were videos of sailors heating themselves using some sort of blower heater and a flexible tube stuck down their layers of thermals. Perhaps it was a hair dryer! I have not seen any of that in this race. But the videos of sailors in their cabins breathing vapour out of their mouths in the cold conditions are impressive indicators of the harsh conditions. I had no such problems when I crossed the Southern Ocean. I had a Waterford Stanley wood stove on board and a plentiful supply of driftwood salvaged from the leeward side of Auckland Harbour. Every week or so when conditions permitted, I fired up the wood stove and relaxed in the cabin with a good book! Excellent for the morale of the crew. My hat goes off to these hard ladies and men of the Vendée Globe.
Where to now?
Most of the commentators on the race have remarked on the small number of retirees through equipment failure this edition of the race. Which is a tribute to the level of preparation on the part of the teams. As it is due to technological advances in equipment and its deployment by designers. The main snag seems to be the halyard locks and tracks on the masts which is probably because they are designed to be as light as possible. Steering gears would be the next problem area (knocking out the previous winner, Yannick Bestaven). I never cease to be impressed by the sophistication and the ruggedness of the steering systems which have evolved. An efficient method of self-steering was the holy grail for the early single-handed racers. Now things have gone far beyond that. The skipper rarely touches the helm but rather makes sure that there is enough electricity in the batteries to run it. A failure at 25 knots must be a catastrophic event. The final gismo which I understand people are working on would appear to be a sort of underwater radar or beeper which will warn the automatic steering device on board of an imminent collision with a dreaded OFNI. (Unidentified floating object) I'm sure this is a perfectly feasible development.
Perhaps this is the end of the road for the sort of sailing which the early Whitbreads and Vendée races heralded. Twenty-three-year-old females and one-handed athletes can control these boats around the world from the shelter of their sealed cabins. It almost makes more sense to have a race around the world for remote-controlled boats.
Dublin marine artist Pete Hogan sailed solo around the world in his gaff ketch Molly B in the mid-1990s
