Lead up to the start of the Vendée Globe

The once-every-four-years Vendée Globe will start this weekend, and 20 solo skippers will set off to race around the world, without stopping.  It’s an incredible feat to be able to accomplish – both to manage the boats (think running with scissors) and to deal with the exhaustion…for almost 90 days. It is a delicate balance of pushing hard enough to go fast, without breaking yourself or your boat.

Ever since Justin and I met umpteen years back, we’ve followed these round-the-world races (or, rather, Justin stays glued to the updates and keeps me apprised) – both the fully crewed (the Volvo) and the solo races (the Vendée Globe, the BOC Challenge/now Velux 5 Oceans).  Last year, we got to see the start of the fully-crewed Volvo in Alicante, and this year, we are heading to Les Sables d’Olonne on the western coast of France to watch the start of the Vendée Globe.  We are really excited, partly to see the race, the racers, and the crazy-fast boats, but also to see the mania that the French have about long-distance sailboat racing.  They are nuts about the sport, and apparently, nearly 1,000,000 people have already been to the race village, where the racers are doing final preparations prior to the race start this Saturday.

We’re trying to get to know the skippers better by watching the videos profiling the sailors – there are 12 French, 3 British, 2 Swiss, 1 Hungarian, 1 Spaniard, and 1 Italian/French skippers this year.  There is 1 woman (Sam Davies from the UK).  So far, we are both really excited about the Spaniard (Javier “Bubi” Sansó) who is trying to accomplish something that has never been done before – successfully race a 100% “eco-powered” boat.  He has a hydro-generator, solar panels, and wind generators.  However, watching the videos of all the skippers has been great – their breed is pretty likeable!

We’re off to see them tomorrow, and will try to post pictures from the race village!

2 comments