“When you think about the Vendée Globe, you always remember the good stuff. I’ve done three now, and you remember the good bits of all the races. So it seems like the race is condensed into a really short length of time. But once you get out there, that’s when it hits…” says Initiatives-Coeur skipper Sam Davies.

“The hard thing is when you realise just how long it is and how you’ve got to survive in those conditions.”

The Vendée Globe can be a powerful drug. For some skippers it’s an experience so transformative it draws them back again and again. For first-timers it’s a daunting prospect: can they endure three brutal months? Will they even be the same person afterwards?

More sailors than ever will pit themselves against the physical, mental, elemental and technical challenges of sailing alone around the world when a record fleet of 40 IMOCAs starts the Vendée Globe’s 10th running on 10 November. It is the longest race course in sport: from Les Sables d’Olonne in France, and back, around the world non-stop without assistance. Technically they are racing for €200,000 – the 1st place prize money. But in reality they are racing for a place in history.

Highs and lows

Charlie Dalin nearly took his place in the history books, having been first to finish in 2021 on Apivia in his debut Vendée Globe, before Yannick Bestaven was crowned winner after redress was calculated for the skippers who assisted in rescuing Kevin Escoffier. For Dalin, the Vendée is truly unfinished business.

“I guess I was like a temporary winner. Only for eight hours. It’s a mixed feeling. When I arrived 80 days after leaving Les Sables, I was really happy – to see my son again, my wife, my team. Sailing around the world on my own – it was amazing. And I always thought the finish line was going to be a relief. But the race was not over, I still had to look at the time. That felt a bit weird – when you do a race like the La Solitaire, the clock is part of the game. But normally in the Vendée, it is not,” recalls Dalin.

“I didn’t think about it for long. I just enjoyed the [welcome]. But I had a moment during the press conference – I was on stage and on the right wall they had big photos of all the past winners. And then I realised that I was not going to be on that wall.”

In the end, the deciding margin was tortuously small. “When I really started thinking about it was a few weeks after the finish, when everything settles back down. The objective you had for so many years, and then for the 80 days of the race – everything is over. We call it the Vendée blues. And that’s where I had a bit of, ‘I could have won the Vendée’. A win was only two and a half hours away, so I started redoing the race in my head every night. Where did I lose this 150 minutes? Where did they go? I did that for quite a while,” admits Dalin.

“I’m not thinking about this anymore,” he adds, “I’m just thinking about the upcoming race,” but to return to the Vendée Globe is to put yourself back through an emotional wringer for even battle-hardened competitors.

Jérémie Beyou will be starting his fifth Vendée. In 2020 he was one of the hot favourites, only to be forced back to port with damage.

Beyou eventually restarted nine days after the fleet, truly alone. “We talked a lot about what happened. From a technical point of view, I think we reviewed everything. But in a mental, psychological way, I have to admit that it was difficult to start again. After the race – like after every Vendée – it was difficult to be okay.”

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Ever present danger

More difficult still is dealing with the cold creep of fear. Fear isn’t a word Vendée skippers use very often, they tend to speak instead of managing physical symptoms like racing heart rates in stressful situations, though many will admit to a fierce dislike of climbing the mast. But danger is ever present, and at the speeds IMOCAs travel at things can go wrong very quickly.

Sam Davies’ last Vendée ended when Initiatives-Coeur crashed, hard, at 20 knots into an unknown object, causing structural damage and throwing Davies across the boat, injuring her ribs. She was, she says, “really freaked out by the whole thing”.

To come back meant facing the possibility that fate could strike again. “Do I really want to do this again? I put four years of my life into this, then something beyond my control has just taken it all away. It’s so disappointing. Do I really want to put myself and my sponsors, my family and everyone who supports me, through that again – because it’s the same risk. The fact that happened doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen next time,” Davies said, recalling her thought process after the 2020 race. “Those were the doubts that I had.”

“But I’m still looking for that result and the opportunity to race a really competitive boat all the way around the world. I really hope I make it this time.”

Back on the horse

This Vendée Globe cycle has been remarkable for lots of reasons. There was an unprecedented 13 new IMOCAs built. This meant there were a lot of IMOCA skippers with boats either in build or in refit, kicking their heels around Brittany, all the while desperate to keep up with the fleet’s accelerated pace of learning.

Enter the crewed Ocean Race, which for the first time featured the IMOCA class in 2022. For Davies, whose new Initiatives-Coeur was undergoing significant rebuilding work, the opportunity to get back to racing in the Southern Ocean with Paul Meilhat’s team on Biotherm was too good to miss.

“For two reasons. One was mentally for me, given what happened in the last race, but also in terms of preparing for a Vendée Globe. I realised any Vendée sailor that does The Ocean Race can have a massive advantage, because our boats are evolving so quickly. It’s nothing like what even the top boats were four years ago. We don’t sail them in the same way. Everything’s changed so much, and this was the only opportunity to go and send it in the Southern Ocean with the powerful foiling boats we have now – and with a crew, so you push it a bit harder.”

While sailors in The Ocean Race could practise hard throttling a foiling IMOCA – on someone else’s boat – once back to their own projects every skipper faced a conundrum. Unlike previous races, Vendée veterans did not get an automatic pass to re-enter. With the entry list oversubscribed, every qualifying race counted to secure one of 40 precious spots. This left teams facing some hard decisions: sail conservatively to lock in the miles, or use each opportunity to really test their weapons?

The upshot is that the level across the whole fleet has risen, says Jérémie Beyou. “I think all the teams are much more professional. The qualification mode makes you race a lot, so teams have to be bigger.

“I remember my first Vendée Globe. We had many problems with reliability – it was a new boat, and we had a small team. I’d broken the mast, so at the start of the Vendée I didn’t know my boat, I didn’t know how to do the manoeuvres alone.

“I had a discussion with Violette [Dorage, the youngest entrant in the race at just 23] – she’s much more ready, even if she’s very young, than I was on my first edition.”

High-wire act

Getting the most out of the latest IMOCAs is now a high-wire juggling act that requires the ability to race technically accurately, analysing vast amounts of data and calibration settings, but also employ some old-fashioned seamanship to know where the danger zone is.

“We all have to navigate this fine line between going fast but preserving [our boats]. And that’s what I find really fascinating,” says Dalin. “Because numbers don’t give you the answer – even though we’ve got gigabytes of data with fibre optics in the foil, the rigging loads, acceleration in all directions. But no numbers tell you how to sail the race. The numbers don’t tell you where the line rests. Your gut is going to tell you where this point is.”

As Davies points out, the sensors are not invincible (they are also power hungry). “If something slips in a jammer, or if a hydraulic releases a bit – you can dismast. But you also have to put marks everywhere – and watch the marks because you pretty much know that halfway around the world, some of your load cells will stop working. Then you’ve got to be able to do it the old-fashioned way.”

After two editions of the race that have seen foiling IMOCAs partly fly – and partly lurch and skid – their way around the world, the current crop benefit from more reliable construction, bigger foils, and sophisticated rake controls (though not T-rudders, still banned under class rules) for increasingly sustained flight.

As well as VPLP and Verdier there are boats by Owen Clarke, Farr, David Raison, three scow-style boats from Sam Manuard (including Initiatives-Coeur, built to older moulds but updated, and Charal 2), and two new builds from Antoine Koch/Finot Conq. Hull shape is a major development area, with focus on avoiding the bow burying into waves as the boat comes off the foils.

Dalin says this was a big priority for his Verdier-designed Macif. “My new boat is much better in that respect. We’d get quite a lot of water on deck, and I’d pretty often have big decelerations. The new boat is above the waves nearly all the time. But when it slows, sometimes you can still nose dive. So before, I was always bracing myself and getting ready for the decelerations. This time, I don’t know if it’s more dangerous, but it’s much rarer.”

Jérémie Beyou says his Charal 2 also sails at a more level pitch: “In terms of attitude, constant heel and trim, it’s much better than it was four years ago. I have tools to trim the boat easier than last time, with the extension or rake on the foils, and our systems on the rudders. The boat is much more sensitive to that. That is a big step forward.”

Brutal

But with higher average speeds come potentially higher impacts. “In terms of slamming and the loads, it’s a bit higher – and it was already high, so sometimes it’s a bit too much. Inside it’s still brutal,” Beyou adds.

Dalin agrees. “There are ways to tame it a bit, but it’s still pretty violent. No matter what anyone tells you, when the seaway is big, there’s no single boat which, if you go fast, is going to be comfy.”

The bone-breaking impacts can shatter both boats and skippers. Biotherm had three new bulkheads fitted during The Ocean Race’s Cape Town stopover to give the boat’s skeleton more stability, then three more added since.

During the 2023 Retour à La Base solo transatlantic Sebastien Simon knocked himself out, awaking covered in blood. After completing the race doctors discovered he’d also fractured a vertebrae in his neck.

Teams are going to huge lengths to keep skippers safe. Sam Davies has turned her living space around with an aft-facing chair with suspension, as on a RIB. “All the really violent movement is basically being thrown forward the whole time. If you sit facing backwards, then it’s a lot less risky, otherwise we end up destroying our screens the whole time.” (The ‘flip’ side is that all Davies’ autopilot controls, radar screen views etc are reversed). Dalin has moved his nav station and bunk aft of the cockpit, with a custom-built chair, that looks like something an astronaut would belt himself into for take off.

Small details matter – Davies has fitted a tap to the bottom of her jet boil canister because pouring boiling water becomes impossibly dangerous (Boris Herrmann suffered burns that required hospital treatment during the Ocean Race while preparing food). Macif is built with no aft-facing flanges in the bulkheads to avoid every possible protrusion that could cause injury.

The skippers have been experimenting with body armour. Head injuries are a big concern, and sailors have tried everything from rugby skull caps to hard helmets. Sam Davies shows me a beanie she’s been trialling with impact protection from a mobility aid company. Musto has developed waterproofs with panels similar to those used in motorbike gear. Dalin says he often wears knee pads to avoid sores: “You have to be so careful. Even a small cut, or if you spend too much time on your knees, you can get infections, and it can become pretty bad.”

But there is also a psychological element. “If you’ve got your shock-absorbing seat and your noise-reducing everything on, if you protect yourself, then it’s a lot less scary,” says Davies. “So then you send it.”

Unknown entity

So what can we expect from this year’s Vendée Globe? “Everyone tells me it will always be the unknown,” says Vendée rookie Dorange, who’s been asking for advice. “Even those who’ve done the Vendée Globe three times say to me, ‘Don’t imagine, it will be the unknown.’”

It’s safe to speculate that if conditions allow, records are likely to be broken and competition is likely to be furiously close. But outcomes are impossible to predict.

“Previously in IMOCA, if you had a reasonable boat and an okay budget, then you’d pretty much be guaranteed to be in the top five. Now with that, you can just be in the top 20,” says Davies.

So how many skippers are realistically in with a shout? Beyou is circumspect. “Last time, I fell into the game of being one the favourites, the two guys to beat were Alex Thomson and myself!” he shrugs. “So no prognostics for me. Maybe it’s 10 boats…”

Starting unscathed is the first task, then it will be about hanging onto the pack and seeing what the Vendée dice rolls. “That’s what I want to do – hopefully, be in the lead group. If I can do that, and manage to sail it like a transat all the way around the world, then I’ll be really happy.

“After the two transats this year, I was like, ‘Do you think it’s physically possible to keep going like that for 10 times the length of what I’ve just done?’” Davies ponders.

Is it? “I’ll tell you in three months’ time.”

Key Vendée Globe 2024 contenders

Charlie Dalin

Picking a favourite is fiendishly hard, but having led the fleet home last time around, there’s only one goal for Dalin and his new Macif. The boat is immaculately prepared, the team and skipper know what to do to get around in front – now it’s largely down to fate and fortune.

Thomas Ruyant

Dalin and Ruyant have duelled each other across oceans for years, but it was Ruyant who won both the 2021 and 2023 TJV and 2022 Route du Rhum. Foil damage put paid to his chances in the 2020 Vendée – will his Antoine Koch/Finot-Conq design Vulnerable prove to be anything but?

Jérémie Beyou

One of the most seasoned campaigners on the circuit, Beyou’s new Manuard-designed Charal is a consistent podium finisher. Beyou will not want to take any risks on his fifth Vendée, but if he can get around unscathed expect to see Charal right at the front.

Yoann Richomme

Can you be a Vendée favourite as a rookie? Richomme last year won his first ever solo IMOCA race in the Retour à La Base transat, after a 2nd in the TJV. The two-times Figaro winner has a sistership to Ruyant in Paprec Arkéa and is known for his ability to push his boats seriously hard.

Sam Davies

This will be the fourth Vendée for British-born Davies, and her first with a newly-built boat. Davies has experience in spades and banked the most qualifying miles of any skipper, having taken every chance she could to ‘Send it’. Her results seem to be peaking at just the right time.

Boris Herrmann

The German skipper delivered a career best with back to back 2nds in the Transat and New York-Les Sables races this spring, while the fullsome Malizia has proved itself capable of handling the biggest Southern Ocean conditions. A strong podium contender.

Sam Goodchild

Goodchild’s IMOCA campaign hit the ground running with a 3rd in the 2023 Fastnet, and he just kept going, with more 3rds including the TJV, and his first solo IMOCA race, the Retour a la Base. A dismasting this summer was little setback and he’s another rookie podium challenger.

Best of the rest

This is where it gets hard. Yannick Bestaven (Maître Coq V) winner in 2020 or Ocean Race winner Justine Mettraux (Teamwork, pictured)? Then there’s Sébastien Simon, Maxime Sorel, Nico Lunven, Louis Burton… easily 8-10 serious campaigns that could make a very large lead pack.

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