That is the Vendée Globe.

It may seem like November is a long way off, but the next race, starts on November 8th, 2020 from the Département of Vendée, in France. The boats are the IMOCA 60 Open class. The class has been updated to allow for foiling, though no one really knows how that will work through the Southern Ocean^‡. Most of the foiling boats are modified older IMOCA 60s, or they are designed to be competitive without foils. One or two are strictly foiling monohulls.

The current record is 74 days, 3 hours and 35 minutes. To sail around the world.

Here’s the video “teaser” for the race. Considering that it’s only 3 minutes, I think it conveys the reality of trying something like that. Something I would never do…

‡ The Southern Ocean is a band of water that runs around Antarctica, south of South America, Africa and Australia. It is, mostly, an uninterrupted band of water. With no continents in the way to act as windbreak, the winds can be fierce. The Roaring 40s start at 40 degrees south. And then there are the Furious 50s, where Gale-force winds are common year-round. (That means tropical-storm-level winds approaching hurricane strength, but not associated with a tropical depression.) Dame Ellen MacArthur, who briefly held the record for the fastest, solo circumnavigation, noted that when you are in the Southern Ocean, the closest people may be the astronauts in the International Space Station.

Alone. Nonstop. Around the World. No Assistance. That is the Vendée Globe.

New boats are being launched. New teams announced. This isn’t the kind of thing you decide to do at the last minute.

The 2nd boat to bear the name La Fabrique was launched this week for her skipper. News – Alan Roura has launched his new IMOCA – Vendée Globe. (As always, click the image for a better view.)

Alan Roura could not hide his emotions on seeing that his dream will continue. The 24-year old Swiss skipper, who finished twelfth in the last Vendée Globe on one of the oldest boats in the fleet, is about to begin a new chapter in his ocean racing career.

This is no small undertaking. An IMOCA 60-foot sailboat costs between 3.5 and 4.5 million dollars, or maybe a bit more. (There is talk of introducing a cheaper class, maybe 50 ft in length, but as far as I can determine it is only talk at this point.)

The Transat (Trans-Atlantic) Race is less than 3 years off, and it serves as the qualifier for the Vendée Globe. So there is that deadline to deal with.

Getting an entire country to embrace off-shore racing is no small task. News – A new Irish project for the 2020 Vendée Globe – Vendée Globe

Nicholas O’Leary recently raced alongside Alex Thomson on Hugo Boss in the Rolex Fastnet Race. It is in fact the team that ran Thomson’s last project, led by Stewart Hosford, that is behind this new campaign called Ireland Ocean Racing. Their goal is to enable an Irishman to complete the non-stop solo round the world voyage for the first time.

Ireland Ocean Racing has some interesting information. If you’re interested in sailing, it’s interesting.

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Alone. Nonstop. Around the World. No Assistance. That is the Vendée Globe.

So after sailing since November 6th, the 2 leaders, Armel Le Cléac’h and Alex Thomson, are about to race a match race to the finish. News – Throttles down in sprint to Vendée Globe finish – Vendée Globe 2016-2017

The skippers, split by just 95 nautical miles, were eating up the 1,300nm standing between them and the finish line in Les Sables d’Olonne, France, as they try to squeeze every last bit of speed from their foiling IMOCA 60 raceboats.

At the 1400 UTC position update British skipper Thomson, who led the race through most of its early stages, had a narrow speed advantage as he hurtled north on Hugo Boss at 24 knots. French skipper Le Cléac’h, who has topped the rankings since December 2, was more than two knots slower as he closed in on the Azores. With the ETA in Les Sables currently Thursday, the Vendée Globe is shaping up to go right down to the wire.

The following video is a brief interview with Alex Thomson.

Alone. Non-stop. Around-the-World. No Assistance. That is The Vendée Globe.

The end of his race near New Zealand. News – Tumbling Dice. Enda O’Coineen’s Boat Dismasted. – Vendée Globe 2016-2017

In a few unfortunate moments the Vendée Globe solo round the world race came to a premature end for Irish skipper Enda O’Coineen. A sudden, unexpectedly strong gust at 35kts of wind overpowered his autopilot, resulting in two crash gybes leaving no time to get a running backstay on to support the mast.

The mast and boom went over the side, and he had to cut away the rigging and let it sink to save the hull. So he is very limited to what he can do from the standpoint of being able to jury-rig any kind of sails.

The only good news is that he is only a few hundred miles off New Zealand, and not a thousand miles out in the Southern Ocean.

The leaders are far ahead, having just crossed the equator into the northern hemisphere in the Atlantic Ocean on their way back to France.

Alone. Nonstop. Around the World. No assistance. That is the Vendée Globe.

After looking like this might be a record-setting race, conditions have deteriorated somewhat. News – Great Expectations – the counters are reset – Vendée Globe 2016-2017

The race started on Sunday the 6th of November in Les Sables d’Olonne, France. They raced down the Atlantic, made a circumnavigation of the Southern Ocean, and are now “racing” back up the Atlantic. (Currently off the coast of Brazil.) I used “racing” because things have been slow.

Armel Le Cléac’h is the skipper of Banque Populaire VIII in 1st, and Alex Thompson, skipper of Hugo Boss, is in 2nd. About 250 miles separates the 1st and 2nd place boats, which isn’t a lot given the distance they have traveled.

Numerous skippers have had gear failures. There have been at lease 2 collisions with submerged objects. A lot of folks have retired from the race, but a few have made repairs with spares on-board and continued.

Alone. Nonstop. Around-the-World. No Assistance. That is the Vendée Globe.

Alex Thompson, British skipper of Hugo Boss, and current leader, suffered a collision with an unknown object. News – Thomson suffers damage on train ride south – Vendée Globe 2016-2017

British sailor Alex Thomson was forced to slow his 60ft foiling yacht today after hit a submerged object in the South Atlantic. One of the boat’s two foils, which help lift it out of the water to give it more speed, was damaged in the collision with the unidentified object floating beneath the surface.

Could be a lot of things, but there are an unfortunate number of cargo containers floating around the world’s oceans. They wash off the decks of ships and mostly they tend to hang just below the surface of the water.

Thomson has now retracted the damaged foil and slowed his boat. He said there does not appear to be any structural damage but he will further inspect the boat when the weather conditions allow.

Sailing offshore in small boats is not for the faint of heart.

Didac Costa, the only Spaniard (Catalan) skipper in the race, finally gets underway. News – Didac Costa back in the race – Vendée Globe 2016-2017

Didac Costa, who suffered water damage shortly after the start of the Vendée Globe on Sunday, was forced to return to Les Sables d’Olonne. Having now repaired the damage to the electrical system on his One Planet One Ocean, he set sail again today at 1140hrs UTC crossing the line between the Nouch S buoy and a GPS point. He is 1134 miles from the leader and 770 miles from his nearest rival, Sébastien Destremau.

1000 miles and 5 days may sound like a tremendous disadvantage, but over the course of 3 months and 22,000 to 25,000 miles isn’t that much.

Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, it is possible to keep up on the exact standings in an off-shore race from the comfort of your office chair. VG 2016

The graphic takes a bit of time to load. Clicking on one of the boat icons on the map will highlight the boat and skipper info in the left-hand sidebar. Clicking on the popup on the map will close the popup.

One skipper got turned around just after the start, as he was taking on water. The Japanese skipper has been suffering from seasickness for at least 2 days. The fleet is nearing the Canary Islands and the leaders should be in tropical waters by the end of Thursday.

Not bad for a race that started on Sunday.

The Vendée Globe. Said to be the toughest race in sailing. The winner 4 years ago took 78 days or so. Alone for 78 days or more. A third of that in The Southern Ocean.

They start tomorrow.

There is a nice CNN documentary on the race at this link. It is from 6 months ago, at the start of the Transat – the Trans-Atlantic race – which is the qualifier. (It includes a bit of other sailing news, but it starts and ends on the Vendée Globe.

No Way Back is the name of an Imoca60 open racing sailboat that will be competing in the upcoming (Nov 6th start) Vendée Globe around the world race.

Most of the videos are in French, so this is just music, and a depiction of the route (which is in English). Enjoy.

The skipper of No Way Back is Pieter Heerema. He’s Dutch.

At the age of 65, Pieter Heerema who is a captain of industry in offshore construction, enters the world of solo racing. A qualified and experienced sailor and racer in Holland and internationally, he has been sailing competitively since childhood. After his first tacks in dinghies, Pieter carried on sailing on various types of boats and competed in numerous events.

He had to qualify by participating in a trans-Atlantic solo race, among other things, like survival courses.

The winner in the 2012/2013 race took 78 days and a couple of hours to complete the circumnavigation.

The Vendée Globe is a single-handed, nonstop, around-the-world race sailed without assistance.

So here are two minutes of video that show what the boats are like.

The boat is an Imoca60 design, christend Saint Michel Virbac. The skipper is Jean Pierre Dick.

The Vendee Globe kicks off one month from today. So I thought I would share these videos.

This video from Canadian Ocean Racing has a good look at the boats and the race.

The organizers call it the hardest race in the world. It probably is. People have been lost at sea during this race.

4 years ago it took the 2 lead boats 78 days and some hours to complete the race. From France to France. Nonstop. South through the Atlantic, turning east around Africa, around the Southern Ocean and back up the Atlantic.

The Vendée Globe is a single-handed, around the world race that allows no outside assistance. The 8th race will begin on 6 November, 2016.

Here is a look at the preparation for the race. It shows a nice look at what the boats are like.

All boats competing in the 2016-2017 version of the race conform to the IMOCA 60 Open Class rules. Among other rules, the boats have to be able to self-right, if capsized. That is helped by the swing keel which can put a lot of weight over 1 side of the capsized hull. (You get a brief glimpse of the test on one boat at about 50 seconds into the video).

A lot of my sailing friends gave me grief over the catamarans of the America’s Cup races, because of how high-tech they were. (Foiling, etc.) Well in the video you can see these boats have a swing keel, lee boards AND a j-foil to aid in righting moment. This enables them to carry a LOT of sail. Everything is high-tech today.