Find all the Tip & Shaft information about the Vendée Globe here. Latest news, information on the IMOCA skippers, teams, yards and decision-makers of the Vendée Globe, Tip & Shaft is carrying out the survey in the field.
Competing on the Vendée Globe, the America’s Cup with Emirates Team New Zealand, The Ocean Race with the new Imoca for 11th Hour Racing and a Class40 with a new Pogo built at Structures, clearly Guillaume Verdier’s collective is busy at the moment. The designer took time to answer questions from Tip & Shaft.
As in every big ocean race, Tip & Shaft puts together a panel of experts to canvas opinions as to who will be on the podium at the finish.
The 2020 Vendée Globe is due to start ‘behind closed doors’ with no local public audience on Sunday November 8 at 1:02 p.m local time in Les Sables d’Olonne. Despite the context, this ninth edition is a record breaker on many different fronts with 33 participants and a budget of 16 million euros (against 12.3 in 2016). Tip & Shaft has analyzed the budget for the Vendée Globe.
Last to finish the last 2016 Vendée Globe, Sébastien Destremau, 56, will set off on November 8 for a second round-the-world race, this time at the helm of Merci, the boat with which Conrad Colman raced four years ago. The former America’s Cup specialist, also a former journalist, spoke to Tip & Shaft from Les Sables d’Olonne at two weeks before the start.
At the age of 42, Antoine Koch has had a dual career as a sailor and an engineer, which enabled him back at the start of the last decade to join Gitana Team. Since 2018, he has been working alongside Thomas Ruyant on enhancing the amazing performance of the Verdier-designed Imoca LinkedOut, one of the favourites of the 2020 Vendée Globe. Tip & Shaft met up with him to find out more.
The last preparatory practice race before Vendée Globe organized by the pole Finistère race off Port-la-Forêt ended last Thursday. Charlie Dalin was out there in the mix and, at a month before the start of the ninth Vendée Globe it was the ideal opportunity to catch up with the skipper of Apivia, one of the favourites for the solo round the world race.
During the last Défi Azimut, two boats, Fabrice Amedeo’s Newrest-Art & Fenêtres and Louis Burton’s Bureau Vallée were unable to start racing because of a problem with the renewal of their insurance. And so, in light of that, Tip & Shaft took an interest and questioned most of the teams to learn how the Vendée Globe Imocas are insured.
The Vendée Globe Notice of Race gives entrants the opportunity of substituting themselves with a replacement skipper should something happen which means they cannot take the start (that replacement has to be appointed before October 1). Of course this is a scenario which becomes all the more relevant, a choice closely considered by some teams while Covid-19 remains a threat. Tip & Shaft lit up our phones to ask all teams whether or not they are employing this option.
The Vendée Globe organization is entering the final stage of planning and preparation before the start on November 8. From the sports perspective the Vendée-Arctique-Les Sables d’Olonne race in June provided some reassurance, but the current evolving health situation in France leaves room for doubt especially as to the final shape and format of the village, the organizational arrangements and the final rules and regulations. Two months before the start gun fires Tip & Shaft takes stock.
Last July 14 Jérémie Beyou won the Vendée-Arctique-Les Sables d’Olonne race, concluding what proved to be a thrilling three-way match up with Charlie Dalin and Thomas Ruyant. Tip & Shaft shares some of the lessons that we learned, debriefing with the help of the race director Jacques Caraës, Antoine Mermod who is president of the Imoca class, the weather routing specialist Jean-Yves Bernot, skipper Romain Attanasio (who did not participate) and the journalist Didier Ravon.
The start of the first ever Vendée-Arctique-Les Sables d’Olonne is on Saturday at 3.30 p.m local time. As before each major event, Tip & Shaft has solicited the opinions of the great the good of the ocean racing world in France as well as a few hand picked Anglo Saxons to ask the big question. We have Antoine Mermod, president of Imoca, Tanguy Leglatin the trainer in Lorient, Christian Le Pape, head of the Pole Finistère Course au Large, sailors Yann Eliès, Charlie Enright, Dee Caffari, Matt Sheahan and French based American Ryan Breymaier who works with Boris Herrmann. Also questioned was Gaël Robic, journalist at France Télévision.
More than a year after the end of his collaboration with the Gitana Team, Sébastien Josse is back on the water. As soon as deconfinement started he started sailing and working with Nicolas Troussel helping him to prepare the next Vendée Globe aboard Corum L’Epargne, the latest new generation Imoca to be launched. That seems like a good opportunity for Tip & Shaft to catch up with the skipper who is originally from Nice and whose career to date spans Figaro, Imoca, Ultime and the Volvo Ocean Race.
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