In solo ocean racing the Vendée Globe is the greatest challenge. To race non-stop alone around the world is as tough as it gets. When the race was first held in 1989 the winner took one hundred and nine days to complete the course, the thirty skippers preparing the compete in the most recent edition expected that the first home would end their lap of the planet in less than ninety days.
With the quest for speed comes more powerful boats, capable of around 500 miles per day, and skippers putting more pressure on themselves to push hard, twenty four hours of every day for three months, often in wild conditions. All this with a backdrop of short interrupted bursts of sleep, freeze dried food and the prospect of intense challenges every day.
In the most recent edition of the race, nineteen of the thirty skippers who started the race failed to finish. There was drama, including, a skipper forced to abandon his yacht as it was smashed onto the rocky shore of a Southern Ocean island, two skippers in peril deep in the Southern Ocean, one injured and unable to sail, the other helpless inside the upturned hull of his yacht.
Seven British skippers entered the race, Mike Golding (ECOVER) back for his third time, looking to improve on the third place he scored in the last edition, whilst Alex Thomson (HUGO BOSS) was on the Vendée Globe start line having finished second in the last round the world race he competed in.
. For the other British skippers the Vendée Globe was a new game, Dee Caffari (AVIVA) looking to become the first women to sail alone non-stop around the world in both directions and with Sam Davies (ROXY) the only women in the thirty strong fleet. Three British men were preparing to start their first Vendée Globe, Brian Thompson (Bahrain Team Pindar) former number two for the late Steve Fossett, Jonny Malbon (Artemis Ocean Racing) heading for his first ever solo ocean race, and Steve White (Toe in the Water) who had re-mortgaged his house to get to the start and line up against the best in the world