News Around the World
Spirit of the Vendée Globe: pre-race favourite Jérémie Beyou (top) deserves all the generous plaudits he has received for restarting his race a week late after heading back to Les Sables for major repairs to what was surely one of the best-prepared boats in the race. Seahorse mantra: ‘racing is nothing like testing’. Two more stars of this race have been Paralympic champion Damien Seguin (left), racing an Imoca at the front of the best fleet ever seen while only having the use of one hand, and Yannick Bestaven who following his dismasting in 2008 set out to make some money ashore and then re-entered the fray some 10 years later as a very fast Corinthian
More than half the Vendée Globe skippers are ex-Class40 To begin with the sailors at the front of the fleet: Yannick Bestaven has distinguished himself for six years with two victories in the Transat Jacques Vabre; Thomas Ruyant won the Route du Rhum on a Verdier design (#88); Damien Seguin, faithful to the Class40 from 2009 to 2014, has performed well; and Louis Burton is also a very active actor in the Class40 – also building several examples. Further down the fleet we find Boris Herrmann; Maxime Sorel,
another winner of the TJV; Armel Tripon; Giancarlo Pedote; Arnaud Boissières; Pip Hare; Stéphane Le Diraison; Manuel Cousin; Alexia Barrier; Isabelle Joschke; Nicolas Troussel; Fabrice Amédéo and of course Miranda Merron, Class40 president Halvard Mabire’s partner. Is the Class40 the best preparation for the non-stop solo round-the-world race? It’s certainly the most popular… One out of every two Vendée Globe navigators is a former Class40 skipper!
The spirit of the VG Pip Hare has been the female revelation. Nobody in France knew her before the start and they all discovered from her videos of the race a very brave sailor pushing hard with her 22-year-old boat; she
24 SEAHORSE
is also very talented in front of the camera and microphone. Like the other competitors she has continuously had to solve
technical problems. She was doing very well in the fleet, having overtaken and left behind Alan Roura and Arnaud Boissières, who are sailing in much more modern sailboats… and with new foils. But a big crack appeared on the port rudder stock of Medalliasailing in the Southern Seas and on the video we could see a desperate Pip Hare, with sails down in a rough sea, saying that she has a spare rudder but needs a calm sea to try to make the replacement. Pointing to the stormy skies she said that bad weather was on
the way and she did not know when she would have conditions to change the rudder… When finally she succeeded in her impossible mission she was justifiably very proud of what she had done. A day or two later, in the true spirit of the VG, came her pertinent
words: ‘One of the things that attracts me to solo sailing as a sport is that it allows me to become the best version of myself. When alone in the middle of an ocean there is no easy option. You must face every problem head on and find the solution from within. This race challenges every aspect of what it means to be a human being, on every level we are forced to perform and do extraordinary things.
JEREMIE BEYOU/DAMIEN SEGUIN/YANNICK BESTAVEN
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