Coming of age
It did not turn out entirely as expected… or maybe it did? Rob Kothe looks at the ‘patient’ 2018 Golden Globe victory of VDH and discusses the next edition of the race with creator Don McIntyre
When the 1968-69 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race singlehanded fleet set out on a quest to sail solo around the world no one knew if it was even possible. On 1 July 2018, 50 years after that first
race, 18 skippers started the second edition of the Golden Globe Race, under the same low-tech rules from Les Sables d’Olonne in Brittany. This time they knew it could be done… and now they had a time to beat, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston’s 312 days. Not unexpectedly the pre-race favourite
was the grandfather of French solo sailing, 73-year-old Jean-Luc Van den Heede. ‘VDH’ as he is universally known, already held the record for the fastest non-stop solo west-about circumnavigation. He had also finished second in the 1986
solo BOC Challenge, third in the 1989 Vendée Globe, second in the 1992 Vendée Globe, and third in the 1994 Around Alone Race. For his sixth and probably final round-
the-world race VDH bought a Rustler 36 in August 2015, renamed her Matmut, fitted a slightly shorter mast, lighter rig- ging and headsail furlers and set about a meticulous programme of preparation. The second favourite was Philippe
Péché, 57 and with 300,000 miles’ racing everything from IOR maxis to giant multi- hulls. Péché has twice won the Jules Verne Trophy with Bruno Peyron, completing his last circumnavigation in 50 days. He’d prepared his Vendée-based PRB-sponsored boat well, including manufacturing a new lightweight self-steering system. The wildcard among the 18 skippers
was Australian-born Dutch sailor Mark Slats, the surprise winner of the pre-GGR warm-up race from Falmouth to Les Sables d’Olonne. Slats was a late entry with no racing background. But he arrived with a formidable sporting reputation. Slats, 41, and cutting a towering figure
at 6ft 7in, is a former water polo player, triathlete and sparring partner of a previ- ous European Heavyweight Boxing Cham- pion. At the start of the century and aged 23 he was touring Australia on a working holiday. For fun he entered and then won the Australian Kickboxing Championship;
the winner’s $20,000 purse made a useful addition to his travel fund. Although he had never sailed Slats
decided that buying a yacht and sailing 16,000nm back home could be fun… In Brisbane he found and bought a steel Alan Buchanan-designed 46-footer, Cornelia, and immediately set off, sailing across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope and back to Holland. In 2003/2004 he set off again on the same boat, return- ing 169 days later after sailing non-stop around the world. Now it was time to try swapping sails for oars. After a year of training eight hours a day Slats won the solo division of the 2017 Talisker Atlantic Challenge. Rowing a minimum 18 hours a day, he completed the crossing in 30 days to smash the previous record by five days. It was only after Slats’ Rustler 36
Maverick was first to the finish the GGR warm-up that competitors looked a little more closely at this unknown Dutchman. They soon realised they had been over- looking a serious rival. Come the GGR and Slats was fast off the
18-boat startline and briefly held the lead until Péché overtook him on day three. But by now a lead group of Slats, Péché and VDH was already breaking away. As Slats explains: ‘I planned to stay with Jean-Luc and Philippe, but critically my HF radio
Age before beauty… or certainly before bulk. Dutch sailor/oarsman/adventurer Mark Slats (above) was a formidable rival in every sense for VDH (left) to hold off for nearly halfway round the world as the French Vendée Globe veteran raced on with a rig that rattled about unnervingly. The 73-year-old pre-race favourite had deserved his billing with change to spare
stopped working a day before Cape Verde, so suddenly I had no weather reports, and no idea of where the others were going. ‘All I could do was take the traditional
western route to avoid the St Helena High by heading over towards Brazil. With no weather I was sailing blind. Finally, after a week my radio crackled back into life and I was dismayed to discover that I was in 12th place and way out to the west of everybody else who had cut down the middle of the Atlantic. ‘That westerly loop possibly cost me the
race… but it could also of course have won me the race.’ Jean-Luc sums up the opening stages.
‘At the equator I was still in a battle with Philippe but Mark had already gone very wide and that cost him a lot of ground. ‘I was enjoying a good fight with
Philippe, he is a very experienced racer and when he later retired [with a self-steering failure] I was sad because I was now alone in the Roaring Forties.’ Alone was an understatement… VDH was by then a whole weather system ahead of his rivals. Slats steadily ground his way back and
had sailed up into second place behind VDH by the time he reached Cape of Good Hope. Irish sailor Gregor McGuckin, sail- ing his Biscay 36, held onto third place. Uku Randmaa on yet another Rustler 36 was fourth, while Abhilash Tomy, sailing a Suhaili replica was moving into fifth. But before long the group trailing the masterful VDH had other things on their mind than the fight over podium places. The Indian Ocean cold fronts kept
rolling through giving the slow fleet of heavy designs a steady battering… a Rustler 36 does not nip out of the way of a dangerous weather system as might, say, a big trimaran like Sodebo…
SEAHORSE 37
JACQUES VAPILLON
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