Winner of the first modern Golden Globe Race, the grand-père of French ocean racing Jean-Luc Van Den Heede, known by all as simply ‘VDH’, beats back up the North Atlantic in 2004 to set a new singlehanded record for sailing the ‘wrong way’ around the world of 112 days and 14 hours on his specially built aluminium 80-footer Adrien. Having set the bar, VDH will pass on the next Golden Globe but has already bought a boat for the crewed Ocean Globe Race in 2023… by which time he will be 78 years of age
In 2017 he too bought a Rustler 36 and began preparing for the
2018 Golden Globe. He had stripped her back to hull and deck in a Falmouth boatyard, working much of the time on his own. Behind schedule, he withdrew just a few months before the start, but his C’est La Viewas in the water in 2018 and has since sailed around 4,000 Atlantic sea miles in preparation for the second race. Key lessons from watching the last race? Davie says, ‘We know
in real estate it’s location, location location. In a seven to nine- month Golden Globe it’s preparation, preparation, preparation. ‘The September start this time means we are two months later
into Southern Ocean spring so there may be fewer storms but, if the ice waypoints are set north like last time, the danger comes from ocean storms coming down from more equatorial regions. Van Den Heede had one, Mark Slat, Abhilash Tomy and Gregor McGuckin had one, Susie Goodall had one, all coming down from the north. And I wonder if we might not be better off further south. ‘Regardless, I will be competitive because after three races down
there I know what it is like in the Southern Ocean and I will have prepared accordingly. I have a damn good solid boat.’ Coming at the event from another perspective is South African
Kirsten Neuschäfer (38), so far the only female skipper planning for the 2022 race. She told Seahorse, ‘I love solitary adventures. In 2005 I completed a 15,000km solo cycling trip from Europe back home to South Africa passing through 12 African countries. ‘Then from 2006 on I worked as a sailing instructor in South
Africa. I was delivering sailboats along the South African coast as well as delivering new catamarans from Cape Town to Hong Kong, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean, Europe, North America, South America and beyond. ‘Since 2015 I have been working for [former Whitbread skipper]
Skip Novak on his Pelagic Expeditions between South Georgia, the Antarctic Peninsula, Patagonia and the Falklands. I am currently skippering Pelagic, and we are in Maine doing refit work, getting her ready for the next northern summer in the Arctic. ‘I have Southern Ocean experience with voyages from Ushuaia
to Cape Town, across the Drake Passage to the Antarctic peninsula and from Cape Town to Australia and New Zealand. But the Southern
Ocean on the Pacific side I have not experienced. I have been planning for this since pressing the go button in September 2019. For my yacht I settled on a Cape George 36. It has 1,300kg more lead in the keel than a Rustler 36 but carries an extra 10m2 of sail. Long on the waterline, it is a heavy-displacement boat, which might struggle a little in light airs on the Atlantic legs, but a very solid, seaworthy vessel. It also has a reputation for tracking well, steering particularly well under wind vane.’ Neuschäfer freely admits she has little racing experience, other
than coastal races in South Africa. ‘I am keen to gain experience in double-handed offshore racing in the lead-up to GGR 2022. My long-distance experience has been in delivery and charter, where there is a very conservative emphasis. So I absolutely need to experience another mindset.’ One entrant who has perhaps had too much Southern Ocean
experience is New Zealand’s Graham Dalton, older brother of Team New Zealand CEO Grant Dalton. Dalton will be 70 when he starts his third solo round-the-world race. In his first attempt in the 2002 Around Alone he was rolled 1,000nm short of Cape Horn. Soldiering on with a broken boom, then dismasted after rounding the Horn, he was forced to abandon the race. In his second attempt in the 5 Oceans Race in 2006 he suffered broken rudders, keel issues, sail problems. Still he pushed on to make the finish in Bilbao, Spain... six weeks behind winner Bernard Stamm. After his issues with new boats during his last two races Dalton
has gone for a tried and proven vessel this time, buying Van Den Heede’s winning yacht from 2018. And that has bought him precious time. He sailed the boat last summer but, trapped in New Zealand, he does not expect to get back to her in 2020. ‘I was going to be sailing from Les Sables to the Azores and back, getting time on the boat before making changes. I know how I want to sail the boat and there are a few things I would like to change, but I need serious sea miles before I do that, and we have lost a whole season. ‘All this takes time to work out. As Philippe Jeantot, founder of
the Vendée Globe, nicely described it, “You must be in the right bit of ocean, pointed in the right direction, you must have the right sails up, and they need to be trimmed properly!’”
SEAHORSE 17
ALAMY
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