Vendee Globe; Steve White Looks Back

Now that the deconstruction of the recently completed Vendee Globe has begun, Steve White's story has to rank as the most improbable of the lot. Without a major sponsor, not sure whether his race would go off at all, having mortgaged his house, and with an older boat, Steve managed an eighth place finish.

Steve and his wife, Kim, give a typical circumspect Brit interview with CowesTV. A very fascinating look at the singlemindedness that one needs in both getting to the starting line and getting around in one piece. In two parts.

Part 1 ..........



and Part 2

Vendee Globe: Two Women back on land

Link to the BBC interview where both Sam Davies and Dee Caffari appeared;

Ninety minutes of sleep

Vendee Globe; Dee Caffari finishes

Dee Caffari, our other women in the duo we've been following around the world, finished in sixth on Sunday. She was three hours behind fellow Brit, Brian Thompson, with whom she has been locked in a duel since the Southern Ocean. Her mainsail had vast areas without any mylar, just high tech string netting. A sterling accomplishment and when the interviews with Dee after making landfall pop up on the Internet, I'll link to it.

Meanwhile two videos from Cowes Online . The first has interviews with the top two Vendee Globe finishers (in English) and some footage of the Brits, Sam, Brian Thompson, Dee Caffari, Steve White racing up the Atlantic. It is interesting that Armel Le Cléac'h finished second in his first race around the World and at a young age, 31.

I can close my eyes and Steve White sounds just like my uncle Roy.



The second video has more Sam Davies, including her press conference ashore.

Vendee Globe; Sam Davies finishes

Sam Davies finished third across the line, crossing early Saturday morning. She will drop to fourth, as it looks like Marc Guillemot, with his 50 odd hours of redress for standing by Yann Eliès will make up the difference. Marc Guillemot has been sailing the last 700 miles without a keel, but light airs off the French coast have helped his cause.

As Sam herself admits, third across the line is an incredible result and one that no oddsmakers would have taken at the start of the Vendee Globe. No doubt she has become the media darling of this race with her ready smile and upbeat video reports. Take nothing away from Sam; she took a 9 year old boat and raced it hard around the world. She is one tough cookie. Also tip of the hat to her shore team as Roxy had very few problems.

Welcome back Sam!

(The English interview starts at about 4 minutes into the video)

Vendee Globe; Two Women - Day 93

Both are in the North Atlantic. Sam Davies has a good chance at taking third since Marc Guillomot, who was a strong third, has had his keel fall off. Sam is projected to finish on Thursday

Dee Caffari is in a nip and tuck battle with Brian Thompson for fifth at the moment.

Samantha Davies, ever the poet, soaking in the beauty of the day.



Dee Caffari;s smile is cracking larger and large as she gets close to the finish.

Vendee Globe: Michel Desjoyeaux wins.

While I was in sunny but chilly Florida, Michel Desjoyeaux on Foncia won the Vendee Globe around the World race. He is known as "The Professor" but in this race he was "The Dominator". At the start, Michel Desjoyeaux, had to head back to port to fix a leaking ballast tank that had knocked out his generator. He spotted the fleet about 700 miles, caught up to the leaders in the Southern Ocean, took the lead in the race just below Australia and, in the Atlantic, had piled on another 500 miles on second place Roland Jourdain before Roland Jourdain had to retire to the Azores when he lost his keel. It was a performance worthy of that fabled remark to Queen Victoria when the yacht America raced in England, "You highness there is no second".

Vendee Globe; Sailmaking on the ocean

We've been following closely, Dee Caffari's travails with her disintegrating mainsail . It still seems to be shedding large bits of mylar so Dee, just before she reaches the doldrums, has performed another operation. Hopefully this repair will get her to the finish. Dee is currently in seventh with our other women skipper, Sam Davies, currently in fourth.

Vendee Globe: One Woman Today

I mentioned Dee Caffari hadn't had a surfeit of videos recently, so in the interest of fairness, here is the latest video of Dee now making her way up the Atlantic. You can see the obvious relief that she has survived the Southern Ocean. Unlike the ever positive Sam Davies, Dee has been scared, depressed, elated and underneath it all, determined. Hats off to her and she has prevailed despite a mainsail shedding large bits and the worry that she may be sailing with a mast hiding a fatal flaw (Mike Golding, with an identical boat dismasted below Australia). She is in eighth place at the moment, in a pack of three.

Vendee Globe: Two Women (on Day 69 of the race)

Time for an update. Sam Davies on Roxy has rounded Cape Horn and been in the Atlantic for some time. At present Sam is about on the same latitude as Buenos Aires, Argentina. She currently holds down fourth and has put some gains on Marc Guillemot on Safran, who had pulled into the Falkland Islands to fix his mast track. Bubbly as ever on her latest video.



Dee Caffari on Aviva, remains in eighth. She has rounded the Horn, but was held back, along with her traveling companions, Brian Thompson, and Arnaud Boissières, to let a vicious storm pass to the North. She has been limping along, restricted in going full on by her mainsail, which continues to shed mylar and taffeta. No recent YouTube videos of Dee but you can see some up to date videos of Dee at the Vendee Globe Website . Informed sources say the mainsail cloth is a special lamination also used by the Volvo Around the World racers. They are finding it doesn't take being reefed for long periods of time. Dee is waiting for a weather window for the next round of repairs, probably Tuesday.

Vendee Globe: Two Women (on Day 60 of the race)

For the three or four regular readers of this blog, it is easy to deduce that I'm following the two women on the Vendee Globe Around the World Singlehanded Race.

On our last post, we said that Dee Caffari had some sail repair to do on her main. This video gives a how-to on main repair on an Open 60. That main looks rather sad!



With all the destruction of those in front, our every day effervescent Sam Davies finds herself currently in 5th (that may not be technically true as Marc Guillemot in 6th has been awarded 82 hours for the rescue of Yann Eliès). She is zeroing in on Cape Horn and her morale may be on the upswing but it's hard to tell with Sam as she is always upbeat. The video mixes French and English.

Vendee Globe: Two Women (on Day 50 of the race)

As I said before, if you magically dropped me on an Open 60 in the Southern latitudes, I would be desperately making a beeline to the nearest spot of dry land before I went bonkers. In these two videos, you get a good feel for life down below on these racing machines as they reach along toward Cape Horn. The banging, the crashing, the shaking..... how can anyone get any sleep?

In the first video, our eternally upbeat Sam Davies, is celebrating Christmas with, what looks like a brewski, and some jam and toast. Not too easy to get down the hatch as the boat lurches about;



Was it a bird? .... No....In the second video, friends of Dee Caffari have chartered a light plane and rendezvoused overhead to take pictures while she passes south of New Zealand. Dee's happiness is palpable at even this minor brush with civilization. What she doesn't mention is that she has a mainsail that needs an on-boom repair, that is when the conditions moderate so she can safely hang out there! And the slamming, bashing noise and the shocks reverberating through ones bones goes on and on and on...........



Again, thanks to Yachtpals for putting these videos up on YouTube.

Meanwhile Frenchman Michel Desjoyeaux continues to pour it on at the front, seemingly impervious to the breakdowns that have frustrated his pursuers.

Vendee Globe: Yann Eliès

Yann Eliès suffered a severe fracture of the femur while changing sails on his Open 60 "Generali" and is awaiting rescue by the Australian Navy. Fellow competitor, Marc Guillemot, has rendezvoused with Generali and is keeping station until the Aussies show up on Saturday

No one knows more intimately the extreme risks that are inherent in this race than the 30 competitors who started the Vendee Globe. These sailors are made of very stern stuff.

That said, my thoughts go out to Yann and his family.

Vendee Globe: Two Women (cont)

Most of the time, video posts from the Vendee Globe competitors have a relatively sunny flavor to them, even when all hell is breaking loose. In this post, we see the raw emotion breaking out from Dee Caffari when she learns that Mike Golding, sailing an identical boat and rig to her, has dismasted. For her, it's just another niggling, distracting thought that hopefully you can put to the back of the brain as you continue attacking the Southern Ocean.



The shore crew for Sam Davies "Roxy" has come up with the best video angle for shooting these boats as they careen down waves in the Southern Ocean. They have a camera with a fish eye lens, strung up off the aft port quarter which captures most of the Open 60. What amazes me in this video is how well this Open 60 handles waves at speed and I mean SPEED!. Part of it must be the trimming of the ballast tanks, part of it must be hull design, but you never see walls of water washing over the boat as you see on the VOR 70's.

Vendee Globe: From the two women

I really should be writing Christmas cards but in true Internet armchair warrior fashion, I am sipping one of my favorite stouts, Brooklyn Brewing's Chocolate Stout, and watching true sailing warriors battle the Southern Ocean.

Sam Davies changing out headsails on Roxy and then on the back half of the video, Sam, after enduring an hellacious night (not a good night for sleeping, she says!), shows a childlike amazement at a beautiful, crisp, sunny day on the Southern Ocean.



And then Dee Caffari on the psychological pressures of enduring a gale in the Southern Ocean. Even in dinghies, carbon hulls are much louder than other hulls. I've read that the U.S Army has used constant blasting of rock music as torture. Can the slamming, banging, groaning, loud swishing of water passing at 20 knots underneath ..... can this be far behind?



If I was magically transported to one of these Open 60's, it wouldn't take long before I was curled up in my bunk, hands over my ears, yelling "Please make it stop..... Please!"

Videos posted by Yachtpals

Vendee Globe: Loick Peyron Dismasting

Anybody reading this blog will figure out that I've been following the Vendee Globe Round the World Singlehanded Race pretty closely. With regular video updates and yacht tracker positions, this years race has an immediacy for the Internet sailor second to none.

Loick Peyron, one of the leaders, dismasted on Wednesday in the Southern Ocean. He made a quick video of the damage (look at the daggerboard poking up out of the mainsail) before getting to work cleaning up. Cutting away a dismasted rig is hard work for a full crew, let alone a singlehanded sailor. The end of video shows Loick with his jury rig using the boom. Yacht tracker shows him pointed for the West Coast of Australia.



Yachtpals has been hard at work converting Vendee Globe video over to YouTube.

Vendee Globe: Samantha Davies

The Vendee Globe fleet is in the Southern Ocean now, racing at the bottom of the world, in large wind and waves, aiming toward Australia, New Zealand and then onward to Cape Horn. Samantha Davies is one of two women racing the Vendee Globe (we have posted some of Dee Caffari's (the other woman competitor) informative videos on this blog). Samantha is very telegenic, a bubbly personality on video that masks how tough she needs to be to race these 60 foot behemoths singlehanded.

Vendee Globe; Dee Caffari on Sail Handling

Because the headsails on an Open 60 are all on furlers, all sails are stored rolled up. Dee Caffari gives a good overview.

Vendee Globe, Dee Caffari

One of the two women racing this singlehanded round the world, Dee Caffari gives an interesting tour of the navigation area in these Open 60's.

Vendee Globe

Vendee Globe, the singlehanded around the world race, is now underway. The leaders are approaching the bottom of Africa. The Vendee Globe doesn't get much play in the United States; I guess mainly because it is mostly a French affair (out of 30 starters, eight were English, 1 was American, sounds like one of them may be Polish .... the rest French). A pity it doesn't get more press over on this side of the Atlantic. The Vendee Globe must be the most grueling of any of the endurance sports and I include the Tour de France here. The leaders are expected to take 90 days to get around and most of them seem to be on 2-3 hour sleep cycles as they constantly drive their boats. The Open 60 designs are beasts; 60 footers with clouds of sail though at least they pay some heed to shielding the crew from the worst with large steering cuddies (unlike the VOR 70's).

Videos can be found here;

www.vendeeglobe.org/en/media/videos/

Unfortunately most of the interviews are in French, a language I found beautifully melodic but incomprehensible.

Reminds me of the tired joke.

1. What do you call a person that speaks more than two languages ..... multilingual.

2. What do you call a person that speaks two languages .... bilingual.

3. What do you call a person that speaks one language ..... American.

Cowes TV did an English interview with French sailor Seb Josse sailing for BT. You get a good feel for these Open 60's. Of note is the central channel which leads all the lines aft to the steering pod for easier and protected handling of sails.



Seb Josse is currently lying second.