The Vendee Globe is off and running
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Sailing non-stop around the world should be considered a tough challenge. On your own and in charge of a 60-footer makes it a life or death adventure, the ultimate test both mentally and physically for any sailor.
You may see this as a shameless plug for Roxy, whose boat is being helmed by a Brit Sam Davies, but my interest in the Vendee Globe (along with the rest of this island) was captured by another British lady - Ellen MacArthur. In the 2001 race, this diminuitive woman came close to winning the event at the age of 24 and her story propelled her into the Anglo French psyche.
MacArthur's return to England was televised live, she is now a Dame and regardless of what she does now she perpetuates the legend of the plucky, underdog Brit spirit. Team Ellen is supported by BT amongst others, with various races in the offing, but one of their team is competing in the Vendee this year for the second time - Sebastian Josse.
The Roxy boat has won the event twice as PRB, its previous name, and so has the pedigree to do it again and holds the course record of 87 days, 10 hours and 47 mins set in 2004. Its not a latest generation Open60 yacht however, and there are arguably faster sailors in the competition but Sam Davies is confident of being close to the front-runners.
The surfing world's boundaries are being pushed at one end by big-wave hunters chasing 100ft plus waves and these sailors will be sleeplessly trying to avoid these mountains of water, in the Southern Ocean especially. Around 26,000 miles later, they will return to the start-point in France hopefully in one piece and having conquered one of the great challenges in sport.
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The Vendee Globe is off and running (text) by Steph Pomphrey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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