Feb. 2/2023: I’ve been waiting since the 1990s, when I developed a crush of sorts on Isabelle Autissier, for a woman to win an around-the-world solo sailing race. A tantalizing prospect! This is the toughest, most extreme sport there is, but it is also that great rarity—a sport where women and men compete against each...
Dec. 29/2021: We previously discussed the very cool Energy Observer project, in which the old “maxi” racing cat Formule TAG (most famously known as ENZA New Zealand, an early Jules Verne winner) has been repurposed as a 100% energy self-sufficient vessel. But not all race-boat makeovers are so ambitious… or so well financed. One interesting grass-roots...
Feb.28/2021: I sure hope you guys followed my advice from last month, about paying attention to the end of the Vendée Globe. No records were broken in terms of elapsed time over the course. By that simplistic metric, this was a slow race, six days off the last edition’s record 74 days. But in every...
Jan. 15/2021: This has never happened before. Usually at this point in a Vendée Globe, with the lead boats well around Cape Horn and sailing back up the South Atlantic toward home, there is one boat well out in front with another perhaps a few hundred miles behind hoping for a lucky break. But this...
Nov. 28/2020: I was really hoping this was going to happen. That after coming second in the last Vendée Globe, and third in the one before that, that this time Alex Thomson on Hugo Boss would finally finish first and so become the first not-French person to win this singlehanded non-stop race around the world,...
Nov. 19/2020: Hokey smokes! Can this be a coincidence? That the first aligning in 20 years of the planets Saturn and Jupiter, the two biggest in our solar system, and their closest conjunction since the year 1623, will occur next month, just as the two biggest races in sailing, the Vendée Globe and the America’s...
Oct. 11/2019: Since visiting the America’s Cup 36 scene last month to glimpse the launching of the first new foiling monohull AC75, I’ve noticed three more AC75s have launched, and lo, they have gone airborne too. The first to fly was American Magic’s Defiant (up top), which was launched soon after Team New Zealand’s Te...
After running much of the Vendee Globe in 14th place (out of an original fleet of 29), the race’s only wholly American competitor, Rich Wilson, got lucky as he started closing on the finish line in Les Sables d’Olonne two weeks ago. It wasn’t the sort of luck you openly pray for, as it came...
It’s done. Try as he might, Alex Thomson could not overhaul Armel Le Cléac’h in the last mad dash back to France. Le Cléac’h sailed his IMOCA 60 Banque Populaire across the finish line off Les Sables d’Olonne at 1537hrs UTC this afternoon, setting a new Vendée Globe race record of 74 days, 3 hours,...
Last we discussed this the race leaders, Alex Thomson on Hugo Boss and Armel Le Cleac’h on Banque Populaire (seen above, celebrating the New Year), had just been in sight of each other as Armel passed Alex and then opened up a slim 15-mile lead. It seemed my remarking on this was a jinx for...
