After a few rare weeks stateside, 28 IMOCA 60s are setting off on the NY-Vendée. The transatlantic race to Les Sables-d’Olonne, France, is the final qualifier before November’s Vendée Globe, the premiere singlehanded, nonstop, round-the-world race that happens every four years.
This is the second edition of the NY-Vendée, with the first in 2016 and another, scheduled for 2020, canceled due to border restrictions. In 2016, the first days of the race were a thrashing, with several boats diverting back to Newport, Rhode Island, after the start due to damage sustained in collisions with objects in the water.
“The goal for this race is to not break the boat. The last thing I want to do with the Vendée Globe this close is damage something,” says Japanese skipper Kojiro Shiraishi (DMG-Mori Global One). Likely to reduce the potential for race-ending collisions, the race organization has placed the start line 150 miles offshore and put speed restrictions on the boats as they approach.
For some skippers, like Clarisse Crémer (L’Occitane En Provence) and Oliver Heer (Oliver Heer Ocean Racing), this extra time to get out to the course eats away at precious stopover time. During the Transat CIC, the race across the Atlantic to New York, Crémer had a catastrophic failure of her forward bulkhead, forcing her to divert to the Azores and spend four days making repairs before continuing to New York.
“The Azores were beautiful, it was my first time seeing them, but I’d have liked it to be under better circumstances,” she jokes. “My team was working in shifts so that they could continue all day and all night to get the boat fixed, and still I had to be cautious with how I continued the race.”
In the same race, Heer suffered a knockdown that resulted in a complete blackout onboard. “I rewired the solar panels so I could use the autopilot when there was sun, but I had to hand steer by paper charts during the night and when there were any clouds,” he says. In total it took him 18 days to make the crossing, leaving scarcely enough time to make the necessary repairs and get back out on the course for the NY-Vendée.
Because the IMOCA 60 circuit acts as a qualifier for The Vendée Globe, there is enormous pressure on the skippers to complete races against the odds. The global circumnavigation is capped at 40 competitors, so for many skippers in the fleet, not finishing (or in some cases starting) the race could jeopardize their standing in the top 40.
While stateside, the fleet also competed in the Liberty Race, a speed run exhibition in New York Harbor. Since the vast majority of IMOCA 60 racing happens well offshore, this gave American spectators a rare and exciting opportunity to see them underway. The wind left something to be desired, but there was enough to work with for Romain Attanasio (Fortinet-Best Western) who took home the gold in both his heat and the event overall. Jérémie Beyou (Charal), Manuel Cousin (Coup de Pouce), and Szabi Weöres (New Europe) won the other three heats.
Ollie Heer suffered a boat blackout during the Transat CIC.
Clarisse Crémer had a difficult journey to the United States due to a bulkhead failure.
Boris Herrmann’s Malizia is one of the race favorites.
Szabi Weöres won his heat of the Liberty Regatta.
The forecast for today’s start calls for less than 10 knots of breeze. The fleet will have a shifty southeast reach of around 170 nautical miles to a turning mark before continuing across the ocean.
“Although it will be downwind, we risk having some complex transition zones,” says French skipper Maxime Sorel (V and B Monbana-Mayenne). “I looked closely at what happened in 2016, and there were two groups, one to the north and one to the south, which came together at the end. The finish in the Bay of Biscay can also change the game. Anything can happen and that’s how I am going to approach it—even if the start will favor new boats, we mustn’t give up until the end.”
For the race tracker, click here: https://www.newyorkvendee.org/en/tracker
May 2024
