Races around the world in general and the Vendée Globe as a single-handed regatta in particular are always a big test: not only for people, but also for the equipment. The care taken by each participant to look after, maintain and look after the equipment used is - in addition to pure sailing, navigation and making strategic decisions - the original task on board. If you want to sail the Vendée Globe, you know that you are not on land beforehand, but that you are on your own at sea.
Support from outside
The regulations provide for disqualification as soon as assistance is provided from outside. The support of the shore crew by radio or email in solving problems is not affected by this. In the current tenth edition of the solo circumnavigation, there has not been nearly as much breakage as in previous editions. The conditions have been unusually mild overall. What's more, most of the projects simply went into this stress test for the material better prepared.
A look into the past shows that both the weather conditions and the preparation of the teams were once different. The skippers had to deal with breakdowns, breakages and dramas at sea, sometimes in hair-raising conditions. The sum of their stories, big and small, reflects what the Vendée Globe is all about: perseverance, ingenuity and pragmatic thinking, even in exceptional circumstances. In other words: MacGyver qualities were and are highly valued.
Breakage in this edition
The Vendée Globe also had to cope with a first retirement in the first quarter of the race. Frenchman Maxime Sorel tore a ligament while repairing his main halyard lock. However, the most serious damage and the most spectacular repair up to the Cape of Good Hope was caused by Louis Burton. He had been alerted by a nasty noise in the hull. I can assure you from my own experience that this sound is very frightening because it is an unpleasant and exclusive feature of breaking carbon fibre. Burton discovered a crack in the hull of his "Bureau Vallée". He discovered that the fibres on the side of the hull and also in the deck had completely broken through. This is veritable damage to a boat that is used for non-stop round-the-world sailing in the toughest conditions.
Giving up was out of the question for the 38-year-old from Saint-Malo, who is known as a hard-nosed fighter. So the repair. A job that would otherwise be carried out by several experts in a well-tempered, dry shipyard with dust extraction and every conceivable tool. They also have a vacuum pump at their disposal to achieve the desired high-strength bond during lamination. Louis Burton didn't have all that. His repair had to be carried out in the middle of the Atlantic on a moving boat with limited materials, some imagination, radical measures and a courageous approach.
Louis Burton's repair was impressive under the circumstances: he sanded the crack from the outside and inside to prepare the damaged area for lamination, using a small angle grinder. It just creates a lot of dust. And of course, you really don't have a hoover with you. The mess was correspondingly big and could be seen all the way down to his charcoal-black face. Everything had to be cleaned before he could fill the gaps with high-strength epoxy adhesive. For ease of handling, he then glued many short pieces of biaxial and unidirectional carbon fibre fabric over the crack and pressed them on with a roller.
Burton also bolted two replacement carbon sail battens to the inside and outside of the hull as additional hull reinforcement. In view of the Atlantic challenge, the repair results were really impressive. During this phase of the race, Burton had nature to thank for the decently high temperatures that allowed the laminate to cure better. Days later, however, Burton had to abandon the race: Irreparable damage to the rig forced him to turn back to Cape Town.
Pip Hare also had to demonstrate MacGyver qualities. Her mast came down from above. However, she saved herself on land with an emergency rig.
The great dramas of the Vendée
Building boats on the high seas is a special challenge. I think back to the Ocean Race and the mast repair on "Malizia - Seaexplorer" at lofty heights. That wasn't a fun job either! In emergency situations, such carbon work doesn't have to look pretty, it just has to hold. But even this requires a head for heights of almost 30 metres, patience, a sure instinct, very good timing and a tolerably calm sea. In the "Malizia" case, the crack in the mast was successfully repaired with good teamwork. It was such a dodgy job that the crew subsequently won the Queen's stage through the Southern Ocean with the repaired rig. In the Vendée Globe, however, there is no team at sea. Just one woman. Or one man.
At the last Vendée Globe 2020, co-favourite Alex Thomson also had structural problems with his "Hugo Boss". A longitudinal stringer in the bow was broken in several places, and in some places the laminate had come loose from the hull. But "the Boss" was also able to repair this damage. At the time, Thomson noted that he had plenty of repair material with him, i.e. carbon fibre fabrics, carbon plates and even prefabricated stringers. Unfortunately, the mammoth repair didn't pay off in his case either. A few days later, he had to give up due to irreparable damage to the rudder system.
"Vital" systems are usually at least duplicated and have a fixed place in the boat, partly because they are heavy. These are the seawater desalination systems, the sail generators, which are installed at the stern and generate electricity like a dynamo via their propellers when sailing. Such vital systems also include the masthead units, i.e. the wind generators, which must be stored safely in a fixed location below deck as a replacement. Without the wind sensors, the entire self-steering system will not work. In the event of a fault, the boat can no longer sail efficiently at its optimum angles. Most participants already have two units permanently in the masthead, between which they can switch at the touch of a button in the event of a malfunction.
Other rather heavy spare parts are engine or hydraulic oils. These are essential because the tilt keel would no longer function in the event of oil loss and such a failure could jeopardise the boat.
The sails are susceptible to damage
The material-intensive areas that require a lot of repair equipment are, apart from boatbuilding, primarily the sails. In order to repair the wardrobe efficiently with on-board equipment, you not only need a lot of cloth of the same type as the sails, but also adhesive cloth and single-component adhesive such as Sikaflex554, which is used to permanently bond patches to the sail. Strong needles and high-quality Dyneema rigging twine are also essential. Spray adhesive provides good service for quick and durable repairs to the sails. Such sets are usually put together by the sailmakers in charge.
The boatbuilding department also includes protective clothing, acetone and many small items that can also be found in modern shipyards. On an Imoca, everything is stowed away in bags and hopefully available in sufficient quantities when needed.
Sophisticated electronics
The efficient selection of spare parts for the electronics area is one of the most demanding tasks. The yachts are now so complex that extreme care has to be taken with installation and cabling so as not to have to take everything with you twice or three times over. On "Groupe Dubreuil", for example, the electronics expert Andreas Baden from Kiel has nevertheless written a 90-page manual for all eventualities for his skipper Sébastien Simon, whose hobbyhorse is not exactly electronics.
The rudder, often a problem
Some boats still have special spare parts with them, such as spare oars. In the last race, Pip Hare was lucky enough to decide to have such an extra rudder blade with her. She noticed a crack in the upper section of the rudder shaft of the original rudder in light to medium winds and decided to change the rudder blade on the high seas. In the middle of the Southern Ocean.
Modern boats have an automatic kick-up system that raises the rudder blade when it comes into contact with an object in the water. Replacing the blade on such a system is easy. Pip Hare's previous boat didn't have this. She had to unthread the rudder blade downwards through the rudder bearings and float the new blade in from below, so to speak. All alone and in rough seas. What seemed like open-heart surgery, she managed after enormous effort, in a good moment that she had been waiting for. It was a marvellous feat of seamanship. Helpful: she had already rehearsed this operation once in the harbour before the start and was well prepared.
There have always been rudder problems in previous editions of the Vendée Globe. This prompted the designers to design the systems to be easily accessible and with catch-up mechanisms and safety systems. Favourite Jérémie Beyou was hit on the third day after the start of the 2020 race, when a collision with an unidentifiable object not only severely damaged a rudder, but also the structure of the rudder system's suspension and the anchor point of a backstay. Beyou was still so close to the starting harbour of Les Sables-d'Olonne that it seemed more sensible to return to the starting harbour for repairs. The rules allow the return for repairs and the comeback within a time window of ten days after the start. Such a repair is based on a balancing process. It is chosen if the loss of time and distance to the fleet appears less serious than the damage that can be repaired under optimal conditions.
Rarely: Leaks
It was a different story for Thomas Ruyant in the 2016 race, when the sea valve of the port ballast tank virtually self-destructed when the boat hit the wave, damaging the hull floor and the laminate in the area. Ruyant noticed a rapid and violent inrush of water and had to act quickly and pragmatically. He plugged the leak with oilskin trousers, jibed and furled the headsail to repair the damage under calmer conditions and with less water pressure from the outside at the damaged area. Using foam, carbon fibre and epoxy resin, he was able to close the hole and stop the water ingress.
Genuine outstanding performance
Some participants have also left their own mark on the race through their inventiveness. "Le Professeur" Michel Desjoyeaux, the only person to win the Vendée Globe twice, had a problem with the starter of his generator in the 2000 race, which had given up the ghost. It is now possible to start such small three-cylinder diesel engines by hand using the flywheel. However, this requires a lot of strength and possibly a second person to move the decompression lever on the engine at the crucial moment of starting. This is difficult for a single-handed sailor. Finally, the French Daniel Gyro Gearloose came up with a brilliant idea. He ran the starting line for the manual start from the flywheel, deflected with blocks, through the entire boat on deck to the nock of the main boom. He then tightened his mainsheet, which caused the boat to heel heavily, and gave the pull line enough pre-tension up to the end of the main boom. He checked again that the line was leading up to the engine and released the mainsheet, which then pulled the pull line and started the engine via the flywheel. A simple and ingenious solution.
The "extraterrestrial"
Yves Parlier wrote one of the most incredible stories of the Vendée Globe shortly after the turn of the millennium. It is the action that earned him his nickname "the alien".
His mast breaks in two in the Southern Ocean. What would have meant the end of the race for most sailors, Parlier does not accept. After setting a small storm jib on the remaining mast stump in order to make progress, he spends several hours working with saws, files and knives to prepare the mast parts for gluing. His cockpit becomes an open-air shipyard while the "Aquitaine Innovation" plods through the Southern Ocean under emergency sail.
Parlier builds an electric oven from the 25-watt spare bulbs in his navigation lights. With the help of an aluminium frame, which he dismantles on board, he makes a kind of string of lights, which he positions in the mast where he wants to stick it. He wraps the whole thing from the outside with his sleeping bag and the insulating blanket from the first aid kit. This allows him to maintain a constant temperature for the bonding at this point.
Parlier then sets course for Stewart Island at the southernmost tip of New Zealand. He dropped anchor in a quiet bay and continued his work under better conditions. In the bay, however, he is hit by a 60-knot storm and ends up on the beach with his "Aquitaine Innovation". With the help of a self-built raft made from canisters, he also manages to free himself from this situation, using anchors to pull his 60-foot boat back into deeper water.
Using his main boom, he builds a crane to lower the stump still on deck and glue the two parts together on deck. On the seventh day after arriving in the bay, he is satisfied with the fit of the two parts and begins the assembly. He carefully winches the two parts together. He laminates several layers of carbon laser on the outside and also glues prefabricated half-shells around the hull, which he has with him as spare parts.
To erect the mast, Parlier uses his main boom and the two deck spreaders to build a kind of jib boom and erect the mast. A 60-footer, alone. The masterpiece of repair and mast-setting is unrivalled and enjoys legendary status in the history of the Vendée Globe. The operation in the bay took ten days. When he resumed the race, he was 6,000 nautical miles behind the leaders.
But the story of Yves Parlier's Vendée Globe 2000/2001 is not even over yet. He had lost a lot of time and used up a lot of provisions during the repairs. Realising that his resources were limited, he began to fish for seaweed after resuming the race, boiling the leaves to replenish his protein levels. His entire cockpit is filled with algae - and their vapours.
Parlier also goes fishing, luckily catches a four-kilogram dorado and feeds on flying fish as he sails back into the trade winds. Yves Parlier has finished the race and is one of its most extraordinary protagonists. He finished in thirteenth place despite being a long way behind.
The on-board pharmacy
For good reason, however, there are more than just tools and spare parts on board an Imoca. There is also a large medical emergency pack on board. The skippers are trained to treat themselves as much as possible in the event of injuries. Bernard Stamm had to give himself a dental filling in the 2012 race. Since the second Vendée Globe, Bertrand de Broc has epitomised the bloody increase in difficult operations in the mouth area. He was hit hard in the face by the mainsheet during a manoeuvre on deck in 1993. He bit his tongue so hard that he suffered a wound about two centimetres long and five millimetres deep. The race doctor at the time was informed by fax and advised the solo sailor de Broc to stitch the wound himself. It was extremely difficult to carry out such a rather undramatic procedure alone on board a bucking boat. Under supervision, however, de Broc managed to anaesthetise himself locally and stitch up the tongue. After two hours, he had successfully completed the operation.
It is stories like these and the people who characterise them that impress the sailing world and help shape the DNA of the race of races. In the past, as today, great virtues such as resilience, willpower and problem-solving are highly valued. It is the core values of the Vendée Globe that have made it unique, a great mix of sport and adventure.
