The Vendée Globe, renowned as the greatest solo, non-stop, and unassisted sailing race around the world, began its 10th edition on Sunday, 10th November 2024. This extraordinary race, often referred to as the “Everest of the seas,” challenges sailors to circumnavigate the globe via the three capes: Good Hope, Leeuwin, and Horn. The race has a storied history, tracing its roots back to the Golden Globe in 1968, where only one of the nine pioneers, Robin Knox-Johnston, successfully completed the journey after 313 days at sea. Inspired by this feat, Philippe Jeantot, a two-time BOC Challenge winner, introduced the idea of a non-stop race, leading to the inaugural Vendée Globe in 1989. Since then, the race has seen 200 contenders, with only 114 managing to cross the finish line, underscoring its extreme difficulty.

Involving our Club in the excitement this year, a group of Howth Yacht Club members visited the event during the week leading up to the race. Their presence highlights the club’s continuing active engagement with the global sailing community and opened these members eyes to the scale of this prestigious international event.

But it was a serendipitous story when we arranged to meet with Howth’s Marcus Hutchinson. Marcus has been deeply involved in the high-end racing scene for most of his career, first as a naval architect with Rob Humphries, later as editor of Seahorse Magazine, on America's Cup campaigns, and now as a coach and mentor for major solo ocean sailing campaigns including the Figaro and Vendée Globe. This time around, Marcus is the Team Manager for Swiss native Oliver Heer, who is skipper of the IMOCA 60 ‘Tut Gut’. Many of Howth’s international offshore sailors will already know 35-year-old ‘Ollie’, because he not only was boat captain of Alex Thompson’s radical IMOCA design in the 2020 Vendée Globe, but he also skippered the frequently Howth-chartered ‘Pata Negra’ – the Marc Lombard 46 footer which has been a frequent contender in recent Caribbean 600s, Fastnet Races and Round Irelands.

Meeting Marcus and Ollie last week in the charming and very traditional French port-town of Les Sables D’Olonne added extra value to our trip.

At a ridiculously (good value) local ‘haute cuisine’ restaurant, HYC’s Kieran Jameson soaked up the gossip from Marcus, taking up the conversation at exactly at the point he had previously signed off from on a Zoom call that we had with Marcus mid-COVID and mid-Vendée Globe in 2020, when he had been team manager for Thomas Ruyant on his boat ‘LinkedOut’. Marcus is a qualified naval architect and former Figaro racer. His first IMOCA experience was with Mike Golding on the 2000-2001 Vendée Globe. Golding broke his mast and had to restart seven days later going on to finish seventh. The British solo racer then asked Marcus to sail as co-skipper on the Transat Jacques Vabre and they finished in second place. After a long spell working in 5 America's Cups, he returned to working for the Artemis Offshore Academy on the Figaro circuit. During that period Michel Desjoyeaux asked him to project manager SMA where he was or three years. He also ran Enda O'Coineen's last-minute project in 2016, after which he then started working with Thomas Ruyant’s Vendée campaign in January 2018 – another team-building exercise that started from scratch.

But to sit for hours in the relaxed and remarkably friendly atmosphere of a local restaurant might erroneously suggest that all was quiet in the off-season on the mostly-rural west coast of France. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Arriving at the Vendée Globe village at 10am on a Saturday morning in early November can only be described as an awe-inspiring and even jaw-dropping experience for even the most experienced visitors and competitors to an international sailing event. The queue for going down on to the marina to see the boats was already 2km long – the French families with prams and packed lunches were clearly prepared to spend hours happily soaking up the atmosphere as they inched towards the distant marina and enjoying the spectacle as they transversed the amphitheatre that the marina and port create. To see crowds like this at a sailing event left me stunned. Our tickets indicated (by a traffic light system: green, orange and red) that the busiest times would be from 12:00-14:00. By late that evening, the event organisation team hasd confirmed that 250,000 people had visited the event that day. The Vendée (local council) representative told us that they were expecting more than 3 million people to have visited over the 2 weeks and additionally, on the morning of the race start, that up to 500,000 people would line the port to cheer the sailors out through the fairway channel in a procession that would take 6 hours.

So it was with much relief that we were given ‘’back-stage passes’ to visit Ollie on his boat early on the Sunday morning, before the crowds gathered and allowing us to walk the reserved marina and see the 40 boats up close as their teams continued the preparation before the start on the following week.

Swiss-born Oliver Heer has had an unusual route to the IMOCA class. After success on the youth dinghy racing circuit, Ollie moved to Taiwan to study International Business communications, and started competing on TP 52's in his spare time. In 2014 and following the death of his father at the early age of 53, he decided to follow a dream and moved to the South Coast of the UK to get a foot-hold in the sailing industry, and started skippering professional race boats (including Pata Negra) in the UK, Mediterranean and Caribbean. In 2018, he joined Alex Thomson onboard the IMOCA 60 HUGO BOSS. Alex and Ollie co-skippered in the double-handed 2021 Rolex Fastnet Race. This was his debut in the IMOCA Globe Series and the moment he realised he was ready to take on the challenge of his own campaign. Early in 2022, Heer purchased his own non-foiling IMOCA 'Gitana 80' which was previously owned and sailed by some of the best-known names in offshore racing including Jean Le Cam, Fabrice Amedeo and Romain Attanasio.

Ollie’s IMOCA is one of the non-foiling boats in this event, with 2 daggerboards rather than the foils of the newer designs. This might reduce his top speeds but he believes that the boat is strong and gives him the best chance of finishing the non-stop single-handed circumnavigation. It is also one of 3 boats that has the original rig, with considerable proven mileage. He gave us a personal tour of the boat, showing where he made alterations to the cockpit design with a new semi-open cover from where he will be managing the trimming and controls. The team constructed a new one from scratch, using their expertise to lay up carbon cloth and foam core, before moulding them into the desired shape. These panels were then bonded together and permanently fixed to the boat. This new design, proposed by a local composite design office, is larger, wider and higher than the previous one. This will offer skipper Ollie much greater protection from the wind and waves during his journey through the Southern Ocean, ensuring a slightly less unpleasant experience.

The IMOCA monohulls are designed to be as light as possible to maximise speed while being robust enough to withstand the extreme conditions of the high seas, such as those encountered during the Vendée Globe. From the beginning, these monohulls featured characteristics suited to the downwind conditions of the Southern Ocean, with a wide beam and significant waterline length.

The safety requirements imposed by the IMOCA Class are crucial for these monohulls' success. Since 2000, boats must demonstrate that they can right themselves without external assistance and ensure effective internal compartmentalisation and sufficient buoyancy in case of capsize or water ingress. These stringent safety standards significantly contribute to the reliability and performance of IMOCA monohulls in the most demanding maritime challenges.

Over the years, technical advancements have been significant. In 1998, the introduction of canting keels increased righting moments, and the rise of computing revolutionised weather forecasting and communication management. Autopilots have become increasingly sophisticated, facilitating solo navigation. Hulls and sail plans have evolved: boats have gained power with wider sterns and improved upwind performance. Cockpits have also improved, becoming more protected, with some equipped with sliding roof covers and others have fully-closed cockpits to secure the manoeuvring area.

In the mid-2000s, a new revolution occurred with the introduction of foils on America's Cup multihulls, quickly entering the world of IMOCA monohulls. These wing-like appendages allow boats to foil, or lift off the water, reducing drag and significantly improving speed. In 2016, six foilers participated in the Vendée Globe; this year more than 50% of the fleet are fitted with foils. The Class has expanded the gauge concerning foils, offering more freedom of movement (up and down, forward and backward), stimulating designers' creativity.

Typically, Ollie will consume between 4,500 – 6,000 kcal per day. Over the 90 days of racing, this is approximately 472,500 kcal, and he will still lose weight. Of course, it is crucial for Ollie to have the right food with him; once the race starts there is no option to stop and ‘top-up’ supplies. On board, he has extremely limited cooking facilities and no refrigeration. After the first few days he is dependent on freeze-dried meals and pre-packed snacks which provide a high energy content combined with essential nutrients. His entire “kitchen’ consists of a single jet-boil, a thermos mug and a long-handled spoon! He uses the gas-powered “jet-boil” to heat water which is used to make hot drinks and reconstitute the freeze-dried meals.

On Sunday 10th November, Ollie and his team took ‘Tut Gut’ out of the marina and into the cauldron of noise in the channel from the passionate French sailing fans. He remarked: “What a fantastic day here in Les Sables d’Olonne. Leaving the channel surrounded by hundreds of thousands of French people – well, it’s a moment I’ll never forget in my life. It was really emotional.”

The race will take about 75-85 days to complete and you can follow Oliver Heer Racing with live updates on his website: oliverheer.com Instagram: @oliverheeroceanracing and on the race tracker at: vendeeglobe.org

Main photo: Kieran Jameson presents Oliver Heer with the HYC burgee on the weekend before the start