The Vendée Globe is sailing's answer to an impossible question: what happens when a single person, alone on a 60-foot racing yacht, tries to sail around the world without stopping and without help? The answer, which has been given in varying forms since 1989, is approximately 80 days of solitary navigation through conditions that include the Southern Ocean, the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Horn, and everything the North and South Atlantic can arrange in between. It is, without serious competition, the hardest thing a solo sailor can attempt.
It is also, in France, a national event of the first order. The villages of the Vendée department have followed their sailors south for decades. Hundreds of thousands of people line the quays of Les Sables-d'Olonne to watch the start. The French sports press covers the race with the intensity American newspapers reserve for championship playoffs. Sailors who complete the Vendée Globe become figures of genuine public significance in a country that understands the sea.
The Origin: Philippe Jeantot's Vision
The Vendée Globe was conceived by Philippe Jeantot, a French solo sailor who had twice won the BOC Challenge — a solo round-the-world race that allowed stops at ports on each ocean crossing. Jeantot believed the race needed a harder version: non-stop, no assistance, no second chance. He brought the idea to the Vendée department's leadership, who saw in it a vehicle for regional promotion, and the first race started in November 1989 with 13 boats.
The first edition established the race's character immediately. Titouan Lamazou won in 109 days, 8 hours. Three boats failed to finish. One competitor, Loïc Caradec, was lost at sea. The race's margin between success and catastrophe was apparent from the beginning, and it has remained so ever since. Of the more than 160 sailors who have started Vendée Globes, roughly 40 percent have failed to finish.
The IMOCA 60: The Machine
The boat class that defines the Vendée Globe is the IMOCA 60 — International Monohull Open Class Association, 60 feet on deck. The class rules are open enough to allow significant design variation while maintaining a common size and basic configuration. The IMOCA 60 is a monohull with a deep canting keel — a ballast keel that swings to windward to maintain righting moment — and, since the mid-2010s, retractable foils that extend from the hull to lift it clear of the water.
A modern foiling IMOCA 60 is a technical object of considerable sophistication. Carbon fiber hull and rig. Hydraulically operated keel and foils. Navigation and weather routing systems processing satellite data continuously. A watermaker turning seawater into drinking water. A single bunk where the skipper sleeps in short intervals between sail changes. Freeze-dried food for 90 days. Communication equipment for daily position reports, weather files, and the voice calls to shore teams that form the emotional lifeline of the race.
At speed — foils deployed, keel canted hard, breeze above 20 knots — the boat lifts onto the foils and accelerates past 30 knots. Boats have logged 24-hour runs of over 700 nautical miles. These speeds, on a 60-foot boat sailed by one person in Southern Ocean conditions, produce physical and psychological demands that no simulator has fully replicated.
The Southern Ocean
The defining geography of the Vendée Globe is the Southern Ocean — the unbroken ring of water south of 40 degrees south latitude, circling Antarctica with no continental land mass to interrupt the wind. The roaring forties begin around 40°S; by 50°S, the screaming fifties, the wind blows hard and consistently from the west. The swell height in an average Southern Ocean depression runs 5 to 8 metres. In a significant storm, it runs considerably higher.
The Vendée Globe course passes below the Cape of Good Hope, across the Indian Ocean south of Australia, below Cape Horn, and back up the Atlantic. The ice exclusion zone — a line south of which boats are not permitted to sail, set by the race organisation based on iceberg reports — has moved north in recent editions as Antarctic ice behaviour has become less predictable. Hitting a submerged or semi-submerged object at 25 knots is a race-ending or life-ending event, and the exclusion zone represents the race's acknowledgement that the Southern Ocean's hazards include more than weather.
South of 50° there is no help coming. The nearest SAR asset may be 48 hours away by aircraft and unreachable by ship in severe conditions. The Vendée Globe sailor is, in a genuine sense, alone.
Life Aboard: Sleep, Food, and 80 Days
Sleep deprivation is the race's constant companion. Alone on the boat, a skipper cannot leave the helm unattended for more than a few hours without checking conditions. In the Southern Ocean, where weather systems move fast and sail changes are frequent, the rhythm is typically 20-minute sleep intervals — long enough to rest without allowing the boat to develop a dangerous situation. Longer sleeps happen in the trade winds, where conditions are steadier and autopilot can be trusted for a few hours.
Food is freeze-dried and pre-packaged for caloric efficiency rather than pleasure. A typical daily allocation runs 3,500 to 4,000 calories. Water comes from the onboard maker. The physical demands of solo sailing — sail changes, rope handling, working on a pitching foredeck at 3 a.m. in 35 knots of wind — mean that many skippers lose significant body weight over the course of the race despite caloric discipline.
The 2020–21 Race: Rescue in the Southern Ocean
The 2020–21 Vendée Globe produced one of the race's most complicated finishes. Kevin Escoffier's boat PRB sank suddenly south of the Cape of Good Hope in early December after structural failure. Three fellow competitors diverted to rescue him: Jean Le Cam found Escoffier in his liferaft after several hours of searching in difficult conditions. The three boats that had assisted — including Le Cam, who spent 16 hours with Escoffier aboard before transfer — received time compensation from the race committee.
Yannick Bestaven, who had diverted to assist and received 10 hours, 15 minutes of time compensation, ultimately won the race on corrected time — finishing behind Charlie Dalin in elapsed time but ahead after compensation was applied. The finish, spread over 24 hours of uncertainty as the compensation calculations were confirmed, was the most dramatic in the race's history. Bestaven won by less than four hours of compensated time after 80 days at sea.
Watching the Race
The Vendée Globe tracker at vendeeglobe.org provides real-time position data for every boat, updated every few hours. The tracker has become one of the race's most compelling features for non-sailors: the separation between leaders in the Southern Ocean, the routing decisions around weather systems, the moment when a boat stops moving and the question of what has happened — all are visible on the public map.
Each day at 0800 UTC, skippers report in by radio — the "vacation" (vacances) call — with their position, boat condition, and brief commentary. Extracts are broadcast and published in French with translations available. The shore teams post daily updates through the race's official platform and through team social media. Following a Vendée Globe from a desk in another country, for the 80-odd days the race runs, is a consuming experience that has built the race's international following far beyond France.