2024

The Vendée Globe is currently the most prestigious sailing race in the world, taking place solo, non-stop, and without assistance. This event follows in the footsteps of the Golden Globe, which in 1968 marked the first such circumnavigation, passing through the three capes: Good Hope, Leeuwin, and Horn. Of the nine adventurers who set off in 1968, only one managed to return to Falmouth, the main port of Cornwall, England. On April 6, 1969, after 313 days at sea, the British Robin Knox-Johnston achieved his goal. Twenty years later, navigator Philippe Jeantot, after winning the BOC Challenge (a solo round-the-world race with stops), proposed a new competition: a solo race, but non-stop. Thus, the Vendée Globe was born. On November 26, 1989, thirteen sailors embarked on the first edition, which would last more than three months, but only seven of them would manage to return to Les Sables d’Olonne.