10° EditionVendée Globe

10 November 2024

The Vendée Globe is a solo, non-stop, unassisted round-the-world yacht race that takes place every four years. It is contested in IMOCA 60s, which are 60-foot monohulls. The skippers set off from Les Sables-d’Olonne in Vendée, covering about 45,000 kilometers around the globe, rounding the three legendary capes (Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin, and finally Cape Horn) before returning to Les Sables d’Olonne. The race has gained international fame, attracting skippers from all over the world. Beyond the competition, it is above all an incredible human adventure.

SINGLE-HANDED, NON-STOP, AND UNASSISTED

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.

THE COURSE

45,000 kilometers, or 24,300 miles: that’s the distance of the theoretical round-the-world course for sailors. A revolution achieved in a record time of 74 days and 3 hours during the eighth edition of the Vendée Globe, in 2016-2017. This planetary voyage is above all a climatic journey down the Atlantic, across the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, then up the Atlantic again… The program includes a mid-autumn departure from Les Sables d’Olonne, a journey through the South Seas in the middle of the austral summer, and a winter return to Vendée.