Anyone doing the Vendee Globe?

 

The longest I've ever sailed singlehanded was across the channel which only took 14 hours. I remember how my emotions were definitely amplified with the isolation. Given how much more Vendee skippers are isolated, any frustrations we may have had during the game with the weather, routing etc must have been many times worse on the water. Not sure that I would have the right stuff for that.

 

It was also interesting how different strategies could be equally successful. I notice that I hunted around for the wind taking a lot more risks and consequently of the finishers so far, I've sailed the most miles of all of us, 28074. Even more surprisingly it gives me a higher average speed than the "with options" boats in our group. Dougal on the other hand sailed 27,554 and Bootscooter even less at 26527 miles. I think it was only a bit of luck that put me ahead of Dougal, as I actually thought he was being smarter (maybe in hindsight, I don't know) on the risk taking as I often had to put a lot of effort into making my risks work (the South American coast being one of them).

 

Anyway, I can say a learnt a lot from this, but maybe that is because I've never done any real ocean racing myself.

Enjoyed it but best when having someone from the Forum close by to race against, a good contest with Craiggo since Brazil.

 

 Made one or two costly mistakes, first one was in the South Atlantic on the way down when I got greedy for overall ranking, held off turning south to avoid a developing hole and ended up getting badly caught in it. Worst mistake was when going on holiday for a few days before Xmas setting a course taking me just south of an ice gate near Australia, it wasn't so much the 48 hours spent going back upwind but the distance everyone else went West during that time moving me from 50k to 150k. Also crashed into Brazil on the way but only for a couple of hours so not to damaging!

 

Will do it again at some point but only in the Winter!