Francesca Clapcich on her 2028-2029 Vendee Globe campaign ahead of The Ocean Race Atlantic
by David Schmidt 18 Aug 08:00 PDT
August 18, 2026
11th Hour Racing pressing hard on its foils © JULIEN CHAMPOLION - polaRYSE
On September 1, six fully crewed IMOCAs will cross The Ocean Race Atlantic's starting line off of New York City, with their bows and foils aimed at Lorient, France. Of these mixed-sex teams, only Team Francesca Clapcich Powered by 11th Hour Racing will be flying the Stars and Stripes. The team, which will led by skipper Francesca "Frankie" Clapcich, features talented sailors from five different countries, and is likely to be a strong contender. But before racing starts, the team is visiting Boston, Newport, and New York City, where they plan to raise awareness for the "Believe, Belong, Achieve" purpose campaign, which Frankie is championing alongside 11th Hour Racing.
An Atlantic crossing is a big deal for any sailor, but for Frankie, the upcoming TOR Atlantic is one of 11 events (between early 2026 and 2028) that the Italian-American skipper plans to compete in ahead of the start of the singlehanded 2028-2029 Vendée Globe nonstop-around-the-world race.
This dance card includes the 1000 Race, which was her first solo offshore racing experience aboard an IMOCA 60 (see below); the singlehanded Route du Rhum-Destination Guadeloupe, the double-handed Transat Café L'Or, the singlehanded Retour a la Base, the Solo Transat CIC, and the singlehanded New York Vendée-Les Sables d'Olonne.
Excluding deliveries, this racing schedule means that Frankie will be crossing the pond six times before the Vendée Globe's start.
Impressively, all of this sailing is happening alongside "Believe, Belong, Achieve" purpose campaign, which Frankie and 11th Hour Racing hope will increase the size and inclusivity of the sailing world's tent.
This is an ambitious few years of living for anyone, but Frankie—a two-time Olympic sailor who was aboard 11th Hour Racing's winning campaign in the 2023 edition of The Ocean Race and the New York Yacht Club's American Magic Women's AC40 in the 2024 Puig Women's America's Cup (to cite just two achievements on her lengthy and impressive sailing resume)—has the skills, experience, and commitment to make this happen, while also focusing on her bigger-picture goal of competing in the Vendée Globe.
I checked in with Frankie, via email, to learn more about her efforts leading up to the 2028-2029 Vendée Globe, and about her "Believe, Belong, Achieve" purpose campaign.
Can you please start us off by telling us about this year's 1000 Race? What went well, what could use a bit more polishing, and what were the biggest things that you learned about sailing alone offshore aboard a really fast boat?
It was my first ever solo race on an IMOCA, one of the few solo races I've done in my career, so I took it as a great experience with a lot of learning.
The conditions were quite complicated. We had really light wind for the entire race, and on this boat that's not easy: sometimes it's harder to keep the boat foiling than it is to just get it moving and floating around.
It was a good fight from start to finish with the other IMOCAs, and I'm pretty proud to have just gotten it done and had a decent result, being in the fight from beginning to end.
At the risk of asking a silly question, were you able to get any sleep, or was your brain constantly sensing for attitude changes in the boat, foils, and sails? Also, have you been working with a sleep coach, or invested any other time/resources into trying to get better sleep/rest/recovery aboard a boat that sure looks like it's capable of delivering some violent motion?
Sleep is a big deal in single-handed sailing, as we all know—it's a massive part of recovery and being able to make good decisions and stay mentally sharp.
I'm not working specifically with a sleep coach, but there are plenty of techniques you can use—breathing patterns, trying to calm your body and your heart rate—to be able to fall asleep much faster than normal.
I use quite a lot of that onboard, and then it's about managing the moments, the situation, the timing—both during the day and during the race. There are moments where it's easier to get some rest because there isn't much going on, and other moments where, unfortunately, you just need to be awake and deal with the weather, deal with the boat.
I think it's important to always aim for at least four hours of sleep over 24 hours, and you get there through micro-sleeps of 20 minutes, half an hour. It's not pleasant, but you get used to it.
Can you please tell us about your "Believe, Belong, Achieve" purpose campaign began?
I always wanted to have my own project, but not one driven just by performance and trying to win on the water. I wanted to use the sport that I love, the sport I've been doing my entire life, as a platform to send a strong message. I think that's pretty much the responsibility nowadays of most sporting teams, athletes, and clubs: not just to win matches and regattas, but to do it with a purpose.
And of course I didn't do that on my own.
I brought some ideas, and then I have a really great group of people and a team behind me who helped bring that to life. It's been a journey, and it's not over yet.
What we're trying to do is send a fairly complicated message: it's not just about getting more women in the sport, it's about getting more diversity overall, more equitable treatment in the workplace, more consistency throughout the sport, so that people can really feel they belong in their team and their workplace. It's more abstract than most other sustainability projects, but we're up for the challenge, and we have great people working on spreading the message as best we can.
As a follow-on to the last question, where do technologies like Starlink, high-resolution video cameras, and social media fit into the equation? Also, how—if at all—do at-sea media responsibilities change your life as a skipper compared to teams that are racing with less of a social mission?
I think it's an added value having media around and having to do more media. It's a lot of work sometimes, but at the same time, if you have something to share and something to say, media is really the only way to spread it to as many people as possible. If we keep it to ourselves, that message doesn't go anywhere.
New technologies are definitely helping with this. We're connected 24/7 on the boat with really high-speed internet, better than what I have at home. So we're able to give fans and the people following us really high-level content directly from the boat, which is quite special.
I personally enjoy it most of the time, and when I don't, I'm not afraid to be honest about it - to say, look, this isn't a good moment, let me take a break and do it another time. We want to be authentic. We want to really show what life on the boat and in our team is like, and I think we're doing a pretty decent job of that.
How do you and 11th Hour Racing use stopovers, like the ones in Boston, Newport, and New York to further "Believe, Belong, Achieve"?
The U.S is our home country - second home country, really. For me it's great to be able to bring the boat and the entire team to the U.S. and do a bit of a tour along the East Coast between Boston, Newport, and New York — especially Newport, which is 11th Hour Racing's home.
It's great to connect the dots, cross the Atlantic, bring the boat back, and have a lot of the local communities, grantees, sponsors, and people who follow us be able to come to the dock, check out the boat, and go sailing.
I'm really looking forward to it. I think it's a great way for us to do something tangible with our purpose message. It's not just about the words we use, but the actions we take, and we're going to have a lot of young people coming on board from underserved communities around the East Coast. We're going to have interns join the team and learn from us. That's really great, intangible work that a lot of other teams can hopefully take as an example and do on their own, too.
What are your goals and objectives for the upcoming The Ocean Race Altantic?
The upcoming Ocean Race Atlantic is going to be full crewed - two women and two men. I've recruited a great team of sailors—Alberto Bona (ITA), Will Harris (GBR), and Elodie-Jane Mettraux (SUI), plus Julien Champolion (FRA) as our onboard reporter.
It's the first time The Ocean Race has had a 50/50 diversity split, which I think is good and needed - we have to be doing everything we can to be giving opportunities to people to race at these top levels of the sport. And the even better thing is that they are all friends—there isn't anything better than sailing with people you know well!
My goal from this race is performance and learning. The Vendée Globe might be over two years away, but it is so important that I keep developing my skills and learning more about the boat.
Having Will onboard with us will be great as he knows the boat so well - he was my co-skipper for the Transat Café L'OR as well.
It's the first time I'll be skippering a full crew so that brings its pressures for sure. Everyone I'm sailing with is so talented and full of knowledge but ultimately the final call will be down to me - that will be a totally new experience and one I'm looking forward to.
How are you feeling ahead of this year's Route du Rhum? What are three areas that you are currently feeling really confident about, and what are three places that you want to improve your game between now and November? And can you please tell us how you plan to address the three areas/things that need some fine-tuning?
The Route du Rhum is a pretty historic race, a big solo transatlantic race, and it's the first time I'll ever do it.
So, if I have to name something I'm not confident about, it's that I've never done it before, so I don't really know what to expect.
As I said, I don't have any Vendée Globes under my belt, and I don't have a huge amount of miles sailed on my own yet. It's still building that experience. And if you look at the start line and the skippers signed up for the race, you're basically racing against some ocean-racing heroes, and we definitely don't have the newest boat in the fleet, so we also need to deal with the performance gap as we see the new boats coming out of the shed with really strong performance on the water.
On the other hand, I'm really confident about the team we have. We have really strong people, both in the technical department and in every other department. I'm pretty confident about being able to finish the race, and about the reliability of the boat and of myself.
We've raced twice so far this year and finished both races, in good contention, fighting until the end. That's definitely a positive. And if you take the example of the Transat Café L'OR last year, [Will Harris and I] finished on the podium, so I don't think we're terrible out there and we can do well.
But this time it's all on my shoulders instead of sharing it with someone else onboard, so that's definitely a bit harder.
For the areas I still want to work on, it's really about putting in more time on the weather and feeling more and more confident on board — you learn the boat a little more every time you go sailing.
What do you think is harder—getting one's mind or body prepared for sailing alone across an ocean (or around the world) on a foiling monohull? The physical training, I imagine, is likely fairly hard but straight forward, but can you please tell us about any steps or training that you have been doing to mentally prepare for what I can only imagine is one of the sport's world's hardest challenges?
I think there are a lot of small pieces that build the puzzle, so I don't think it's fair to put more weight on one or the other — it's a big-picture thing.
I do work out in the gym, I work out outside, I try to work on myself. As human beings we keep growing, we can always learn from our own emotions, from our own mistakes, and go from there, and keep learning the boat. It's a big process.
I don't think there's one detail that's going to put you ahead of the others, it's a lot of small details that build the bigger picture, and I try to work on all of them.
Of course, the biggest enemy of performance is always time. We never have enough of it to do everything.
Can you please tell us about a really beautiful moment (or moments) that you've experienced alone aboard 11th Hour Racing? What made this (or these) moment(s) so special? And are these the kinds of experiences that keep pulling you back to high-end sailing after all that you have achieved in the sport, or is your campaign fueled by a different kind of gravity?
There are always a lot of special moments on board.
I'd say my favorite one, since I really started offshore racing in 2017, is the moment when you leave the dock and start sailing, and you can still see land, and then at one point you don't see land anymore, and it's just you, the boat, and the ocean around you.
It's been a few years now that I've been doing this, and I've always found that [to be] such a special moment. I'm not saying it's the only reason I keep coming back, but it's definitely one of them, and I miss it when I'm not doing it. I love racing, and of course the competitive side brings me back every time. I love lining up against other skippers, other boats, and having a good race against each other. But most of it is really that feeling of freedom and a kind of simplicity that you find out there.
I think we get really stuck ashore over-complicating life, and at sea, life is just easy and simple.
Is there anything else about your "Believe, Belong, Achieve" purpose campaign, your team's efforts in the TOR Atlantic, or about any of your upcoming solo sailing, that you'd like to add or mention, for the record?
I am just happy to go and see all these young people in the U.S.! I think it's important to inspire young people, since they're the future. I have a daughter myself, and I think it's really important to give kids and young people the opportunity to see what we're doing as adults, to see that no dream is too big if you really work for it, and if you have a good team behind you that supports you.
It's not really common for an IMOCA to be seen on a dock in the U.S., and I think that's really inspiring. I hope people will come down to the dock and chat with us, check in with us—we're just excited to be part of the community.