Shorthanded sailing offers more options than one might first consider. You can sail solo and be out there all alone. Or, you can sail doublehanded and be out there alone trying to guard your teammate’s essential sleep. So, you see, there are all kinds of variety! Welcome to dark and cold. Welcome to incredible challenges and the resulting memories. Welcome to At The Front—The Shorthanded Edition.
IMOCA fleet is pictured above during the IMOCA start of the Transat Jacques Vabre in Le Havre, France, on November 07, 2023. Photo by Vincent Curutchet / Alea.
People will tell you Brittany is the epicenter (Sailing Valley) of worldwide singlehanded sailing.
I think they’re right. And I should know. I grew up here.
By: Pierre Masse’ —Managing Director, Harken France
A lot of people can say that where they grew up has a lot to do with how they end up. I would be one of them. I grew up in a town called Piriac sur mer, which is in the Brittany region of Northwest France.
In my little village by the water, there wasn't much to do! So, when I was five, I started sailing singlehanded. And I grew up bigger and probably stronger than most (thanks to Britanny air and water).
After years of Optimist sailing, singlehanded sailing no longer suited me, so I started racing in IRC, maxi (Merit, Nicorette, etc.) and then match racing. When the French Sailing Federation launched a nationwide recruitment drive for two youngsters to compete in the America's Cup, I signed up!
And I was selected to take part in the 30th America's Cup in New Zealand as a mast man. Please note that my hair is no longer that color.
Looking back at the three campaigns that I sailed, you’ll find a ‘who’s who’ of people who make the shorthanded sailing community what it is today. We have people from Areva Challenge in IMOCA Class management.
You have Hubert Lemonnier who, as Race Director of the Vendée Globe Race, stays in continuous communication with every sailor in the race and coordinates rescues—which we hope is never needed.
We have Managing Directors, design team leaders, and Communications Directors from many of the most prominent teams across all the major shorthanded classes.
Much of this has grown up around La Base in Lorient, where many Mini, Class40, IMOCA 60, and Ultim teams train. Since 2008, this location has also been the home of the Éric Tabarly Sailing Museum - a major tourist attraction.
Shorthanded sailing is a particular craze in France that began in the 1960s around the solitary feat and “spectacle sailing” with large, expensive, open rule, purpose-built boats. This type of sporting event is better suited to media coverage and sponsorship, than are other famous international races, like the Olympics or the America's Cup.
Over the years, the involvement of the French nautical industry has become more and more important, followed by significant funding from sponsors (banks, insurance companies, food industries, etc.). This type of sailing represents enormous economic opportunity for the region. For example, the nautical industry represents 6 to 10% of Vendée industry including the port, and the town of Les Sables d'Olonne.
Today, I’m responsible for Harken in France. We provide as many innovative parts as we can to support this type of sailing in boats from Minis to the 100 ft foiling Ultims.
There’s really no place in the world where sailing means so much as it does in my home. To me, sailing is one of the best things in life and I'm Breton - I love everything about shorthanded sailing. And sailing shorthanded is one of the best things in sailing!
I hope you enjoy this Shorthanded issue of At The Front.
these winches went around the world solo. let's look inside.
Boats, the way we know them, are changing fast. They're going faster, they're getting stronger, and the loads they see are exponentially increasing. How does Harken keep up with the changing times? We collaborate with sailors, teams, boat builders...you name it!
A lot of testing and some smart engineering can lead to things like the Air Winch 900. Harken France's Jean Martins shows us an Air Winch 900 that came straight off the 100 foot foiling Ultim Banque Populaire after its solo around the world race. The goal was to see the winch, inspect it, and learn from it.
off-roading...on the ocean
We sometimes talk about the America's Cup being the Formula 1 on water, but when we talk about the Vendée Globe, it's more the Paris-Dakar (the world's most famous off-road endurance car race). In these races, robustness, high reliability, and performance are most important. We asked IMOCA deck hardware experts to tell us more about the fleet. Laurent Berjon, Technical Sales Specialist from Harken France, fills us in.
What kind of deck equipment are teams running for the 2024 edition of the Vendée Globe?
As speeds continue to increase, boats are sailing more than 600 nautical miles per day singlehanded. With that, we're also seeing a significant increase in loads, prompting all teams to upgrade their fittings compared to the 2020 edition. In years to come, we're likely to see new winches on board as these loads continue to rise.
For this edition, almost every team has several Air Winch 300s, driven by a pedestal system. They also all use Harken's V Blocks and are equipped with our track systems (B Battcar System and most of them have Big Boat CRX Tracks for their mainsheet traveler system).
Are there significant differences in the loads faced by the foilers and non-foilers?
Of course, foilers go much faster, so the loads are higher, but the ergonomics remain pretty much the same - the same pedestal and winch setup. For example, there are two new daggerboard boats this year, which look just like their foiling buddies (without the foils).
The real difference is due to the dynamic load peaks you get when the foiling boats crash down off the foils that you don't get in the daggerboard boats. When it comes to loads, there's a general rule of thumb: where a 5T V Block will do on a non-foiler, a 6.5T V Block is needed on a foiler.
Is there customization in deck layout from team to team?
The big evolution is in the cockpits, which are increasingly closed, even watertight, making them more practical at high speeds. All the boats are prototypes, and each has its own vision of ergonomics based on the feelings of skippers, designers, and engineers. But since it's a box rule rather than a one-design rule, there are things to be taken into consideration: winches, pedestals, runners, sheets, foils...so, for each project, it's started from scratch to make a specific deck layout.
IMOCAS have a long life. The boat that won the Vendée Globe in 2008 is still racing, and is defending itself rather well in the hands of Violette Dorange. There is a lot of evolution on the older boats. Some are very big refits, integrating complete winch system changes for example, or even the integration of foils.
What gear is most prominent on board the fleet?
The Air Winch 300s have been a real success on the IMOCAs. Almost the entire fleet has two to five per boat. The gear they use ranges from winches and pedestals right down to the small 16 mm blocks that are used to attach equipment on board, as well as over 65 12T V sheaves! The whole Harken range is used on these racing boats, even Elevated Safety, which supplies the mast-mounting kits.
backstage at the world's biggest nonstop race, the work is...nonstop
The Vendée Globe is a singlehanded, unassisted, nonstop race around the world in the IMOCA 60s - the biggest race of its kind. There was a record-breaking number of fans at the race village in October before and during the start, and even now, they are glued to the tracker and live updates from the fleet. But the sailors aren't the only ones working nonstop around the world - there are teams behind the scenes that work 24/7 to ensure the safety of the sailors.
Race Officer of the Vendée Globe, Hubert Lemonnier, works with his team to make sure things run smoothly. What does the team in the race office do in their "on-land IMOCA?" We stopped in, in Les Sables d'Olonne, to hear from Hubert.
A SOLO CIRCUMNAVIGATOR NEEDS TO BE A SEASONED PROFESSIONAL WITH HUNDREDS OF OFFSHORE HOURS. OR...JUST A SAILOR FROM WISCONSIN.
Ok, so you're probably not going to do a Vendée Globe...or maybe never a doublehanded Sydney Hobart...definitely never a lap of the globe solo on a foiling 100 foot trimaran. But, you CAN go shorthanded sailing. Tim Kent lived a comfortable life in the quiet suburbs, 30 minutes from Harken's World Headquarters. He honed his sailing chops on Lake Michigan, then got bitten by the shorthanded bug, and decided to take his humble, Middle America experience around the world....singlehanded. His choice? The 2002/03 Around Alone Race. A singlehanded around-the-world race with five legs, four stopovers, that started and finished in in Newport, Rhode Island.
How did you get into shorthanded sailing?
I had done a lot of deliveries back from Mackinac, Michigan to our home base in Milwaukee, Wisconsin shorthanded, sometimes with just one other person on board, so I was accustomed to being the only person on deck for extended periods of time. I had read books and articles about solo transatlantic races and circumnavigations – I believed I could handle the boat myself for a few hundred miles. When the Great Lakes Singlehanded Society announced a solo race from Chicago, Illinois to Mackinac Island, about 300 nautical miles, I signed up. After just one race, I was hooked. Doing the whole job alone – navigating, watch standing, trimming, changing sails – challenged me in a whole new way. I loved it.
You went from solo races on Lake Michigan to racing solo around the world. Why on earth did you think you could do that?
I was not looking for a big challenge in my life, but when the possibility of doing this arose, the challenge of doing it did not just appeal to me; it overwhelmed me. Sailing on the Great Lakes can be challenging, and I had endured enough storms on Mackinac and other races to know how to deal with them. I knew that the Southern Ocean was several orders of magnitude more difficult, and therefore more challenging…which made doing this absolutely perfect. It was a marvelous experience. I scared myself half to death on numerous occasions, but I knew that would happen. Some big storms, some major system failures, and broken stuff made some parts of the event really wild, but I brought the boat – and myself – home. I'm still taking short naps!
You knew you were going to be alone, but...what's it really like?
As far as being alone…it’s not as if it was a surprise. I knew I was going to be alone and welcomed it. When crossing Point Nemo (the point when you are furthest from any land), it was intriguing to realize that the occupants of the International Space Station were the closest humans to me…though they could offer no practical help to me. If one were to dwell on the practical dangers of this race, you would never leave the dock.
You could hit some random obstacle – a living one like a whale or sunfish, an inert one such an iceberg, or a man-made one such as a container…but to do so would be such random bad luck that it has to be swept aside. I never felt lonely. I pushed contact with the world by writing almost daily to the people who were following the race – their responses confirmed that they were watching me – that I was not alone. I corresponded with people every day…it made me realize that I was part of the fabric of the race, and of other people’s lives.
Did you bring anything to pass the time...did you have time to pass?
Thomas Jefferson said, “I cannot live without books.” I would sacrifice a lot before I would sacrifice the worlds in which I have traveled while reading books. It is absolutely true that I would never have attempted the Around Alone Race had I not been reading books since my early days about adventurers testing themselves on land, mountains, and oceans. I read every day.
My boat captain, Gilles, threatened to take my books off the boat if I wanted too many spare parts on board – I skipped the spares and took the books. Today, that’s not an issue – you can take the Library of Congress on board with no weight penalty.
As for being busy, you can be busy all the time. All of us are different, and we clog and un-clog our minds in different ways. I took a lot of books – from lightweight page-turners to thoughtful histories of Arctic explorations. I doubt I lost any noticeable time to the hours I spent reading. I would do it when I had settled the boat down after a big sail change – look to see if I was going where I wanted and I would grab whatever I was reading and settle down for a few minutes to read and go somewhere else, which is the beauty of reading. I do it still, racing solo or on watch during a delivery. Make sure the AIS is clear, check the horizon for random boats, position the beanbag in the cockpit, and go to the Kindle app (if only that was an option in 2002!).
How do you...CAN you sleep when you're out there alone?
I hate to say it, but it depends. It depends mostly on where you are sailing. If you are sailing inshore, like the Great Lakes or 30 to 50 miles from shore on the ocean, you can run into a moderately fast boat that was not visible when you fell asleep – in about twelve minutes. That includes big cargo ships, fast ferries, fishing boats, etc. AIS systems, mentioned above, are a great tool for identifying and avoiding ships and boats – provided they have one. So ten-minute catnaps inshore is your only solution. Farther offshore, I may sleep for 20-30 minutes, but only with the radar alarms set. Alarms for the radar and AIS are very important.
Waking up – I have seen or tried it all…kitchen timers that were supposed to clip to cookbooks attach nicely to the collar of your shirt or foul weather gear. Watch and phone timers are just backups. There is a new class of wake-up devices – watch-like electronics that either buzz or deliver a small shock to wake up the heaviest of sleepers. Caution – a famous IMOCA 60 sailor drove his boat onto a beach within miles of the finish of a transatlantic race because he failed to charge the device.
pairing up to take on the hobart
When Meg Niblett got her Yachtmaster Offshore qualification, she had Wendy Tuck as her examiner. The relationship sparked the idea for an adventure - a doublehanded Rolex Sydney Hobart kind of adventure. They trained, qualified, and made it to the start line. Hear from Wendy and Meg about the adventure ahead before they set off on the Hobart on Dec 26, 2024.
the pathway to offshore
In 2019, when Pep Costa was 20 years old, he was the youngest skipper in the Mini Transat, a singlehanded race across the Atlantic for the Mini 6.50. He jumped into the offshore scene with the goal of doing as much sailing as he could.
Hear from Pep on his sailing goals (hint: he's been a busy sailor since we talked to him)!
When we talked to Pep back in 2019, he told us he wanted more offshore sailing.