If Ellen MacArthur were sailing in the 2008 Vendée Globe, 8 years after she came second at the age of 24, she would still be the youngest skipper in the fleet. But she was and still is exceptional.
Most things on an Ocean 60 are physically very hard work. I mentioned in an earlier post that tacking involves shifting the headsails from one locker to the other and tying them in place. When I wrote that, it hadn’t occurred to me that these sails weigh a ton or so, so shifting them is more work than moving a dozen barrowloads of wet concrete. Hoisting the mainsail as you let out a reef is not a trivial task, either. Winches reduce the force you need to exert, bringing the job within the limits of your strength, but they don’t reduce the amount of work you need to do – in fact, they increase it a bit because you have to overcome some friction in even the best winch.
You would think, therefore, that Vendée Globe skippers would be at their peak before the age of 40.
It doesn’t look like it. The people now in front after surviving the heavy weather in the Bay of Biscay and then quickly getting into their hard-driving strides are:
Loîc Peyron, 48
Jean Le Cam, 49
And the man who is moving fastest back up the fleet after being delayed by having to return after starting ahead of the gun is:
Mike Golding, 47
Even Eric Wilson, the Grand Old Man of this race, is now overtaking his younger rivals, having managed to tune his autopilot so that it could drive the boat faster and still prevent it broaching. Yet he says hoisting his mainsail is torture for his back…
Clearly, you have to be fit, but it seems that experience is worth a lot. Which gives us good reason to congratulate people like Jonny Malbon, who, thanks to serious delays in its construction, has ended up using the Vendée Globe as his first serious session at getting to know his new boat.
You’re quite right about the physical effort required on the Open 60s, and it’s endurance as well as brute strength. The other attribute, without which success is going to be very difficult, is experience. You can see that in the wily older French skippers who have been there (many times), done it and got the T-shirt. This morning off the Canaries is a classic example – deciding which way to go, east, west or through is really difficult, but gets a lot easier the more times you have done it before! The same applies in spades to the decision the Vendee boys are about to make on where to push through the Doldrums.
The final factor is luck, so let’s hope that the Brit skippers (especially Jonny in ARTEMIS) have plebty of it.
Yachtmaddie
The age thing is really interesting. Today a man of 47 can be as fit (or fitter) than a 24 year old. Many are (note to self: start that diet and exercise regime). I think the most important thing on this race will be mental stamina and that’s possibly not a function of age. It may be that the people doing this race are human outliers anyway…
Welcome aboard, Yachtmaddie. Yes, having recently experienced the doldrums via the sailonline.org simulator for the Volvo race, I have seen for myself how the doldrums can change the leaderboard drastically.
Even the quality of information and the software for processing it that are available to today’s ocean race skippers still leaves a lot in the lap of the gods. Light weather racing on small courses in dinghies is a recipe for headaches – singlehanding a 60-footer through several days of that kind of thing is a real test of unflappability and stamina.