for the first time since 2008, Vendée Globe 2024 skippers saw an iceberg

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A big surprise to start 2025! Three Vendée Globe 2024 skippers witnessed a rare event: the vision of an iceberg in the middle of the Pacific.

A moment that is both magical, but also very distressing for skippers.

“I found myself face to face with him”

The skippers had been preparing for several days for the possibility of seeing an iceberg. It’s done with Eric Bellion (Stand as One – Altavia), Conrad Colman (MS Amlin) and Sébastien Marsset (Foussier), who experienced this moment suspended in time.

The latter is also the first to have seen it, he says:

My radar alarm went off. I poke my head out, and immediately I see the iceberg. There's a fight going on because I'm at 17 knots under little gennak! So you have to drive to avoid the iceberg. I bear down, which temporarily makes me aim even more, I roll, and I find myself 2.5 miles from the iceberg… I try to luff but without accelerating too much, I end up taking a second reef to really slow down, and I wait a long time! Because frankly, it blows my mind, I was going straight for it! This iceberg had therefore ultimately not drifted towards the North at all, but due East, so I was at the same latitude as it, and I found myself… Facing it!

Eric Bellion, who also saw the iceberg at Point Némo, in the heart of the Pacific, was not calm:

The boat and I are not being smart! I remind you that my case is 3.6mm thick, I can't afford to type that. Icebergs are beautiful with expedition boats equipped with steel hulls but not with our carbon racing boats.

Finally Guirec Soudée (Freelance.com), who did not see the iceberg with his own eyes, still recounts his fear. “ I slowed down, I was doing 18-20 knots with spikes on top, so I said hophophophop. I've already caught ice at 4-5 knots with a steel boat, it wasn't very pleasant, so with a carbon boat I don't prefer to think about it!», he describes, before continuing: “It adds a little spice to the race,but it's still a bit stressfulI'm on my radar, every 20 minutes I go outside, you can see the horizon clearly so that's cool. »

An almost unique momentwhich can however shatter their dream of completing the Everest of the seas, in a single moment.

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