Vendée Globe: the new race director ready for “the great tunnel of the South”

In the final stretch before the start of the Vendée Globe, this Sunday, November 10 from Les Sables-d'Olonne, France Bleu Loire Océan offers you a series of five guests to understand all the challenges of sailing around the world alone. After the CEO of the Dubreuil groupsponsor of the boat of the same name, it's this Tuesday the new race director, Hubert Lemonnierwho answers us. He is at the head of a team of four people who serve as skippers.

Although Hubert Lemonnier, 44, holds this position for the first time, he knows the Vendée Globe very well since it is his fourth edition within the race management. He took over from Jacques Caraës, still present as deputy.

“The descent of the channel is timed”

First challenge for you, Sunday morning: getting the 40 boats down the channel on time? “Indeed, to have the 40 who must go out with a beautiful parade on Sunday morning, it is a huge challenge. It is timed. We have the constraints of the tide, the channel and so we will then set off on this great tour of the world at 1 p.m. zero two on Sunday And the weather forecast is good, with a little wind and not too much sea. So these are rather practical conditions.

The Great South Tunnel

It's later, once the skippers have sailed down the entire Atlantic Ocean and find themselves between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn, that the hardest part will begin for you? “We call it the Great Southern Tunnel. The boats enter the Indian and Pacific Oceans where there is much, much less presence of other boats in the area and therefore the best solutions in the event of a problem is to divert the other competitors. So in fact, we are on full alert until the last one arrives at Cape Horn, then we set up a watch system every six hours. We are five people and there are a person who is on call, who remains in the Sables d'Olonne sector if we have several damages to manage at the same time.”

“The realization of a huge amount of work between the skippers and the race management”

You told us, in this area of ​​the South Seas, in the event of a problem, the best way to get out of it is the other competitors. This is what happened in 2020 when Kévin Escoffier's boat sank and he was saved by Jean Le Cam. How did you experience this moment? “It was the culmination of many things. It was also the realization of a huge amount of work between the skippers and us, the race management, of preparation, optimization of the safety systems. The outcome was good , we are happy about it. It was complicated, a very difficult night, but we clearly saw that all the systems we had been able to put in place were able to work.”

A new life raft, special for Vendée globe

Did you learn from this event to further improve the safety of skippers for this new edition of the Vendée Globe? “Of course, we thought about the systems that we could improve. So we have a one-design life raft. Until then, we used standard, commercial rafts. And now, we really have a raft designed for the Vendée Globe. “

Icebergs followed closely

There is also, in these South Seas, particular attention paid to icebergs with what is called the Antarctic exclusion zone. This means that the skippers are not allowed to go too far south. And it is an area that evolves depending on the rise of the icebergs? “We have a huge weather analysis and satellite imagery to follow the evolution of the ice, the drifts, depending on the water temperatures, currents and winds. And this area, we reserve the right to move it since it You should know that if we can put it as far south as possible, the course is shorter for the skippers”. With the possibility, perhaps, of beating Armel Le Cléac'h's record in 2017: 74 days and 3 hours.