Routers offering advice to no one

by Craig Leweck, Scuttlebutt Sailing News
There are a three things I can anticipate when the tenth edition of the Vendée Globe gets underway on November 10 from Les Sables d’Olonne, France:

• My geography will get a refresher. As the race tracker follows the solo fleet round the world, I will also look to the points of land they pass. When they speak of the race being an education platform, I wish it was available when I was in school.

• As the fleet completes its Atlantic Ocean descent, I will lose all patience with references to the Southern Ocean. This is the newest named ocean but lacks full agreement on its boundaries. With Australia as a notable exception, most agree the ocean exists south of 60° S latitude and encircles the Antarctic. The fleet won’t get close to that.

• I will be evaluating the tactics of the fleet and making my guesstimates on the best strategy to take. While the skippers can receive publicly available weather information from approved sources, they cannot receive any consultation, so I will be among a crowd of frustrated routers offering advice to no one.

PredictWind, a global leader in marine weather forecasting, is among the sources available to the fleet, providing their advanced forecasting data to help the skippers navigate the unpredictable conditions that the race presents.

But PredictWind will also offer race tracking through its Race Weather Center which will provide the projected route of each boat calculated by their weather routing technology. This platform will include boat speed, heading, and weather conditions, in real-time and in the future.

With the race record at 74 days, that should keep me busy at least through January.

Event information – Entry list – Facebook

The Vendée Globe, raced in the 60-foot IMOCA, is the elite race round the world, solo, non-stop, and without assistance. On November 10, 40 skippers will start the 2024-25 edition which begins and ends in Les Sables d’Olonne, France. Armel Le Cléac’h, winning in 2017, holds the record for the 24300 nm course of 74 days 03 hours 35 minutes 46 seconds. Only one sailor has won it twice: Michel Desjoyeaux in 2001 and 2009. This is tenth running of the race.