The Most Extreme, Dangerous, High Tech Sport on the Planet, The Vendée Globe

Hey everybody, welcome back for another FUTRtech video update. We took a bit of a break over the last couple of weeks because, let’s face it, there was a whole lot of other stuff going on that people were watching.

I know so many sports lovers out there have been struggling through the pandemic with little to no entertainment. Now, being a bit of a geek, I have always liked sports that combine precision, endurance, mental fortitude, and engineering. That is why my personal sport is olympic style archery. Where even fat old men can compete in an olympic sport. I can definitely do fat and old.

But I want to give you a sporting event that may be the most extreme sporting event on the planet. It has strategy,  intense physical and psychological challenges, endurance and cutting edge engineering and technology in extreme, life threatening environments. I am talking about the Vendée Globe. This race is like if Mount Everest was 24,000 miles high and there was a marathon to climb it.

For those of you who are not big fans of sailing, let me tell you about this race. It is a solo sail around the world through the most extreme waters on the planet. The race starts in Les Sables-d'Olonne in Vendee. It then heads down the Atlantic Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope; then clockwise around Antarctica, then up around Cape Horn and then back to Les Sables d’Olonne. They sail through the dreaded South Seas, the roaring 40 where wave can circle the globe without being impeded by land. The race typically takes anywhere from 74 to 150 days to finish.

When they they are in the South Seas, they are on their own. Most parts of the course are so remote, the only hope of rescue comes from the other sailors. It is too far for helicopter or plane rescue. The seas are a mix of freezing temperatures and constant hurricane conditions, with waves of 60 feet. And these are 60 foot boats. Often times, the majority of the sailors can not finish the course, and there are fatalities. In 1992 two sailors, Nigel Burgess and Mike Plant were lost at sea. In 1996 Gerry Roufs was lost at sea.

There is an absolutely incredible book called “Godforsaken Sea” by Derek Lundy that chronicles the absolutely brutal 1996 race in which only 6 of the 16 racers managed to finish. One of the sailors badly injured his arm in a capsize in the South Seas and had to perform surgery on himself. These people are hardcore.

This year has an incredibly exciting lineup. It features 6 women, some new sailors and veteran Vendee Globe racers. The ones I am really excited to watch are French sailor Jean Le Cam, a 61 year old who is racing in his fifth Vendee Globe and is the most experienced sailor in the fleet. And there is English sailor, Sam Davies, who is sailing in her third Vendee Globe against her partner Romain Attanasio. My personal favorite is British sailor Alex Thompson in the incredible Hugo Boss boat. Really all of the sailors are the best of the best, or the craziest of the crazy, I’m not entirely sure.

When we talk about engineering, these boats are an incredible array of cutting edge engineering. There are basically three generations of boats in this race. There are the older boats that are tried and tested in this race, and have shown they are capable of taking the beating, but there is another generation of boats now that use hydrofoils to lift the boats out of the water after about 12 knots. They fly more than they sail. They tend to be much faster, but the question is can they stand up to the punishment of the race which often sees ships dismasted or broken in half. And then there is the Hugo Boss boat. The Hugo Boss boat has all of the controls and sheets inside a sealed cockpit at the base of the mast. This design protects Alex Thompson from the brutal elements, but it is a completely new and unproven hydrofoil with advanced autopilot functionality. If the boat fares well, I would have to imagine, they will be the future of the sport.

The fleet left on Sunday morning and we will have at least another 70 to 80 days of sailing to watch, and you can even play along with the Virtual Regatta sailing app where you can compete with the racers and more than 500,000 virtual sailors from around the world.

So if you want an exciting sport with incredibly cool technology, this is the one to watch. I will put all the links in the description. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Thanks for watching, if you liked what you saw, please click like. Hit that subscribe button, that help a ton, and if you want to get notifications when I post new content, hit that bell icon and I will see you in the next video.

Vendée Globe Official site: https://www.vendeeglobe.org/

Godforsaken Sea: Racing the World's Most Dangerous Waters by Derek Lundy: https://amzn.to/2IhvDp7

Virtual Regatta: https://www.virtualregatta.com/