Hare’s no tortoise
Piip Hare sounded tired but happy as she chatted over a Whatsapp call in January. Despite the fact that she was awaiting a 40-knot front, roughly 1,000 miles east of Cape Horn, lying in 17th place in the Vendée Globe, the Poole-based sailor had every reason to be upbeat. Hare had just done something very few others have managed, or even attempted.
Having discovered a potentially race-ending crack in her port rudder stock, she had set about replacing the entire rudder at sea, her 60ft IMOCA being thrown around in a confused swell. As anyone who has replaced a rudder knows, this is a mammoth job in a boatyard. Hare had two excellent consultants, Joff Brown of Lighthouse Yacht Services in Portsmouth, who is her boat manager, and Paul Larsen, the record-breaking Australian sailor who joined Hare’s team two years ago. But while they could advise, Hare herself was lying just east of Point Nemo, the lat and long in the south Pacific where sailors are closer to the International Space Station
