The talk on the pontoon was all about the weather. 25-30 knot southwesterly headwinds in the Bay of Biscay would be the first test for the 16 skippers in the 2022 Golden Globe Race after leaving the shelter of Les Sables d’Olonne. This would be followed days later by the remains of Atlantic cyclone Danielle. The choice was to either head westwards into the heavy weather and 4m waves to round Cape Finisterre or sail in milder but more uncertain winds along the French and Galician coastline. It was a decision the skippers would have to make without the benefit of weather routing. The rules of the Golden Globe Race means modern equipment such as chartplotters, GPS, mobile phones and fibres such as Kevlar and Dynemma, are banned; instead, they have to navigate using a sextant and paper charts and rely on HF Single Side Band (SSB) radio, HAM radio, weather fax and onboard barometers for weather information, or by contacting another ship. This first part of the race – leaving France for the run to the first designated photo drop outside Lanzarote, before heading down the Atlantic towards the second at Cape Town – is something of a proving ground, and will highlight any gaps in the sailors’ preparations. In the 2018 race, seven out of the 18 entrants had already retired by the Cape of Good Hope.
LAST-MINUTE CHALLENGES
Walking along the Vendée Globe pontoon, which had been temporarily taken over by the 2022 Golden Globe Race fleet of long-keeled, pre-1988 production cruising yachts, shone a spotlight on those
