27th January 2021: Vendée Globe, the final regatta

Living an experience like the finish of the Vendée Globe sailing race, which is particularly tight this year, is in many ways a jostling experience. 

First of all by the collective nature of the way the event is experienced on board: few screens without offering the “Vendée” window at a click’s distance. From the bar to the bridge, from the scientific PC to the laboratories, the debates on the tack to be pulled and the miles to run are legion.  

The second observation is that we are far away. Far from the looped images with drones and helicopters, far from the (often) looped sports commentaries, far from the hasty interviews that assail the solitude and the first desires of exhausted sailors. On our screens, the sailboats move forward in small jumps at the rhythm of the updates, then do not move forward any more, dropped by a stuttering network. Moreover, this rascal from Dalin took advantage of a rather long drop to cross the line! Then we learn of Herrmann’s late hit. But we also enjoy this slowness, this retreat from the stress of the immediate, the buzz of the event. The retreat of the privileged few.

And we are close too. Close because we are sailing in the cold and windy waters of the roaring forties, with a special thought for these long-distance sailors, who recently sailed in the same waters and on dinghies that must have seemed quite frail under the depressions of the great south…hat off to them.