GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Poole sailor Pip Hare’s Vendée Globe dream was in need of a lifeline, when an email arrived out of the blue from Silicon Valley, hears Rob Peake

- Rob Peake

In the end it was a one-line email that changed everything.

“It said something like: ‘We’re interested in sponsoring if there are still opportunities available’,” recalls Pip Hare. It came from Medallia, a Silicon Valley software giant headed by a down-to-earth Scotsman who loves sailing.

For Poole-based sailor Hare, it was the biggest and most elusive part of the puzzle she had been piecing together for the past decade. A title sponsor meant the realisation of a long-held dream, to pit herself against the best offshore sailors in the toughest race on earth, the Vendée Globe.

Specifically, it would give Hare the necessary funds to get to the start line off Les Sables d’Olonne on 8 November – and from there sail the small matter of 28,000 miles around the world on her own.

The elite group of men and women who do the race contribute to an oft-quoted but still remarkable statistic – fewer than 100 people have sailed solo around the world. It’s an accomplishment that remains rarer than going into space and one that is probably a lot more uncomfortable.

For Hare, Medallia’s support came not a moment too soon. With just five months to go before the Vendée Globe start and funds running dry, Hare was being forced to consider the unthinkable – that the ambition she had nurtured since her teens, to sail the famous race, might be thwarted.

Out of the blue

When the Pip of Charles Dickens’ imagination gets his ‘Great Expectations moment’ – informed in brusque terms by the lawyer Mr Jaggers that he is the recipient of an unexpected fortune – he is sitting in candlelight and working as an apprentice.