MY VENDÉE GLOBE

PIP HARE FULFILLED A LIFELONG DREAM WHEN SHE FINISHED THE VENDÉE GLOBE, THE FIRST BRITISH SKIPPER IN THIS YEAR’S EVENT. HERE SHE TELLS THE STORY OF HER RACE

The Vendée Globe race was everything I ever dreamed it could be, and more. It challenged me every day, it made me scream with laughter, it brought me to my knees with physical fatigue and the emotional agony of disappointment. But there is not one single day I did not want to be exactly where I was.

It had been a hard battle to get to the line. I was sailing the second oldest boat in the fleet, was a rookie in the IMOCA class, had a small team behind me, and very little time to test the upgrades we made after Medallia came on board as my title sponsor. But I was determined to make the most of what I had, to value every minute of the race and get the best result with the boat I had.

At the start of the race I had really no idea where I would sit in the fleet. My previous IMOCA racing performances were in a tired boat with no funding and the sole objective of finishing races to secure my Vendée Globe qualification.

Among the non-foiling fleet there were two other boats launched in the year 2000 to benchmark myself against, and a number of 2007 boats to aspire to keep up with. It is incredible how my own expectations changed throughout the race as I learned, and loved, to push harder with every week that went by. If you’d told me at the start I’d finish four hours behind a foiling boat and be racing against them for weeks before the finish, I would have never believed it.