Steve White has his own mountain to climb if he is to reach the start of the 2008-9 Vendee Globe and time is running out if he is to keep his ten year dream alive. Everything is on standby for White to make his final preparations to his Finot designed Open 60 Spirit of Weymouth, which finished ninth in the 2000-1 race as Josh Hall´s Gartmore, but the Dorchester, England based solo skipper desperately needs a white knight sponsor to materialise very, very soon.
It is hard to consider worse economic times to be searching for just such an individual or company to back White´s dream, but when the seven British Vendee Globe soloists all met in the Southampton recently, White´s optimism remains undimmed. His ´I will be there´ mantra, time and again underlined his drive to make it to the Les Sables d´Olonne start line.
"The planning is all in place, we have sailmakers on standby, rigging ready to be made, the hull-bottom job can be done in the time left, but until we find a sponsor to inject the money into the campaign then nothing more can physically happen." Says White, "We are still very hopeful. I have always been convinced that someone will come along at the last minute, and it will be rushed, but do-able," says the 36 year old, who is, like Mike Golding, an alumni of the Chay Blyth Challenge Business ´school´ of ocean racing.
"It really is getting very last minute now so somebody really needs to talk to us very soon. We are talking to some people but they are not a very large company and so, to them, it is a large amount of money we need and in the current financial situation they are getting a little concerned. We have some other companies but they are at very early stages."
"If we got the money, we´d like to do the hull bottom, extend the coach roof if we had time, re-rigging and some new sails."
White´s vivid Vendee Globe dream started in February ten years ago when he rounded the Fastnet Rock on one of Chay Blyth´s Challenge 67 foot yachts:
"It was the first time I had sailed offshore. The first time I had sailed in bad weather. The first time with a professional skipper and mate and I was completely taken by the whole thing. At that point I had only done 1000 miles of sailing, ever, and in the previous five days I had done 500 miles. I decided I wanted to sail for a living and I wanted to do the Vendee Globe," recalls White who finished ninth this year in the Artemis Transat Race.
"I drove back home, chucked in my job restoring classic cars and went to work at a boatyard in Weymouth. And that was that."
"Since then I worked for Pete Goss, spent four years with the Challenge Business as skipper, which is a great grounding in seamanship, 100,000 miles year round in these big solid boats, and a fantastic way of starting your career. In 2005 I did the OSTAR and was first monohull in that, and with that result got some help to buy the Open 60 and since then have done the Fastnet and the Artemis Transat."
"So now we are all qualified for the Vendee Globe, ready to go and just need the financial help to go the final step."
" I don´t tend to be person who gets frustrated, but there are waves of frustration when you just can´t get across what the value of being involved in a campaign. When you look at the other campaigns they don´t have anything that we don´t have and we can offer just as much."
" We are one of the few campaigns to be largely self funded. This is a family business. We have re-mortgaged the house four times. My eldest son works with us to prepare the boat. So it is unusual, we have got where we are with family backing and a few dedicated people who have put an awful lot into it, in terms of time and money."
"We have been working on this for the last two years non stop and have approached more than 1000 companies," interjects White Ocean Racing´s business manager Peter Watson, "It is not like we have been waiting for something to drop out of the sky. We have done a very professional marketing job on this, but sadly there is not yet the understanding in the UK of what this Vendee Globe race is about and what it can do.
The USP (Unique Selling Proposition), if you like, of this project is that we have done a lot with a little."
White´s journey is a remarkable one so far. His desire to the do the Vendee Globe race dates back to French legends of this iconic race, but his first steps were modest and accidental.
He took to sailing because his friend bought a boat, a 17 foot plywood Lysander trailer sailer in 1996 and he was the only mate with a car which had a tow bar to tow it. Steve was hooked and bought the first boat he saw for a sale, a 24 foot Ballerina, then a Trapper T28, then doing his Fastnet with the Challenge Business.
"Not long after I started sailing I became aware of the Vendee Globe, in particular Christophe Auguin in his third round the world race, he was obviously very well prepared and very experienced but he got round without any fuss, something like two weeks ahead of the next boat, and I thought: "Well if you want to do something like that, that´s the way to do it."
"The planning is all in place, we have sailmakers on standby, rigging ready to be made, the hull-bottom job can be done in the time left, but until we find a sponsor to inject the money into the campaign then nothing more can physically happen." Says White, "We are still very hopeful. I have always been convinced that someone will come along at the last minute, and it will be rushed, but do-able," says the 36 year old, who is, like Mike Golding, an alumni of the Chay Blyth Challenge Business ´school´ of ocean racing.
"It really is getting very last minute now so somebody really needs to talk to us very soon. We are talking to some people but they are not a very large company and so, to them, it is a large amount of money we need and in the current financial situation they are getting a little concerned. We have some other companies but they are at very early stages."
"If we got the money, we´d like to do the hull bottom, extend the coach roof if we had time, re-rigging and some new sails."
White´s vivid Vendee Globe dream started in February ten years ago when he rounded the Fastnet Rock on one of Chay Blyth´s Challenge 67 foot yachts:
"It was the first time I had sailed offshore. The first time I had sailed in bad weather. The first time with a professional skipper and mate and I was completely taken by the whole thing. At that point I had only done 1000 miles of sailing, ever, and in the previous five days I had done 500 miles. I decided I wanted to sail for a living and I wanted to do the Vendee Globe," recalls White who finished ninth this year in the Artemis Transat Race.
"I drove back home, chucked in my job restoring classic cars and went to work at a boatyard in Weymouth. And that was that."
"Since then I worked for Pete Goss, spent four years with the Challenge Business as skipper, which is a great grounding in seamanship, 100,000 miles year round in these big solid boats, and a fantastic way of starting your career. In 2005 I did the OSTAR and was first monohull in that, and with that result got some help to buy the Open 60 and since then have done the Fastnet and the Artemis Transat."
"So now we are all qualified for the Vendee Globe, ready to go and just need the financial help to go the final step."
" I don´t tend to be person who gets frustrated, but there are waves of frustration when you just can´t get across what the value of being involved in a campaign. When you look at the other campaigns they don´t have anything that we don´t have and we can offer just as much."
" We are one of the few campaigns to be largely self funded. This is a family business. We have re-mortgaged the house four times. My eldest son works with us to prepare the boat. So it is unusual, we have got where we are with family backing and a few dedicated people who have put an awful lot into it, in terms of time and money."
"We have been working on this for the last two years non stop and have approached more than 1000 companies," interjects White Ocean Racing´s business manager Peter Watson, "It is not like we have been waiting for something to drop out of the sky. We have done a very professional marketing job on this, but sadly there is not yet the understanding in the UK of what this Vendee Globe race is about and what it can do.
The USP (Unique Selling Proposition), if you like, of this project is that we have done a lot with a little."
White´s journey is a remarkable one so far. His desire to the do the Vendee Globe race dates back to French legends of this iconic race, but his first steps were modest and accidental.
He took to sailing because his friend bought a boat, a 17 foot plywood Lysander trailer sailer in 1996 and he was the only mate with a car which had a tow bar to tow it. Steve was hooked and bought the first boat he saw for a sale, a 24 foot Ballerina, then a Trapper T28, then doing his Fastnet with the Challenge Business.
"Not long after I started sailing I became aware of the Vendee Globe, in particular Christophe Auguin in his third round the world race, he was obviously very well prepared and very experienced but he got round without any fuss, something like two weeks ahead of the next boat, and I thought: "Well if you want to do something like that, that´s the way to do it."
