Vendée Globe

A beautiful sunny day with the Vendée Globe docks awash with visitors again, inspecting the assembled fleet and meeting the skippers when they can.

Above the constant background noise from the huge, omnipresent video-screens which overlook the basin, the soundtrack is still broken occasionally by the rasp of powertools. But mostly this period is about final preparations and checking rather than undertaking last minute, big jobs.
For the Boat Captains and the teams of preparateurs this is the culmination of a workplan which may have run to several years preparation and racing, so what are these final days, counting down like for the shore-team?
Graham ‘Gringo’ Tourrell is just 30 but is on his third shore-side Vendée Globe. He worked in 2000 and 2004 with Mike Golding, and currently is Boat Captain of Artemis for his long time friend Jonny Malbon.
Artemis has not had an easy birth, problems with their rig meant that the boat was late in getting a measurement certificate, and so the shore team have had to work exceptionally hard to get here with the boat in shape:

“ We are very much in the closing stages. The big jobs are done.” Reports Tourell, “ We had a fairly extensive re-fit after Jonny’s qualifier. We took the whole boat apart, keel out, rig out, hydraulics out, because it was such a tough qualifier for him, it was great because that meant that we did a full re-fit pretty much as you would do after a Transat race, 4000 miles, so the boat was pretty much totally stripped as you would normally do, all the winches, clutches, jamers, paint touch ups, running rigging, all the foils were painted and sanded back.”
“You basically want to arrive in Les Sables d’Olonne ready to race. When we left home at Ocean Village (in Southampton) we set off with all the fuel on the boat, all the spares bags, all the sails, the only thing that was not on the boat was Jonny’s food and clothing.”
He explains that leaving work, even small things, to be done en site here is not a good idea:
“ When you get here you can see that the pontoons are always jam packed, so actually getting any work done is pretty inefficient, it is pretty much about presence - being here - and tinkering. But as you can see the likes of Hugo Boss has had a ‘major’ so there is time to get some serious work done, if you have to. This is the really the pinnacle for the skipper, Jonny. He needs to be fully relaxed about the boat preparation and he seems fully relaxed. And it is for us, who have worked all year on the boat, to make sure he is happy.”
“ It has been a busy year, a good year. I would not say it has been stressful because we have such a good team, that the harder it gets the better this team pulls together and gets the job done. It has been a challenge and we are top, at the moment.”
“ We are not where we wanted to be in terms of sailing time with the boat. It is only pontoon and bar chat between the other British teams, but we are all aiming for the same things, keeping the skippers happy, and generally I would say that we are all pretty well prepared.”
“ This year will be a lot more competitive, and you look at how some of the skippers have bulked up it is interesting. Riou (Vincent, current VG champion) is a ‘man-mountain’, he has packed it on, Desjoyeaux looks the same, Bilou (Roland Jourdain) looks the same. Alex (Thomson) has clearly been beefing up, Dee has done a lot of gym work, and Mike is just a natural animal, he is naturally strong as an ox.”

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