Vendée Globe

The biggest crowd on the dock this early morning is around the all-orange PRB where the Vendée Globe champion Vincent Riou is quietly working below.

PRB are calling themselves the ‘tenant of the title’. Based about 15 miles from Les Sables d’Olonne the building materials company turnover is €125m, they employ 250 people, and are effectively looking for Riou to give them a Vendée Globe hat-trick, since they also backed Michel Desjoyeaux when he won in 2000-2001.
Outwardly Riou remains serene and focussed. His planning and preparation with the Farr design has not been perfect, being forced to withdraw from the Barcelona World Race and from The Transat, respectively with rig and keel damage. Rather than using the races to build from, he has taken time to refit, repair and replace. But both contests confirmed that Riou and PRB are quick and smart.
He appears untroubled by the crowds on the dock, and – ever the Preparateur – he is down below completing some splicing work:
“ Preparation of PRB as we stand today are OK.” He confirms, “ We sailed yesterday afternoon and found some little jobs to finish and so we are doing them now.”
While the latest generation of IMOCA Open 60’s are acknowledged to be more complex, he considers they are now on top of any reliability issues:
“ I don’t think that the reliability of these boats is any worse than before with the older boats. When you start to sail with boats like the new PRB it may look like that, but two years later for me there are no problems.”
“ The two problems I had with the boat, in the Barcelona World Race, a problem with the mast, a fabrication problem with a plastic film inside the mast, and in The Transat a problem with the keel when I hit a whale, are not problems of preparation or a problem with the performance, just a problem with the material. And for me that is in the past and I am working for the future.”
“ During the summer I changed the keel to a steel fabricated keel, before we had a solid keel, and so we changed the keel. In the winter we built strakes on the hull (spray rails on the front third of the hull, what the French are calling a ‘moustache’), and also modified the coachroof.”
While he did not manage to complete either race, both have been an important platform to develop the boat’s speed and efficency:
“ I learned a lot of things in the first part of the Barcelona World Race about the sail development. A lot of things about sails and about the balance of the boat to be better. For the Barcelona World Race, we did much more hand steering, and so now I have adapted the boat for sailing under autopilot. We have three pilots, like in the last edition when I sued just one, and I hope this time will be the same.”
While of course this Vendée Globe brings him directly up against Mich Desjoyeaux, who he worked with as Preparateur for the 2000-2001 race
I am still the same with Mich Desj, he is a friend and we compare boats. The thing is that there has been so little time. There is no time to do all the sailing I wanted to do. Last year we did quite a lot of work with other boats, but this year after The Transat we do not have time.
Last year I sailed a lot with Delta Dore, and with BT, but we have only had one time. I have not been to Port La Fôret to train last month because I have been here in Les Sables d’Olonne doing PR work.
There is no pressure here. It is all pleasure. I enjoy it here. I am busy but at the moment I am just very keen to start. I work in the morning and then go home in the afternoon to see the family. And then once the race starts, there is no time to worry, no time to think about anything.
 

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