Vendée Globe

Ten days before the start and the Vendée Globe race village really reaches that mood of the calm before the storm.

The fine details are being attended on most boats today and tomorrow, and then it will be an effective close down for the arrival of the media, sponsors and of course a deluge of tens of thousands of visitors.
Already over 650 media are pre-registered to arrive on site. And so skippers are expecting their boats to be in a concours d’elegance state for next week.
“We are pretty much there at the moment. I think we maybe have five things left to do on the jobs list and that will be it, all wrapped up tomorrow.” Explains Joff Brown, Project Manager of Dee Caffari’s AVIVA, “Because next week it is all sponsors and media so it is busy on the boat. Dee will be back and so it will be trying to help build confidence in her. Really we set ourselves the target of having the boat race ready before we got here and there are usually just a few little jobs that slip through.”
“These last ten days are just about making sure the boat is spick and span, because there will be sponsors coming out and Jonny will be needing to spend some quiet time on the boat, down below looking at the weather files and the start and routing, and so our job then is juts basically making him as relaxed as possible, and looking after the sponsors then, and so the last week should not really involve any jobs of any significance at all.”
Confirms Graham ‘Gringo’ Tourrell, Boat Captain of Jonny Malbon’s Artemis.
British skippers are starting to return en site. Alex Thomson arrives today after a short break at home in the UK, and the remainder return Friday and Saturday.
"We have prepared so well for the race that I am not too worried about the boat. I just hope that we have no major breakages that are out of my control. The part I´m least looking forward to is the start, as everyone will be there to see me and I don´t want to let them down by making a mistake. As for the race itself, my only objective at the moment is to finish." Sam Davies concludes.

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