Justine Mettraux: going the distance

What she’s up to now

She completed her first Vendée Globe on a boat designed for someone else: a 2018-generation VPLP design developed for Jérémie Beyou (Charal). For 2028, the TeamWork - Team Snef skipper is starting from a blank page.

At the CDK yard in Lorient, the hull of her new IMOCA, a 60-foot monohull, has been taking shape since March 2026. Designed by Guillaume Verdier, with no sister ship, it is the first IMOCA ever built for her. “Building a boat means making a huge number of choices, which also means giving things up,” she tells us matter-of-factly.

She has been working through those choices every week with Guillaume Verdier and his team since spring 2025. One priority guides them: sailing more smoothly through big seas downwind, a weakness of the previous generation of boats, hers included. While other recent IMOCAs are also designed for crewed racing, hers is built for solo sailing and the Southern Ocean.

Under the technical direction of Simone Gaeta, design work is continuing alongside construction. The first pair of foils and the rudders are still on the drawing board, but tooling and early work have started at C3Tech in La Rochelle, which is building the appendages. About 10 people are working on the project at Guillaume Verdier’s office, about 20 at CDK and about 15 on her own team. “It’s all those people who put an enormous amount of energy into making a project happen,” she adds.

In summer 2026, she got a firsthand look at how a team gets up to speed with a brand-new boat. She joined the crew of Malizia 4, Boris Herrmann’s IMOCA launched just weeks earlier, for The Ocean Race Atlantic. Despite a foil damaged in a collision, the crew finished fourth.

She will rejoin Team Malizia in winter 2026-2027 for three legs of The Ocean Race, the fully crewed round-the-world race with stopovers. She will sail Auckland (New Zealand) to Itajaí (Brazil) in March 2027, Itajaí to St. Pete-Clearwater (Florida, USA) in April, then St. Pete-Clearwater to Cascais (Portugal) in May. She will be back just days before her own boat is launched, scheduled for early June 2027.

From then on, time will be tight. Four transatlantic races will follow: the Transat Café L’Or, the Retour à la Base in December, then The Transat CIC and the New York Vendée in May 2028. The Défi Azimut comes in September, and Justine Mettraux will line up for the start of the Vendée Globe on November 12, 2028.

The story that defines her: a record and a regret

November 10, 2024: Justine Mettraux sets off from Les Sables d’Olonne on her first Vendée Globe. She’s in the top 10 from the first night and even climbs to third for a while. In the Southern Ocean, the rookie keeps pace despite losing her J0, a 180-square-meter headsail. Off Tasmania, she just manages to latch onto the weather system sweeping the leading group away. On December 28, after 48 days at sea, she rounds Cape Horn. All that remains is the long climb back up the Atlantic to Les Sables d’Olonne, and that’s where things get complicated. Tricky strategy, very strong winds, weeks of fatigue from sailing alone: Justine hangs on.

She crosses the finish line in eighth place after 76 days, 1 hour and 36 minutes at sea. Then comes the relief: on a sunny Saturday, she sails up the channel, smiling, before reuniting with her team and the crowd. The first woman and the first international skipper of the race, she sets a new women’s record for the race.

Yet what stays with her most from that round-the-world race is the climb back up the Atlantic. “I would have liked to handle those difficulties better mentally,” she says, with a hint of regret. It’s a clear-eyed assessment, and one that looks ahead: “It gives me pointers on how to prepare better for next time,” the Swiss sailor adds. Next time is 2028.

Her defining trait: consistency

Whether sailing solo or double-handed, she has posted remarkably steady IMOCA results: seventh in the 2022 Route du Rhum, sixth in the 2023 Transat Jacques Vabre, fifth in the 2025 Transat Café L’Or. She readily shares the secret behind that consistency: “With the experience I have now, I know myself well,” she says without hesitation. On the Vendée Globe, she believes you have to “be fast on average” while still looking after the boat.

Winning in 2028? “Yes, of course,” she answers right away. But don’t expect any grand promises: the goal is to be “fully ready on start day.” For Justine Mettraux, consistency is by design.

Her trademark: a lucky egg

Discipline, sure. But a little luck never hurts. Her clothes bag always holds a stowaway: a small rubber egg, a gift from her brother-in-law, which has followed her to sea since around 2015. It’s a nod to Cool Runnings (1993), the comedy inspired by Jamaica’s bobsled team at the 1988 Calgary Olympics. In the film, Sanka kisses his lucky egg before every run, a gag that became a running joke in the Mettraux family.

For the Vendée Globe, she packed a second one “to stack the odds in [her] favor.” An eighth-place finish and a women’s record later, it’s hard to argue it doesn’t work.

What shaped her: an outdoor upbringing

Five kids, five sailors. In the Mettraux family, you might think competition runs in the genes. Yet Justine’s parents are “not competitive at all,” she explains.

What they passed down was a way of life: spending time outdoors, on Lake Geneva aboard the family boat and in the surrounding mountains. “That’s mostly what I’ve held on to,” the skipper says. She caught the offshore racing bug at the Centre d’Entraînement à la Régate in Geneva.

In 2013, she finished second in the Mini Transat, her first major ocean race, racing for TeamWork. A partner since 2012, TeamWork is still by her side.

Her talent: switching boats

Two crewed round-the-world wins, plus one solo lap of the planet, nonstop and unassisted. Justine Mettraux won the 2017-2018 Volvo Ocean Race with Dongfeng Race Team, then The Ocean Race 2023 with 11th Hour Racing Team.

She keeps that dual culture alive on every kind of boat. In summer 2026, the Ultim Banque Populaire XI introduced her to “another way of flying,” before a detour into classic yachting at the Porquerolle’s Classic.

As she heads into her second campaign, what drives her comes down to one word: learning. “With offshore racing and everything that’s specific to it, you’re never done learning.” The open ocean remains her best teacher. We’ll find out when the next Vendée Globe fleet comes home in early 2029.