The Vendeé Globe is drawing to a close after the first three sailors reached Les Sables d’Olonne. It took the winner, Vinent Riou on PRB, 87 days 10 hours 47 minutes and 55 seconds to finish the 23680 miles around the world, solo, at an average theoretical speed along the course of 11.28 knots (22 km/hr). And Karen Leibovic, on Benefic, had just rounded Cape Hoorn, and is working her way up the South Atlantic.

I had been following the adventures of one particular skipper, Nick Moloney, and Australian, who was ranked 7th (out of the remaining 14), when he had to drop out near Rio de Janeiro because the keel of his boat broke off.

Another interesting saling race is Ellen MacArthur’s around-the-world record attempt.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 5th, 2005 at 9:33 am and is filed under Adventures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.