There is an old saying in sailing that yacht races are won on the shore before a boat or a skipper even sets sail and, when it comes to technical preparation, that is never more true than in the Vendée Globe.

The solo round-the-world classic, which starts from Les Sables d’Olonne in just 40 days time, is a test of racing and single-handed skills, but it is also the supreme test of a shore team and how well they have prepared a boat and its skipper for an unassisted passage around the world.

In the IMOCA Class the buzzword in this respect has always been “reliability” – a broad term that sums up just how durable your boat and all its components are – whether it be its structure, its rig, its standing and running rigging, its systems or its electronics. 

We spoke to two people who are working on this aspect in preparation for the 10th edition of the Vendée Globe, which starts on November 10th, to find out how they approach the toughest test for gear in world sailing. 

Simone Gaeta, is the 48-year-old Italian technical director with Justine Mettraux’s Teamwork-Team SNEF campaign and he is one of the most experienced boat captains and preparateurs in the Class. He first worked on the Vendée Globe back in 2004-’05 for Sébastien Josse on VMI and has since worked for Armel Le Cléac’h, and Kojiro Shiraishi.

 

Gaeta says the key to everything he does is to find simple solutions to every problem. “Perfection is when we have got rid of everything we don’t need,” he said. “The solution needs to be easy for the boat and easy for Justine, without penalising performance.”

The big technical issue for Gaeta and Mettraux was changing the foils on the former Charal 1 and they decided to get that job done in plenty of time to be absolutely certain that the transition had been executed perfectly. The focus since has been on testing the new wings and also the on-board electronics package on Teamwork-Team SNEF.

“The boat was launched in 2018 with first generation big foils,”explained Gaeta. “We changed them and managed to do that not this year but last year so as to be able to check them and to know the foils, and to have time before the Vendée Globe to know the boat in this new configuration. We spent a lot of time on that and also a lot of time on electronics, because single-handed racing demands a lot of electronics on board and there is a lot of work to do to be confident with what we have got.”

A big question is spares and how many to take. “The problem is choice. You cannot put a second boat on board and there are some things that are too difficult or complicated to repair, so it is not useful to have spares. So the problem is to understand what is useful for Justine to take with her and what’s not,”said Gaeta.

 

Gaeta’s fellow Italian, 31-year-old Vittoria Ripa Di Meana, is at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of experience, and is working on her first Vendée Globe as part of Sam Davies’s team on Initiatives-Coeur. Ripa Di Meana is responsible for the mast, rigging and part of the deck hardware.

Her approach is very similar to Gaeta. “The overall philosophy depends a lot on what your goal is in the Vendée Globe,” she said. “What we try to do is not complicate things that can be easy – so we try to keep it easy, keep it simple, keep it not too expensive and spend more time sailing than on land trying to improve things.”

The aim is that magic word reliability: “So the philosophy is, once it works, it works, and that has helped a lot over the last two-and-a-half years because we managed to try things and once they work we say OK, and then we try to focus on things that are still not working. So now we have managed to have a boat that is quite reliable – we can trust it. It means the skipper is confident in the boat so she can push it faster and faster.”

Ripa Di Meana says time is the key component in terms of how things wear out on board. “What breaks things in IMOCA is more to do with time than physical stress on a component – the amount of miles,” she says. “So we try to answer that question for as many things as possible on the boat. How long will they last? And now we are just thinking about spares.”

 

Again with spares, for everything from ropes to mechanical parts for the engine, for electronic components, repair materials for the sails and the hull, Ripa Di Meana says you have to make choices and then prioritise back-ups for the things that are most likely to cause problems. “I think everyone in their department keeps data on what breaks the most, so you know you are going to have spares for those – it’s not even a point of discussion,”she said. A good example is the foil downline, which is used to control the position of the foil. That is very likely to break through wear and tear, so spares for it are essential.

Part of Ripa Di Meana and Gaeta’s role is preparing their skipper in terms of practice on carrying out repairs, knowing where everything is on board and understanding what could go wrong and how to fix it. “Yeah we do that,”said Gaeta. “Justine managed to have time for that, to spend time with the team to know the boat better and to try to understand what she could do if something breaks.”

Ripa Di Meana says Davies has had less time than would be ideal because of her wider commitments with her campaign. “We try to have procedures for the things that scare us the most, even if it is maybe only for us on the shore team. But then we know that at least we have been through it and that, if it happens to her and she wakes up in the middle of the night, we know what to tell her.”

But Ripa Di Meana adds that Davies is one of the most experienced skippers in IMOCA who, like her, has a background in engineering, and has had so much practice looking after things during races on her new boat. “She has raced a lot in the last two years on this boat, so for sure she’s got practice in the field,” she said.  

 

The occupational hazard of working on the shore team in these campaigns is that once the race starts you are stuck on land and you just have to hope that all your work will stand up to the test of a Vendée Globe.

“For me the most stressful part of the job is during races,” admits Ripa Di Meana, “because if you don't have any messages from the boat, it’s maybe good news, but you don’t know what is happening, and when you do have a message, you think you don’t want it!”

Gaeta is the same. “I think I will be a little bit stressed,” he said. “I think I will check the weather all the time. For sure, for us, when there is a problem on board it is not a bad moment, but it is certainly an intense moment. We try to find solutions, we try to communicate with the skipper to find a way to repair whatever it is and think of the best way to move ahead, whether it’s night or day.”

 

Ripa Di Meana, meanwhile, is superstitious about talking up Davies’s chances in what will be her fourth Vendée Globe, during which she will be on call alongside other members of the shore team on a rota system from the start to the finish. 

“We hope she will make the podium,”she said. “For sure she is sailing better than ever – that is clear. The problem is it is a race when you have to be proud of what you did on the startline and then it’s a case of whatever happens…”

Ed Gorman