Every Sunday, we invite you to relive this 9th edition of the Vendée Globe through a webdoc, which offers the main news and video and audio documents of the period.

Every Sunday, we invite you to relive this 9th edition of the Vendée Globe through a webdoc, which offers the main news and video and audio documents of the period.

For the first time since the finish of the Vendée Globe, five IMOCAs will return to the race course as five teams line up to compete in "The Ocean Race Europe", a new, crewed race with stopovers on a course linking Lorient in France and Genoa in Italy. It is a format which has been tried before in the Mediterranean and off the Atlantic coast but for sure it is a new challenge for the current generation of boats and sailors and a very welcome opportunity after the longest non stop solo challenge round the world. The race starts this Saturday, May 29^th.

Thirty one of the 33 skippers who competed in the 9th Vendée Globe mustered in Les Sables-d'Olonne today for the official prizegiving and closing ceremony which saw Yannick Bestaven (Maître-CoQ) receive top award as the overall winner. There were two further key announcements, the 10th edition will leave from Les Sables d’Olonne on November 10, 2024 and the sailors should finally have a chance to meet with race fans later this year, at a popular festival to be organised on Saturday September 25, 2021!

Germany’s Boris Herrmann announced last week that he is well down the road with the commissioning of a new VPLP IMOCA design on which he will compete in the crewed race round the world The Ocean Race before taking on the Vendée Globe for a second time in 2024, looking to improve on his fifth place on the recently finished ninth edition. Herrmann’s race was exemplary and he was absolutely in the match to win, or at least finish on the podium, during the final 24 hours of the race. Desperately unlucky to hit a fishing boat in the final hours, Herrmann did not let the accident mar his enjoyment of the finish, nor the satisfaction of a job well done. As the first German sailor ever to compete on the Vendée Globe his race was followed with passion. He is now something of a major celebrity in his native country, recognised in the street. And the huge profile of his race has helped in his quest to re-sign his partners and find additional support. Here’s Boris……..