Great adventure? How? The great adventure is the Vendee Globe! How can an around the world race in duo with 7 stops be a great adventure? It is a small adventure if compared with the other one! Well, yes and no, for the ones that are going to race it, it will be the biggest adventure of their lives.
They are not comparable in what regards adventure because one is raced only by the best professional racing solo sailors while the other will be raced by good sailors (they have to have experience racing class 40 boats) but sailors that are at the beginning or have not yet reached the top of the racing solo professional career. Or by older, not professional sailors that are living a dream and for them all, this race will be as difficult as the Vendee Globe for a top professional. The Vendee is a race only accessible to a handful of the best solo racers in the world.
The truth is that only to be able to race competently solo an IMOCA, one has to be a hell of a racer, a professional one, and to be competitive on a nonstop racing circumnavigation on an IMOCA it is needed more than to be a competent professional IMOCA sailor, he has to be a very good one too.
While the Vendee Globe is the greatest sail challenge, but only open to the best, the Globe40 is to the Vendee Globe what the Mini-Transat is for the Route du Rhum. They are both famous races but they are raced by very different sailors. Not less competitive ones, but while the ones on the Mini-Transat are trying to start their professional career as racing solo sailors, the ones that race competitively the Route du Rhum are all racing solo professionals and the ones that race it on the top classes, top racing professionals.
There was already an attempt to make a similar circumnavigation race on Class40, an half failed attempt that died at the end of two editions, not because the race was not interesting, but because due to lack of public interest the number of racers was too small. On the Global Ocean race first edition (2008/099) only 4 boats finished, the same number that finished on the 2nd and last edition 2011/12, but from those 8 sailors two are today top solo sailors and will be making the next Vendee Globe, the German Boris Herrmann and the NZ/American Conrad Colman. Quite a ratio!
The biggest problem with this race is the needed budget that although it is not big for a circumnavigation race it is necessarily considerable and not at the reach of young sailors that are trying to start or continue their solo or duo professional sail career unless they can raise the budget through sponsoring and that's where you can help because sponsors are only interested if the race raises a big public interest and therefore will bring them good publicity and revenues.
So if you think that this can be a great race, as I do, share this post, "like" their Facebook page and "like" their promo videos. This way you are helping not only in making this race big but also helping all those young racers that are trying to find sponsors for this race and they are many, more than 60 interested, even if there is only place for 25.
https://www.class40.com/modules/kameleon/upload/globe40listeskippers.pdf
More than half of the ones that have already confirmed the entry, around 12, are not young racers trying to become professionals but older guys (more than 50) that have the money to do it, living a dream, and this is also a race for them. But if we want this to become a very competitive and top race we should help the younger racers to get their sponsors and enter this challenge. That is what I am doing with this post. Do your part and next year we will have a new great race!
https://www.facebook.com/Globe40-2291381837769014/
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