2016 Vendée Globe: Where are the women?

Ellen, Samantha, Dee, Anne, Isabelle, Catherine, Karen…the women who have taken part in the Vendée Globe have always thrilled the public and been the focus of our admiration. For the 2016 Vendée Globe, we are still lacking that feminine touch. We can bet however that this gap will still be filled, remembering what happened in the past...  Lining up at the start of the Everest of the Seas in 1996, Isabelle Autissier and Catherine Chabaud opened the Vendée Globe up to women. The former was forced to stop in Cape Town to repair her rudder, after being up there with the frontrunners. Isabelle left her mark on the history of the third Vendée Globe by spending several days unsuccessfully looking for her friend, Gerry Roufs, who was lost in the Southern Ocean. Out of the race, she sailed her PRB monohull back to Les Sables-d’Olonne, while Catherine Chabaud on Whirlpool, completed the race in sixth place out of the fifteen competitors that had lined up at the start. The Vendée Globe was no longer the preserve of men.

When Ellen MacArthur, the 24-year old British sailor lined up in 2000 on  Kingfisher, a boat specially built for her, the general public wondered how she would manage: so young, so fragile… at the helm of such a big boat. But what is there left to say except she finished in second place behind Michel Desjoyeaux (PRB), apart from the fact that the latter was rather jealous about the welcome given to the young woman by the crowds in Les Sables-d’Olonne? In that race, Catherine Chabaud lost her mast and had to head back to Vendée outside of the rankings. But in that fourth race with 24 competitors, the podium showed that women definitely had their place.
On Roxy in 2004, Anne Liardet proved to the general public that you can be a sailor and mother of three children. Anne came in eleventh out of twenty ahead of another French sailor, Karen Leibovici, who finished thirteenth.
In 2008, it was time for the Brits, Samantha Davies and Dee Caffari to dominate the airwaves with pictures expressing their sheer pleasure as they sailed around the world in style. The arrival back in Les Sables always lives up to expectations even when the sailors don’t always manage to complete the race, as was the case for Samantha, whose Savéol was dismasted off Portugal in 2012. So far, the ladies have always managed to bring their boats home with the support of the general public, which remains just as enthusiastic.
Today, Samantha Davies, Dee Caffari, Isabelle Joschke and Jeanne Grégoire, to give just a few names are dreaming of setting up a Vendée Globe project. If no women made it to the start in 2016, it would be a step back in time to twenty years ago in the Vendée Globe. That can’t happen.

(www.vendeeglobe.org)