On 6th November 2016, there will be nearly 30 skippers at the start of the legendary Vendée Globe. Aged between 23 and 66, the 29 sportsmen and women have an eclectic background. And the same goes for their superb 60-foot monohulls, IMOCA boats! While the oldest were designed between 1997 and 1999, the most recent ones are brand new and will leave the yard in 2015.
As such, not all the skippers will have the same chances of finishing in the lead on this single-handed course of almost 22,000 miles around the globe. The modern IMOCA boats will have a better chance than the old ones on this non-stop, unassisted route. In spite of everything, the Vendée Globe is a mechanical sport, like the automobile, and the main goal is to finish the race without breaking.
In this game, not everyone will have the same chances. The older generation IMOCA boats have several Vendée Globe races under their belt and have even achieved some incredible results. However, the new generation IMOCA boats have made progress and are performing better. For those who are sailing on older boats and cannot play the winning game, the goal for their skippers is to complete the loop, while still achieving the best performance compared to other boats of the same generation. So there will be a race within the race with the IMOCA boats from the 2008-2009 Vendée Globe generation, which will be the most represented with 14 monohulls at the start of this 2016 edition.
To win, the new generation IMOCA boats are faster, but will they be reliable enough? There are six boats designed by the architect duo VPLP-Verdier, who have been able to show their capabilities in a few races, such as The Transat, won by Armel le Cléac'h. Ever lighter, they are now equipped with foils. But they are also less reliable. In fact, this will be the first time that these "foilers" have been tested over such a long distance. The IMOCA boats of the previous generation (older) and equipped with "classic" daggerboards (except for Maître Coq who has foils), but above all more reliable, will therefore all have their chance to reach the podium.
