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Routing in question: assistance or not?
The history of routing is intimately linked with that of the Vendée Globe. The question of routing has always been a controversial subject: between safety and freedom, a stormy debate has seen the rules of this race evolve, with its mantra of "non-stop and unassisted".
Between costly routing adopted by some teams, the refusal of some (at one time) to succumb to it and the introduction of remote routing, the 2024 edition of the Vendée Globe is seeing the emergence of intelligent compromises thanks to the development of software combining safety and respect for racers' choice of route.
Two new features
In 4 years, the Adrena navigation and routing software has innovated, with the arrival this year of 2 new functions tested in South Atlantic weather conditions. This development was carried out in close collaboration with skippers.
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The software was inspired by a famous fable by La Fontaine. A new function will optimize the boat's route by simply slowing it down.
It's better to "lose" 30 minutes here while waiting for the right weather system, and to have spared the skipper and the boat than to have pushed your machine and risk breakage.
The emphasis is on tactics, common sense and safety.
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The second new feature is the wave period. It is a key safety factor, especially for racing in southern latitudes.
Taking the wave period into account allows you to adapt your sail and speed to the water, and thus anticipate the risk of getting swamped. Here again, safety and the ability to analyze the water are paramount.
These two new functions give sailors the ability to read the race course and analyze the weather, making tactical choices and risk/safety trade-offs all the more valuable to sailors who have to take into account the length of the race.
These new functions are not used on IRC races, Transquadra or the Cap Martinique, races which do not really justify their use.
However, they are already eagerly awaited on board IMOCA, Class40 and Ultim boats, which until now have only used them for reliability testing. Both features are now included in the Adrena Pro software.
3 exclusive options soon available to all.
3 options have been developed alongside these features and will be available in the Adrena pro version from early 2025:
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streamline wind display for better reading of divergence and convergence zones (better than barbules)
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polar azimuth projection (north or south), placing Antarctica at the center of the map, the continent around which skippers will "turn" (easier to read than with Mercator).
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Sending the skippers' track "in 2 clicks", particularly in the event of the start line being too far away for the assistance boats. This track export system enables skippers to justify their route to the race committee, even in the case of prohibited zones and penalty repairs.
Skippers can no longer download analysis summaries.
As with remote routing, it's up to the skipper, once he has all the data in hand, to carry out his own analysis and choose his own route.
Safety at the heart of innovation
While the assistance aspect has taken a back seat, Adrena has focused on optimizing intelligent safety. This includes the development of alarms to detect any problems or anomalies in the event of a drop in speed, as well as drift calculations. The latter is particularly useful in the event of a man overboard, or for tracking a life raft. Kevin Escoffier's accident during the last Vendée Globe was a major inspiration for the latest options, which alert the race committee if necessary. An automatic drift calculation saves a great deal of time in the event of a rescue.
Finally, skippers can also report any sightings of cetaceans and relay this information to the other racers via the race committee, in the interests of safety. This valuable data will also be used by scientists.
Today, a declaration of non-assistance, which commits the skipper, his family and his team, will be signed by each racer before the start of the race. This is to avoid the problems that arose in the last Vendée Globe.
In this way, routing will finally strike the right balance between technicality, safety and the integrity of skippers' tactical choices.
