Race Programme

The project is to be run over a period of 5 years, starting on the design and build of the boat. The first race in 2004, a single-handed transatlantic race, culminating in the 2008 Vendée Globe which is considered the worlds toughest endurance event. A single-handed non-stop circumnavigation of the globe. The project will include an extensive training and sea trials programme as well as a series of educational presentations based upon the events and experiences of the project to schools, community, charities and sponsors alike. This list of races is not complete, there will be additional races that are fully crewed as well. Such races as the Fastnet Race, Cowes Week, Cork Week Le Defit 'lantique.

• 2006 – La Route du Rhum
Dreamed up in the imagination of Michel Etevenon in 1978, La Route du Rhum is an ode to freedom. This first French transatlantic yacht race put paid to one or two preconceived ideas. A single-handed yacht race mixing professionals and amateurs, monos and multihulls without any restrictions on size or class specifications. The course? The Rhum is raced out of Saint-Malo, in metropolitan France bound for Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe, one of France’s overseas departments. A complex race from a weather point of view, requiring competitors to cross a part of the northern hemisphere swept with repeated depressions before being able to pick up the favourable warm trade winds blowing over the Caribbean arc. A cocktail of hot and cold which is difficult to negotiate but very exciting on paper, which sharpens your mind and makes for some breathtaking sport.

• 2006 – 5 Oceans previously Around Alone as training for the Vendée Globe. The 5-Oceans is the new name for round the world yachting's most prestigious Grand Prix series. The toughest challenge any professional sailor can set themselves; namely to sail round the world on their own, pushing their boat and themselves to the extreme. Competing in Open 60 & 50 class yachts, the Formula 1 racing machines of the seas, fewer people have achieved this goal than have climbed Mount Everest. Not surprisingly therefore, we refer to this race as one of Sailing's 'Ultimate Challenges'.

The 5-Oceans race will start in September 2006, and will comprise 5 legs each scored Grand Prix style, and each crossing a major ocean and ending with a stopover in Europe, South Africa, Australasia, Latin America & the USA. The race will visit the: The North Atlantic, The South Atlantic, The Indian, The Southern & the Pacific Oceans. With 5 trans-oceanic legs & a route which takes in the Globe‚s 5 major Oceans, the new name became an obvious choice. We anticipate over twenty entries primarily from France, UK, Switzerland, Italy, United States, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Canada.

The 5-Oceans has a unique format which sets it apart from any other round the world race & gives it a truly global appeal. Like the Vendee Globe race the 5-Oceans is single handed, but unlike the non-stop Vendee Globe, its Multi-leg structure gives more leverage opportunities for sponsors, more peaks of excitement & drama for media & race followers and a much more International make up of competing skippers.

'The 5-Oceans is the toughest and longest event for any individual in any sport. Race rules allow for sailors to make repairs to their yachts during the mandatory stopovers, meaning they push themselves and their yachts to the very limits of endurance and technology. Shore teams work 24/7 in the stopover „pitstops to repair & ready the boats for the next gruelling leg. Competitors take on the frustrating calms of the doldrums & the savage storms and mountainous seas of the Southern Ocean; and whilst at sea they carry out the tasks normally covered by a crew of 10+ other round the world races, namely: Skipper, Navigator, Electrician, Engineer, Tactician, Cook , Sail repair and Communications manager to the outside world. In all definitions of the word these competitors are truly exceptional individuals.'

'The 5-Oceans has intense competition, but also a deep camaraderie between the competing skippers born out of looking out for each other in the deep ocean wilderness, and sharing time & space together in the stopovers.'

• 2008 – Vendée Globe
The Vendée Globe was created to meet the needs of sailors who wish to push themselves to the limit. It is both a sporting, technical and human adventure and an international competition that unites single-handed yachtsmen from all over the world who wish to test themselves in a non-stop round the world race. This event will be the longest and most difficult ever devised under competition circumstances. The winner of the event will be the yachtsman who crosses the finish line first in Les Sables d’Olonne after having rounded three Capes without stopping and without any assistance.

• ROUTE :
Les Sables d’Olonne - Les Sables d’Olonne non-stop via the three Capes from West to East.
The compulsory passage points are :
• Les Sables d’Olonne
• The Canaries
• Antarctic to starboard
• Heard Island to starboard
• A marker at 50°S 90°E to starboard
• A marker at 57°S 180° W to starboard
• A marker at 57°S 120°W to starboard
• A marker at 27°S 67°W to starboard
• Cape Horn to port
• Les Sables d’Olonne