Global Solo Challenge’s rising stars

Published on December 12th, 2023

Every week at the Global Solo Challenge is a whirlwind of fast sailing, technical problems to overcome, frustration, isolation as well as achievements. A week of challenges for each of the 15 skippers still in the event.

The starting roster had a total of 20 entries of the nearly 60 that had initially registered for the event.  The latest to drop out of the entries list of the Global Solo Challenge are American skipper Curt Morlock on the ex-IMOCA 6 Lazy K, who was due to start on December 9, and the Turkish sailor Volkan Kaan Yemlihaoğlu with his Open 70 Black Betty, who was due to start January 6.

Both fought teeth and nails to make the start but the financial demands of what would have been the two fastest boats in the fleet were felt hard by the two entrants until both had to come to terms with the impossibility to close the gap in funding needed to prepare their boats safely for this demanding event.

Of the 16 boats that started in the Global Solo Challenge, two have formally retired. Two have stopped for repairs in Cape Town but managed to restart: Edouard de Keyser on Solarwind and Ari Känsäkoski on ZEROchallenge. However, after assessing his situation in Hobart, Dafydd Hughes on the S&S 34 Bendigedig, could not overcome his autopilot problems.

This leaves the Global Solo Challenge with 14 sailors at sea: 11 in the Indian Ocean, 2 in the Southern Atlantic and only 1, Kevin Le Poidevin, still in the northern hemisphere. Le Poidevin started a month late and has been far from lucky with the weather encountered so far resulting in slower than expected progress towards the south.

The format of the GSC allows for technical stops (unlike the VG), but, considering this event is not reserved to top elite sailors and their huge budgets, this does not diminish the achievements or efforts put in by the skippers, especially as they all sail slower and smaller boats than the elite pros.

Philippe Delamare on Mowgli has now taken the overall lead on water and in estimated finish time rankings with a faultless navigation to date. He has not reported any significant problems and has kept an amazingly regular pace, slowing down and sailing prudently in the worst part of each depression but never losing focus on finding an efficient route forward.

His strength is in the amazing regularity of his progress worthy of an ultra-marathon runner who can find the pace and balance between speed and long term resistance. Unfortunately,  he did lose use of his Starlink antenna after a knockdown in the South Atlantic that caused the antenna to be submerged under water and stop working, so he is not providing as much information as from other more vocal skippers. Delamare was anyway quite reserved to start with, or rather, he is out there enjoying his own circumnavigation and loves what he’s doing, which truly comes through in his incredible seamanship.

Many of his competitors in the event have confided their admiration for the regular and relentless pace of the French captain, especially after starting sailing in the roaring forties and encountering their first serious problems with equipment failure in the face of the harsh sailing conditions, which only make Delamare’s performance so far even more remarkable.

This past week has been one of many challenges for the outstanding Cole Brauer whose performance in the Global Solo Challenge has been remarkable on the water as well as from a mediatic point of view, grabbing the attention of more than 100,000 followers on her Instagram channel.

After last week’s broach and knock down caused by a breaking wave, Cole has had to deal with the constant reminder of that episode with pain at her ribs, causing her difficulty in moving around freely or even simply jumping out of her “bed” when action is required.

Adding to the misery, the young American skipper has had to deal with a faulty rudder reference unit, the same piece of equipment that caused Hughes to pull into Hobart.

Luckily, she has a spare sensor but there now is an inherent concern of what to do should this sensor fail too. Hopefully it will remain as just a concern. A wave of support has reached the talented revelation of this event whose determination and performance has been nothing short of inspiring.

First Light, Cole Brauer’s Class40, has once again been the fastest boat in the entire fleet over the past seven days sailing more miles than Andrea Mura’s canting keel Open 50. In fairness, it should be said that Mura is sailing a very remarkable course too and at excellent speed to, but is currently close reaching in southeasterly trades in the Atlantic, which is certainly not as fast a point of sail as going downwind.

Still, Brauer holds the overall record for the fastest week of sailing to date in the event with 1777 nautical miles at an average of 10.5 knots, which is more than 20% more miles than those sailed by Delamare on Mowgli this past week. The French sailor covered 1438 miles at an average of 8.5 knots.

It wasn’t long ago that the thought was how Brauer could not possibly close the gap on Delamare as that would have required her sailing two knots faster than him. Well, it’s happening!

The format of the GSC is a novelty for such a long distance event and therefore the public may find it more difficult to fully grasp who’s sailing well, who’s gaining and who’s dropping behind. On the homepage of the website, the estimated time of arrival is updated every four hours and the estimated time gap to the leader is provided in sailing days.

The baseline assumption is that, purely theoretically speaking, all boats would finish together on the same date of March 15, 2024. The estimated finish time calculated on the ranking is a simple extrapolation of the distance to finish if it were sailed at the same average speed held by each boat to that point.

What the calculation does not do, and it would be very difficult to model, is take into account that certain sections of the event are faster than others, with the south often providing the fastest sailing days in the entire event.

The reason modeling the expected speed in various sections of the circumnavigation may be counter productive is that, regardless of seasonal averages, the wheel of fortune spins for every skipper and they may find unusually fast or slow conditions in each section.

The idea is that the element of “luck” will distribute evenly over the whole circumnavigation as you can’t simply call lucky someone performing well day after day for 25,000 miles, whereas one may be lucky over a short weekend race. Therefore, given the theoretical goal of finishing on the 15th of March (or earlier indeed), skippers must try to accumulate as much advantage on fast days and bleed as little mileage as possible in slow patches.

In the chase within the event, Brauer has shaved 339 nm off Delamare’s lead in the past week, nearly 50 miles a day, with Delamare having done very well in defending his lead so far, and still holding a huge 3950 nm advantage. At the current averages, Delamare would finish his Global Solo Challenge in approximately 70 days, or 10 weeks, meaning that Brauer would not manage to close the entire gap and would still be 550 miles from the finish when he crosses the finish line.

However, this is little more than a mathematical exercise and is inherently flawed in that it is a mere extrapolation. Notably, Delamare has “only” 4750 nm left in the fast south, whilst Brauer has a 8500 nm to Cape Horn making the gap between the two boats far from insurmountable as Delamare will inevitably slow down and sail fewer daily miles after Cape Horn.

Whilst sailing a similar mileage to Brauer in the past week, another American sailor has risen day after day sailing with growing presence and increasing his baseline daily runs. Ronnie Simpson on Shipyard Brewing has consolidated his third place in estimated finish rankings and also closed the gap to Delamare, meaning that he too could in time become a headache for the French leader whilst keeping young Brauer on her toes.

The fourth skipper in estimated finish time is Andrea Mura, and although his gap to the lead seems huge, at 7700 nm from Delamare and 3750 from Brauer, we must take into account that the Italian skipper has not yet even entered the favorable winds of the south seas having left three weeks after the young American skipper and seven weeks after the French leader. He too will very likely start increasing his daily runs once further south meaning that, he too, could become a player in this round the world pursuit.

Attrition List:
RTD: Juan Merediz – Class40, Sorolla
RTD: Dafydd Hughes – S&S 34, Bendigedig
DNS: Peter Bourke – Class40, Imagine
DNS: Ivan Dimov – Endur37, Blue Ibis
DNS: Curt Morlock –  IMOCA, 6 Lazy K
DNS: Volkan Kaan Yemlihaoğlu – Open 70, Black Betty

Race detailsEntry listStart timesTracking

The inaugural Global Solo Challenge 2023-24 seeks to be a budget-friendly solo, non-stop race around the world. Using a pursuit format for the 2023-24 race, 20 entrants from 34 to 70 feet have start times between August 26 to January 6 from A Coruña, Spain, with the first boat to return deemed the winner.

Source: GSC

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