Nervy Vendee Globe sailors eye icebergs as race nears conclusion
The solo non-stop round-the-world-yacht race is precarious at the best of times but when icebergs were unexpectedly spotted on New Year's Day, a whole new dimension of fear was added.
Sailing
"Iceberg," yelled a horrified yet enthralled Conrad Colman to no one but himself.
Laughing wildly, the Vendee Globe sailor was just about as far from land as anyone can be, just south of Point Nemo in the South Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and Chile.
Not only that, the New Zealander with dual US nationality, was completely and utterly alone, and had been for nigh on eight weeks into the endurance event colloquially known as the Everest of ocean racing.
One of 40 sailors who set off from Les Sables d'Olonne on 10 November 2024, the Vendee Globe is a quadrennial race in which sailors aim to be the quickest to circumnavigate the world solo, non-stop, and unassisted.
Capturing his reaction while recording a vlog update on the first day of 2025 from his 28th place in the race, an awed Colman repeated: "It's a massive iceberg."
The excitement was quick to fade: "Well, it feels massive, when you know that if you hit anything out here it's game over."
A noticeable gulp followed as he said with an even more muted. "It's a pretty high-stakes game."
Just days previously, Colman had filmed a segment in the cramped dark bow, acknowledging the seemingly precarious structure of his 60-foot (18.28-metre) vessel.
"There's only 5mm of carbon fibre separating me from the Southern Ocean right now," he revealed, showcasing the 'skin' between the 'ribs', the sound of rushing water and smack, smack, smack of waves on the hull combining to create a cacophonous noise.
A coming together with an iceberg would only have one winner.
On thin ice
The route of the 10th edition of the Vendee Globe starts and finishes in France, heading south through the Atlantic Ocean, around Antarctica, past the famed capes of Good Hope, Leeuwin, and Horn, before piling back up the Atlantic from whence they came.
The theoretical distance travelled would be 45,000km, but many competitors have sailed more than 52,000km in previous editions. The record time achieved, of 74 days and three hours during the eighth edition in 2016-2017 by Armel Le Cléac'h, is under threat.
The first finishers of the 2024-25 edition are slated to complete the race in mid-January, in around 66 days, with the French pair of Charlie Dalin, the 2021 runner-up, and Yoann Arkea leading the charge at time of writing.
Only 114 of 200 sailors have ever completed the race so even finishing is quite the achievement.
Conditions range from unruly weather and disorienting swells to an unearthly hush, bobbing idly, frustratingly, in ocean lulls.
Route plotting, eating, sleeping, boat fixing, food making, injury managing, mental health balancing â all aspects of this race â are down to each competitor, with only medical and technical advice offered, and only as a matter of safety.
For the first time since 2008, this also included an iceberg warning after Collecte Localisation Satellites (CLS), the organisation retained by the Vendee Globe to use its satellites and teams of experts to monitor the ice from space, raised the alarm.
Ice cool heads needed for Vendee Globe race
SĂ©bastien Marsset, in 22nd place, was the first to spy the danger.
"My radar alarm went off and I had an echo four miles ahead. I stuck my head out, and straight away I saw the iceberg. Then it was all hands on deck," said the Frenchman on his immediate response.
Fellow Frenchman Ăric Bellion, then just behind in 23rd, also recorded his reaction on seeing the behemoths. "On January 1st, a little gift from the Pacific Ocean," he said, eyes widening at the iceberg's close proximity.
"Icebergs are beautiful with expedition boats equipped with steel hulls but not with our carbon racing boats.
"It's scary."
"It certainly captures your attention that's for sure," said Colman, "because I'm now looking ahead of me looking to see whether there are any little growlers or 'bergy bits' as they get called, see if the waves are breaking in a different way."
Remaining lucid and alert at all times is an absolute mainstay of offshore ocean racing, with competitors dealing with "lack of sleep, intense and prolonged effort, lack of food or cognitive resources, lack of physical support", said Yves Lambert, one of the doctors tasked with looking after the medical health of the skippers.
Consequences of mistakes can be numerous from "a drop in performance, failure of automatisms or even more dramatically breakages, a breakdown, an injury, abandonment or even a fall into the sea*"*.
Or iceberg hits, apparently.
Colman succinctly captures his thoughts, and presumably those of his rivals.
"That's going to haunt my dreams."