The only concessions to modernity: a telephone, which the sailors can only use to communicate, from time to time, with the race management; and position tracking beacons.
For the rest, the sixteen competitors in the GGR will only have at their disposal sea charts, sextants and compasses to complete a non-stop solo round the world trip, which should take them between eight and nine months.
the race “was first held in 1968-1969” before being relaunched in 2018 for a second edition “on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, in tribute to the original event and its exploits”remember Arab Newswho spoke to one of the navigators, the Indian Abhilash Tomy.
Tomy is trying the adventure for the second time, after being shipwrecked thousands of kilometers from Australia during the 2018 edition. “close to death” in this storm of fatal memory, “Tomy thinks this new edition is his second chance to fulfill one of his biggest dreams”writes the Saudi daily.
“The 2018 GGR was very difficult, but I never blamed the sea for what happened to me”, says this former Indian Navy officer, who will sail aboard an Emirati boat. Sailboats in the running must all have been built before 1988 and not exceed eleven meters in length.
The 16 sailors who will set off from Les Sables d’Olonne on Sunday – including a woman, the South African Kirsten Neuschäfer – are aged 27 to 69. But most of them will not finish the race, reputedly the most difficult in the world.
During the 2e edition, only six of the twenty-seven competitors had reached the finish line. The race was won by Frenchman Jean-Luc van den Heede, who had completed his round the world trip in 211 days 23 hours and 12 minutes – three times more than the record of the very tech-savvy Vendée Globe (just over 74 days ).