The World’s Most Grueling Sailboat Race Has a Winner—and a New World Record
In early December 2024, 40-year-old French sailor Charlie Dalin had Antarctica and icebergs to starboard, and behind him lurked a monstrous storm, barreling across the great swath of the Southern Ocean like an atmospheric bowling ball. It packed 60-knot winds and unruly 30-foot waves, living up to its nickname as the Sailor’s Graveyard. Here at the bottom of the globe, too far from rescue and pinned against the great White Continent while leading the Vendée Globe sailing race, Dalin had two choices. The first could cost him the lead, the second his life.
As one would expect from the most successful singlehanded ocean racer of his generation, Dalin went for broke, strapped himself into the pneumatic seat inside his boat’s cramped cockpit and hurled himself along the iceberg’s edge at 20-plus knots.
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The environment outside his 60-foot projectile would have brought mere mortals to their knees in prayer, but as the wind shrieked and sharp waves pounded the underside of his carbon-fiber vessel, Dalin was in his element. He was confident his boat would endure the beating and the autopilot would steer it over, under, and through the oceanic minefield.
Consider doing the Dakar Rally, in a self-driving car, at full throttle, day and night, for days on end. Hardly any sleep, eating sporadically, always a wary eye on the weather, but in this case you’re surrounded by water with nobody around for possibly hundreds of miles. That gives a sense of the long, lonely and often stressful stretches of the Vendée Globe, considered the most grueling, nonstop, single-handed race in sailing history. By the end of the race, many of the boats look like they’ve been through a war.
Dalin’s closest pursuers in the 40-boat fleet that set off from Les Sables D’Olonne, France, on November 10, were fellow Frenchmen Sébastien Simon and Yoann Richomme. They played it safe by changing course and positioning themselves farther north ahead of the storm—and quickly paid the price as they were swallowed by it. Over the span of six days deep in the Indian Ocean, Dalin grew his lead from roughly 85 nautical miles to more than 300.
Go hard or go home was Dalin’s motto during his record-smashing run.
Richomme would eventually close the gap and pass Dalin as they rounded Cape Horn, Africa, and turned north toward the finish, but over the final 6,800 nautical miles, Dalin was surgical through multiple weather systems and an equator crossing that put him in the lead.
Dalin arrived in Les Sable D’Olonne in the early morning hours of January 14. First across the line, his global speed lap finished with a time of 64 days, 19 hours, 22 minutes, and 49 seconds, shaving nine days and eight hours off the race record. Dalin is now the fastest solo sailor to race non-stop, unassisted, around the world.
The roughly 28,000-nautical mile Vendée Globe Race puts these lone sailors in state-of-the-art monohull yachts capable of high sustained speeds. The fleet’s latest-generation boats, such as Dalin’s MACIF Santé Prévoyance (sponsored by a French insurance conglomerate), have large foils protruding from the hull that allow the boat to skim across the sea when conditions allow. In the early stages of the races, the foilers logged 500-plus-mile days, breaking the 24-hour distance record multiple times (Richomme had the largest daily total of 574.71 miles).
Maintaining such a relentless pace is the ultimate challenge of the Vendée Globe; the most experienced skippers know when to throttle back to preserve the boat and themselves and know when to push to stay ahead and navigate unpredictable weather systems.
And that’s exactly how Dalin made history as the fastest solo sailor to win the greatest sailing race.
“I am feeling a bit tired, I need to get a bit of rest,” Dalin reported from his boat, MACIF Santé Prévoyance, on December 5, 2024, as he was racking up subsequent days of big miles across the bottom of the world. “I spent 10 hours in front of the computer, running hundreds of routings, trying to work out what choice was good and for what reason. It has been fun to sail against this monster. I am like a horse looking forward at the course with the blinkers on.”
Dalin led at key markers of the racecourse; he was first past Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin, and the equator. When he returned to the North Atlantic, he crossed the equator with a 123-mile buffer to Richomme, crossing the finish line first.
This was his second consecutive first-to-finish, but this time, the result does not come with an asterisk. Four years earlier, Dalin was first to Les Sables, but the second-place finisher was awarded an elapsed-time bonus for assisting in the rescue of a competitor during the race. Dalin was gracious in the moment, but those close to him and the campaign acknowledge that the sting was real.
With a faster and more refined boat for this edition, Dalin was able to maintain a much higher average of 17.8 knots over 27,667.9 nautical miles. “My cockpit is much more compact, which allows me to do many tasks without moving,” the skipper told Robb Report before the race, explaining the benefits of the modern-day IMOCA 60 yachts.
Inside, the skippers can race the boat at full-tilt 24/7. “The ergonomics have been improved, the ventilation system too, and there is much less water on the deck,” Dalin said. “And in terms of comfort, I have a custom-made seat with a shock absorber and safety belt—a change from the beanbag I had four years ago.”
The race is “unassisted,” so the skippers are truly alone in their efforts. Sophisticated electronics and autopilots steer the boat most of the time, but all sail handling (and there’s a lot of it) is their responsibility, as is communication (and daily media dispatches) and all elements of survival. The sailors must be meteorologists, engineers, mechanics, navigators, and problem solvers all the time. They are allowed to communicate with their teams on land when it comes to consultations about technical issues, but that’s it. Everything else is on them.
The first Vendée Globe race was staged in 1989 when 13 sailors departed Les Sables D’Olonne (and only seven finished), and while today’s sailors—both male and female—are better connected with satellite communications, so isolation is less of an issue. But in this raw and humbling adventure, the battle of human versus the elements remains pure. There is no stop until the clock stops at the finish line, and only then does the enormity of the feat sink in. “I have been working with the team for four years on this edition, building this new boat, preparing and upgrading it,” Dalin said after arriving. “Now it is done.”
When Dalin crossed the finish line, Richomme was 77 miles out and 32 other competitors remained at sea. Before that, six other sailors had dropped out. In last place, Belgian sailor Denis Van Weynbergh was still 9,000 miles from Les Sables, near “Point Nemo,” a point in the ocean considered farthest from land. Truly alone, in the middle of nowhere. But Van Weynbergh, who is living out his dream, may still beat Ari Huusela, who came in last during the previous event. The Finnish airline pilot completed the course in 116 days, 18 hours, and 15 minutes. It took him nearly four months of sailing solo, but he finished.
In Les Sables, Dalin is not thinking of the competitors, but of his exceptional achievement after last year’s heartbreak. “I am the happiest man in the world today,” he said, surrounded by thousands of fans who had come to greet him.
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