Pip Hare: The 50-year-old who will sleep on beanbag during round-the-world ocean race

Pip Hare accepts she does not have the most sophisticated sleeping arrangements for the upcoming Vendee Globe.

While her fellow competitors have bunks or ergonomic chairs, she plans to use a beanbag as a makeshift bed, on which she will sit “facing backwards, pressed up against the bulkhead” of her foiling IMOCA 60 yacht to prevent herself from flying through the cabin in case of impact. As for protective gear, Hare will be going “full crossfit” wearing “mountain-biking body armour and padded American Football trousers if the weather’s rough” during the round-the-world, solo ocean race. The reason she has not got anything fancier? She was forced to make some difficult choices.

“Most of the stuff I compromised on is the stuff for me, I guess; the comfort on the boat,” Hare says, breezily, ahead of the start of the arduous race on Nov 10. “It was just down to funding issues, really. We had to work really hard to get everything we wanted to get for the boat – new sails, a full refit and so on – and we didn’t really get around to me or my performance.

“So the ergonomics down below are not fantastic. If you look at the top teams, they’ve all got these fantastic, wonderful chairs that they [her fellow skippers] can, you know, sit in. And I’m still on a beanbag on the floor, which is…. to be honest, it’s the easiest thing to cull.” Hare laughs.

“It’s fine. You don’t sleep for long periods anyway on a Vendee. Part of what I’ve been teaching myself over the last two years is to re-establish, in my mind, what normal is.”

Hare, for whom this is a second Vendee attempt, does not let much stop her. If she listened to the doubters, she would never have made it round the first time, at the age of 47, despite having grown up in East Anglia (a “landlocked part”), despite not having got into solo ocean racing until her late 30s, despite little-to-no funding, and despite losing much of what she did have because of the coronavirus pandemic.

It was an emotional interview Hare gave to Telegraph Sport in May 2020 that led to the arrival of Medallia, a San Francisco-based software company, as the title sponsor of her challenge. It changed Hare’s life. She made headlines all over the world when she completed her maiden voyage in 2021.

Now 50, Hare – one of three British skippers this year alongside Samantha Davies and Sam Goodchild – is approaching her second Vendee with exactly the same sense of adventure, the same can-do attitude, and the same last-minute financial dramas.

She knows her odds of finishing a second consecutive voyage are slim. It is unusual for any skipper to complete consecutive non-stop, solo, round-the-world races. As a female entrant, it is rarer still. More men have walked on the moon (12) than women have completed the Vendee Globe (Hare was the eighth to do so). “Oh, I know, to finish two is highly, highly, highly unusual,” she says. “Really unusual. But you can’t let that stop you.”

The only thing which has changed, she admits, is her expectations. They are considerably higher. “For me, a good performance goal would be comfortably inside the top 10,” she says. The reason for her optimism? Hare has a new boat, and it is a quick one, with “big foils”, to bring it into line with a brand new boat’s performance.

Foiling – lifting the hull of the boat out of the water on hydrofoils – is a new experience for Hare. “I’d only done winging [wing-foiling] before, which is completely different,” she says. “So you’ve got to learn so much. I mean, you throw away everything you think you know about sailing.” But she has taken to it with aplomb.

“We’ve had consistent top 10s. To be in the New York Vendee [a solo transatlantic race earlier this summer], to be consistently in the top 10 [she finished ninth], we’ve got to where we thought we should be. We’re outperforming the boat. We’re alongside teams with way more experience and way more budget. But you know, none of that has come easy. It’s always been a struggle, pushing water up a hill.

“We lost a couple of sponsors along the way, which was a massive blow. Pete Goss [former Royal Marine and Vendee sailor] came in and helped make sure we got new sails for which I’m so grateful. And in all honesty, we’re here now, we’re in great shape, but I’m looking at my team and… they’re exhausted. They’re absolutely, totally and utterly rinsed. It’s been such hard work, so emotional. But I guess you know, that’s because we had high aspirations and we weren’t prepared to settle.”

‘We’re punching way above our weight’

It is a mantra which sums up Hare, who reckons her budget of “just under a million pounds a year, and that includes a £1.2 million refit of the boat” is roughly a quarter that of the top teams. “On top of the capital expenditure for the boat, they’re spending between three and four million euros a year,” she says. “So we’ve had to be clever with how we do it. We do loads in-house. And we keep it really small, I only have seven full-time staff compared to around 40 for the biggest teams, which is why everyone is so exhausted.

“But honestly, I couldn’t be prouder. We’re the only Vendee team that is not based in France [they are based in Poole]. There are 11 foreign [non-French] teams and 10 of them are based in France. And in a short timeframe, we’ve got ourselves into a position punching way above our weight without the support of that community and infrastructure. And I’m super, super proud of it.”

Whatever happens over the next three months – and there will undoubtedly be setbacks – Hare will try to approach the voyage in that same positive spirit.

When she is sitting below deck, on her beanbag, in her mountain bike gear, tired and emotional, singing along to a bit of Daft Punk (“Around the world, around the world…”), praying she is not about to get thrown across the boat, she will remind herself of how she got here.

“Absolutely,” she says. “I’m not looking at everyone else going ‘They’ve got a better this, they’ve got a better that.’ They have. But actually, I’ve still got an incredible boat, and I’m doing the Vendee Globe for the second time. When I start that race, I will feel like the luckiest person on the planet. Again.”