PIP HARE Lone star

Pip Hare talks to Elaine Bunting about the long road to fulfilling her Vendée dream

- Elaine Bunting

While many of us are wondering who we will be able to spend Christmas with this year, Pip Hare’s dream is to be isolated and alone. Fingers crossed, the 46-year-old will be deep in the Southern Ocean.

On 8 November she and 33 other solo sailors will set out from Les Sables d’Olonne in France on the Vendée Globe non-stop round the world race. The fleet bristles with the latest foil-borne flying machines capable of reaching 40 knots, costing €10-15 million apiece. Lined up against them, Hare will be on Medallia, the almost 20-year-old, resolutely flightless IMOCA 60 she took out a loan to rent. Winning is out of the question. Yet no one is better placed to expose sailing’s fiercest test of survival than this determined, down-to-earth skipper. Galvanised by the feats of Ellen MacArthur and Isabelle Autissier, Hare always dreamed of competing in the Vendée Globe. But unlike the French sailors who dominate sailing’s ultra-marathon, or her British counterparts Alex Thomson, Sam Davies and Miranda Merron, Hare’s cruising, teaching and seamanship background put her at a disadvantage. She had no youth squad pathway, no apprenticeship with a campaign team, no network of connections to help. It has been a long, often confidence-sapping road.

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