Pip Hare is aiming for a sub-80 day finish in the 2024 Vendée Globe.

The Poole-based skipper, the first British entrant to cross the line in the 2020 race edition, believes a top 10 finish is within her grasp aboard Medallia. 

“This boat on paper is 17th in this fleet, according to its age and its design, but we are aiming to be in the top 10; that is where we really want to be,” explained Hare, who is taking 85 days of food onboard.

“I’ve been working hard on my own skills and strategy. I’ve been working on my fitness. We know the kind of race the Vendée is; everyone is going to have problems. It’s about keeping on top of the problems. It’s about maintaining a good average pace, not the highest speeds, just a good average pace. It’s about keeping your head and managing the unknown.”

Pip Hare took 9th place in the 2024 New York Vendée-Les Sables d’Olonne. Credit: James Tomlinson

The foiling 2016 Verdier/VPLP IMOCA 60 was raced as Bureau Vallée II by Louis Burton to 3rd overall in the 2020-21 Vendée Globe.

The yacht won the 2016-17 event, raced by Armel Le Cléac’h as Banque Populaire, and set the current course record of 74d 3h 35m.

An extensive six-month refit of Medallia took place in the first half of 2023 to make the boat as competitive as possible against the 13 new IMOCA 60s in the 2024 race.

The work included replacing the 3.4m foils with bigger 5.4m foils; these allow Medallia to lift clear of the water. The yacht’s structure was also reinforced and changes to the ballast were made.

But the decision by two of Hare’s sponsors to pull out earlier this year put in doubt other scheduled work – including replacing the keel bearings and buying a new suit of sails.

Undeterred, Hare and her team turned to Crowdfunding, raising enough to complete all the work to be as competitive as possible.

“I really was surprised that we managed to do it for a number of reasons. For one, I felt quite vulnerable because unlike some of the teams here, we are a team that always invests money we have into the boat, the project and the team. We don’t exist to make profit; we exist to deliver a fantastic sailing programme, which means cash flow is quite difficult to manage,” explained Hare, who based her race campaign out of Poole.

“We were expecting to have this sponsorship money and all of a sudden, it didn’t come and I felt very vulnerable and open to criticism, you know, maybe having not managed things so well. It was a really fantastic response, and now it’s just given me the extra drive to really make the most of everything that we have here.”

Pip Hare is aiming for a sub-80 day finish in the 2024 Vendée Globe. Credit: James Tomlinson

New foils also meant learning to sail again.

“My top speed is just under 38 knots. I can cruise quite comfortably in the 20s, and that means that the apparent wind is much further forward, which means you need flatter sails. So everything that I knew about sailing, I had to relearn and work on; this is not the same boat.”

Since then, Hare, who built a loyal following of fans during the 2020 race with her honest and passionate race reports, has not looked back, taking 9th place in the 2024 New York Vendée-Les Sables d’Olonne.

“We’ve had about six months to prove the boat, and I had to learn again to race on big foils because it is very different. We changed our sail plan. Some of my sails are actually quite new, so I’ve had to learn about those, what the crossovers are, and how to use them. I finished 9th in the New York Vendee-Les Sables d’Olonne, having played in the top 10 for the whole race which just kind of endorsed all the efforts, all the all the hard pushing, and all the incredible work from my team,” said Hare.

“2024 is a completely different race”

Pip Hare overcame numerous problems during the 2020 race, which saw her place 19th with a race time of 95d 11h 37m 30s on the 21-year-old non-foiling IMOCA. During that race, she dealt with the loss of a hydro generator, a broken wind sensor, leaving her with no reliable wind information and a cracked port rudder stock, which she replaced.

The yacht also had no outside protection, and Hare had to go to the mast every time to reef, and had to use a block and tackle taken to an electric winch to tack her canting keel.

Hare said her experiences in 2020 mean she has confidence “that I’ve overcome problems before, but I also know this race is going to be so completely different.”

“Having been through the Southern Ocean once does not make me an expert. Yes, we overcame a lot of problems last time, but I also know we’re going to have a whole different set of problems this time, and we can’t imagine what this race will look like. And the competition is unbelievable. In the races that I’ve done in the last couple of years, the finishes have been split by minutes and seconds; 66 seconds the next boat was ahead of me in the Route du Rhum, and that was after an Atlantic.

“So we are in sight of each other a lot more and you can see how the other boats are performing when you’re neck and neck like that and you are both doing 20 knots and you make a mistake and slow down and they’re across the horizon before you’ve even blinked. But, that applies to everyone. There’s a tension, there’s pressure, there’s an excitement. It’s an absolute honour to be in a race of this magnitude, in this fleet now, but it’s not going to be anything like the last race!”

Pip Hare is aiming for “a good average” daily cruising speed of over 20 knots to achieve a place in the top 10. Credit: James Tomlinson

Pip Hare believes success in the 2024 Vendée Globe “cannot just be based on one thing”.

“In a race like the Vendée, I don’t know if I’m going to finish. There are unknowns out there. There are unknowns that we know we can’t overcome, like dismasting. Obviously, I have a performance objective, which is to be in the top 10, but the other success objectives for the whole team, are that we want to finish the race, regardless of whether I’m able to perform or not.

“We want to share a good story. We want to engage people, we want them to understand what it’s like on board, and feel the race with us. And for me personally, I’m 50 years old. I’m at the top of my sporting career. I have an opportunity that I never imagined would come my way. I just want to finish this race knowing that I have absolutely maximized every single opportunity to perform and feel like I left nothing on the table.”

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