In the zone
Organisers of the Vendée Globe have confirmed the race course following the positioning of the Antarctic Exclusion Zone.
04 November 2020
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The Vendée Globe has confirmed the course distance for the imminent ninth edition of the race at 24,296 nautical miles.
Race Direction has now marked out the Antarctic Exclusion Zone using 72 GPS points. The 33 solo racers must stay north of this limit line at all times.
Jacques Caraës, Vendée Globe race director, explains: “For the past several months, we have been working with CLS (Collecte Localisation Satellites) to monitor the movement of ice in the Antarctic zone, in the Indian Ocean as in the Pacific Ocean. These satellite images are monitored and processed at CLS Brest by a radar specialist.
“We established an initial zone on 1 October and, last Saturday, we refined the positioning and published the Start Version of the Antarctic Exclusion Zone.”
Overall, the present and predicted ice situation has allowed Race Direction to lower the Antarctic Exclusion Zone by around 1 degree.
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They have moved the GPS points north by around 1–2 degrees in the area west of Georgia. The proposed route was initially 24,385 nautical miles as at 1 October and on start day, it will be 24,296 miles. Obviously, the further south the fleet races the shorter the route.
The position of the ice fields is not the only determinant for the exclusion zone. The Australian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center (MRCC) and the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) request four points that mark their safe rescue limit from their centres, of around 1,000 nautical miles. This is agreed between the Australian authorities and Race Direction in particular, following the rescue of injured Yann Eliès in 2008. These four points are located at latitude 46 degrees 00 South and run from 105–120 degrees East longitude.
The zone can be updated during the race. Caraes explains, “We update the exclusion zone during the race, watching to see if the ice moves north.”
He continues, “We take pictures before the first ones approach the Kerguelen and, if CLS detects an iceberg or suspects its presence, we issue an Ice Report to the fleet. And we can move the GPS points within a defined framework, based on the position of the leader, and which respects their navigation strategy.”
There are also key Traffic Separation Scheme zones that are prohibited to keep the fleet way from shipping traffic schemes. The Sailing Instructions determine GPS points to delimit prohibited zones at Cape Finisterre, Cape Roca (the westernmost point of Portugal), Cape St Vincente (the southwesternmost point of Portugal), Mauritania, and to the east and west of the Canaries.
For this 2020–21 Vendée Globe, Race Direction has also established two additional forbidden zones around TSS areas that previously might not have been considered to be on the usual course to the finish line of the Vendée Globe. But recall that en route to winning in 2016–17, Armel Le Cléac’h showed that – with the foilers and under certain wind and sea conditions –it was beneficial to go north of France before slanting back down to Les Sables. Thus, the Ushant TSS and Scilly Ouest have become prohibited zones.
In order to make the tracking more accurate and easier to read, Race Direction will run a moving waypoint in front of the leader. This position, on the great circle route, is the mark from which the classifications will be computed.
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