This article is taken from the December-January 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

Do you yearn to get away from everyone at Christmas? Try Point Nemo in the South Pacific. The oceanic pole of inaccessibility is the farthest place on the planet from land. The Pitcairns to the north and Antarctica to the south are 1,600 miles away. Often the nearest human life is on the International Space Station. And it is where 40 men and women would dearly love to be this 25 December.

They are the competitors in the tenth Vendée Globe, a quadrennial solo circumnavigation that left France on 10 November — and if they pass Point Nemo at Christmas, they will probably be leading the fleet. In 2020, Yannick Bestaven, the eventual winner, and Charlie Dalin reached Nemo just 1.2 nautical miles apart after racing for almost 17,000, a margin of about six minutes.

The Vendée is not normally so sociable. Often they go weeks without seeing a soul and when they do, it is because something awful has happened. For all their drive and sacrifice to be the fastest around the world — sleeping in 20-minute snatches — when a distress beacon goes, the code of the sea means you respond.

Four years ago, Bestaven was one of four skippers who diverted to rescue Kevin Escoffier when his 60ft yacht “folded in two” in big seas in the Atlantic three weeks into the race. In the 1996 race, Raphaël Dinelli was picked up from a life raft in the Southern Ocean by Pete Goss, a British sailor who was awarded the Légion d’Honneur for turning back in a hurricane to rescue the Frenchman.

They leave Les Sables d’Olonne, between Nantes and La Rochelle, cheered down the canal to the sea by thousands of well-wishers, but then they are on their own. The record is just over 74 days, and only five have come home faster than Phileas Fogg’s SI unit for circumnavigation of 80 days.

Nearly half of those who return are no longer in the race, since you cannot go ashore for repairs: of the 198 competitors so far, only 114 completed it. In 2001, when Dame Ellen MacArthur became the second to sail solo around the world in under 100 days (Michel Desjoyeaux pipped the 5ft 2in Briton to the line by a day), the last finisher limped in 64 days later. More men have walked on the moon than the ten women who have completed this race. Six started this year.

The route is simple. Out of France, across the Bay of Biscay, down the Atlantic past the Azores, Cape Verde and the Doldrums, left at the Cape of Good Hope, round Antarctica and back up from Cape Horn. The direct route is about 24,300 miles; it is more like 28,000 once you have charted a course to find the best wind and avoid boat-wrecking conditions. It goes from equatorial sweats to polar shivers via tropical showers and icebergs. Many have retired after striking a UFO. That is, an unidentified floating object.

Three have lost their lives. Mike Plant, an American who came in last in 135 days in the first Vendée in 1989-90, was lost at sea on his way to start the next one. Nigel Burgess, a Briton, drowned off Cape Finisterre four days into that race in extreme storms. In 1996, the Canadian Gerry Roufs was lost in the Southern Ocean. His boat washed up in Chile five months later, but his body was never found.

Others were lucky. Tony Bullimore, a 57-year-old Brit, capsized in 100mph winds in 1997 and survived on chocolate in an air pocket. Jean-Pierre Dick sailed the final 2,643 miles of the 2012–13 race very gingerly after losing his keel. He was overtaken for third place by Britain’s Alex Thomson, who had suffered a broken mast in a force 9 gale in 2004 and ruptured a hull four years later.

In 2017, Thomson came second but was just beaten by Armel Le Cléac’h. The French always win, helped by a state-funded training camp off Brittany, but 19 other nations have tackled it — nine of them this year. Sam Goodchild is Britain’s best hope, even if his boat has the unpromising name of “Vulnerable”.

All needless weight is removed to make the boats go faster. In 1966, when Sir Francis Chichester did a solo circumnavigation with one stop, he took 36 packets of biscuits, two Christmas puddings, six treacle puddings, six bottles of brandy, six of gin, one of rum, four of sherry and a barrel of beer. Also 30 cans of curry, which I suppose ensured a fair wind. Fifty years later, Thomson’s Christmas Day meal was a burger, a slice of cake and jelly babies. No wonder he said his mood varied “between miserable and fucking miserable”.

Yet he did it four times. Why? “It’s the most difficult sporting challenge on the planet,” Thomson said before the 2008 race. “You need to be a driver, a skipper, a maintenance man, psychologist, navigator and weirdo.” He loved the “humbling insignificance” of being alone in the middle of an ocean. “I get a really big dose of my mortality,” he said.

They do it because it makes them feel alive and it is hard not to envy their adventure, whilst at the same time being very glad to be in the dry at home. Godspeed to them all, and a safe return to land.