Keeping the rest of the fleet out of her head challenging, says Pip Hare

Pip Hare’s In My Element: Life lessons from the world’s toughest solo ocean race, has recently been published. In it Hare talks about equality only truly existing on the water and now in this extract she delves into the pointlessness of constantly comparing what we do with others who are in totally different positions (especially when competing in the Vendée Globe). Through her experiences of the Doldrums she learnt to employ practical mental approaches to her race.

Pip Hare’s Race Blog, 21 November 2020

OK folks, in the spirit of total honesty I am putting my hand up and confessing to being grumpy. Yes … it’s true; Little Miss Sunshine over here is in a stinker of a mood.

I’m done with the doldrums. Totally and utterly done with being thrown around by sloppy inconsistent waves, listening to sails flogging, blocks banging, the pilot struggling to work out which way it is supposed to be going. I’m done with being alternately drenched in sweat then drenched in downpours. I’m done with changing sails only to have to change them back two minutes later. I’m done with endless trips up and down from the engine room to drop the keel, then raise it, then drop it, then raise it. And most of all I am done with every time I put my head down the boat starts going slow or the wind changes direction and I have to get back up again. OK … I’m done!

The reality is I have not slept enough, drunk enough or eaten enough in the last 48 hours and that is manifesting itself in the form of swearing at inanimate objects, a lack of patience, feeling sorry for myself, being close to tears when an unexpected wave spilt my cup of tea this morning, and once … only once … a full-on belly roar at a cloud to ‘just get lost and go and mess someone else’s life up for a change’ (this language has been adapted to protect the innocent). For the last two days there has been no stability, so my energy and my willpower have been slowly eroded until I am standing in the cockpit screaming at the sky.

I know this is a temporary state so it’s bearable. In fact, just writing this now has made me feel better already. It’s allowed me to zoom out of my tiny little world and rationalise that it will all seem better after food, drink and a kip. There is hope after all, coming over the horizon in the form of some nasty little waves that my bow slaps into, making the whole boat shudder.

Something has created these waves that are marching towards me with no mercy. Judging by the direction of them, it must be the south-east trade winds. So we can’t be too far off now. I guess I am also grumpy because I care. I have put so much effort into the last week of sailing. It was unexpected to be so far forward in the fleet, and I feel all of the miles made I fought for, and it would be such a wrench to lose them because I got stuck under a windless cloud in the doldrums for half a day. So, I carry on fighting for every mile, safe in the knowledge that when I pop out the other side of this equatorial hell, my world will seem a better place, so that cheerful, positive inner me can be back with a vengeance.

Managing these short-term hold-ups has always been a challenge for me throughout my sailing career. In this race it was hard not to compare my progress with others on the course, measuring my performance when stuck in a wind hole against their speed and progress.

But there was little point in measuring on-the-water performance against boats that are hundreds of miles away in completely different conditions. The same could be said of many situations in life: we constantly compare what we do with others who are in totally different positions.

While competing in the Vendée Globe race, I had the added challenge of having to assess progress against a finish line that was thousands of miles and months of time away. I was never going to move towards that end goal at a linear rate, so I needed to find a way to make it hurt less whenever I was held up by either the weather or some other problem. This meant setting realistic short-term goals to provide me with punchy yet achievable objectives that were relevant to my own personal position on the racetrack. I could benchmark progress against boats that were close to my position, but I had to be driven by my own circumstances and not let the perceived progress of the rest of the fleet get in my head. In reality, I already had a method to manage this, a structured approach that had evolved while I learned to manage the variable data surrounding weather forecasting. I just needed to adapt this way of thinking so that the same practical and mental approach could be applied to all aspects of my race.

Browse the latest news about Pip Hare’s journey to, and within, the Vendée Globe.

Pip Hare’s In My Element: Life lessons from the world’s toughest solo ocean race is available from all good bookshops and online from Bloomsbury.