the master jean-luc van den heede
Jean-luc Van Den Heede proved the perfect Victor of the Golden Globe race. Helen Fretter met the master
The twinkle in his eye should have given it away. When a relaxed Jean-luc Van Den Heede told me before the start of the Golden Globe Race that he was taking part ‘for fun’, I assumed he was modestly adjusting his expectations. At 73, 16 years since his last circumnavigation, perhaps Van Den Heede felt that he wasn’t as competitive as he had been in the past? Or maybe he just had nothing left to prove.
With hindsight, it’s more likely the jovial Frenchman meant he was going to see just how much fun he could have winning. Jean-luc Van Den Heede’s Golden Globe preparations were no less thorough, his mindset no less focused on the final prize than in any other race, and his sailing only more skilled after over four decades at the top.
Man at the top
Jean-luc Van Den Heede is a pillar of the French ocean racing world. He has completed six circumnavigations, rounded Cape Horn 12 times, and stood on the podium of the most revered round the world solo races. Yet he had never before won an international event.
VDH, as he signs himself, was born in 1945 in the Somme region, north of Paris. He began sailing aged 17, before qualifying as mathematics teacher – a career he pursued for many years while sailing out of Lorient.
He was 23 when the 1968 Golden Globe fleet departed. Frenchman Bernard Moitessier taking the headlines as he turned his back on a life ashore to sail on into the Pacific. Van Den Heede read in the newspaper how Robin Knox-johnston had instead arrived home first to Falmouth after 312 days, and was hailed a British hero. The impossible had been made possible.
Despite clocking up some strong results in the Mini Transat, his best being a 2nd in 1979, VDH didn’t become a full-time professional sailor until 10 years later, aged 44. By then he had already finished 2nd in the 1986 BOC Challenge (the multistage solo race later known as the Around Alone and Velux 5 Oceans).
Having quit teaching, Van Den Heede entered the first ever Vendée Globe in 1989, finishing 3rd. He built a new 60-footer, and moved up to 2nd in the next edition. He added another podium finish in the BOC Challenge, and transatlantic races such as the Route du Rhum.
But his next challenge was his most all consuming – over five years spent in pursuit of the ‘Global Challenge’, the single-handed record for sailing eastabout around the world against the prevailing winds and currents. His first attempt in 1999 ended when his ketch Algimouss struck an unidentified floating object and began taking on water, leaving VDH to nurse the yacht to Chile.
Three years later he restarted, this time suffering keel structure failures that saw Van Den Heede again limping back to shore. The following year he made a third attempt, only to dismast in the Southern Ocean. He set a jury rig, and once more made for landfall in a disabled boat.
In 2003 Van Den Heede set off for a fourth time. This one was successful: he powered round to set a new record of 122d 14h 3m 49s (for comparison, in 2001 Michel Desjoyeaux had won the largely downwind Vendée Globe in 93 days). His record remains unbeaten today.
But, apart from a record loop of the British Isles in 2005, Van Den Heede had stepped back from ocean sailing until the Golden Globe was announced. Race organiser Don Mcintyre recalls that he was bouncing ideas around with old sailing contacts in the early stages, and nearly picked up the phone to ask his friend Jean-luc for his input. But he stopped himself, wondering if Van Den Heede might in fact consider entering.
His hunch proved right. “For me, sailing around the world was finished,” Van Den Heede told me before the start. “I was playing music with my group, I was racing with my boat – but no big campaigns, and suddenly in 2015 a friend sent me a mail saying ‘This is for you.’ So I read it and I thought what a good idea. In fact I was quite upset I’d not had the idea before!” he adds with the frequent laugh that peppers every conversation.
Within a week he was signed up and launched into a full race campaign. His Rustler 36, Matmut, was prepared assiduously (see overleaf), including an new shortened rig to limit weight aloft and reduce the frequency with which Jean-luc needed to reef.
His shoreside preparation included a thick dossier of weather information prepared by a meteorologist
‘IT’S BETTER TO HAVE A LITTLE BIT OF EXPERIENCE – BUT IT’S ALSO BETTER TO HAVE 50 YEARS THAN TO HAVE 73!’
on the theoretical best routes for the Golden Globe course – Mcintyre says both Van Den Heede and Philippe Péché invested heavily in weather routing ahead of the start (routing was allowed up to one month before).
Mcintyre says Van Den Heede also asked him multiple times during the race for clarification on rules points.
“He must have done that on six or seven calls, confirming what he can and can’t do.
“Jean-luc is a very clever racer, and I can tell you now there is no way he wants to cheat. That’s just laughable. He’s a racing guy, he wants to win, but he was always meticulous on making sure he had a clear definition.”
Solo motivation
Before the race Van Den Heede predicted that the ability so sail consistently would be key. Much of that would come down to experience, although he mused: “It’s better to have a little bit of experience, but it’s also better to have 50 years than to have 73!”
The early stages of the race progressed much as expected, he was in the front pack heading down the Atlantic, trading blows with Philippe Péché in another well-optimised Rustler.
“I was pushing then as hard as possible. I was happy to pass Philippe in the middle of the South Atlantic, and it was a real race with Mark [Slats] and Philippe.”
However the first clues that the race would not shape up quite as predicted came as half a dozen yachts retired before rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Péché amongst them. Mark Slats took a more westerly route and dropped behind, leaving Van Den Heede out in front on his own.
“A lot of things surprised me. I imagined in this race that we were going to have six Rustler 36s racing very closely, but it was not the case.
“And I thought that it would be like the Vendée Globe, that we would have daily radio rendezvous with everybody, and chat together, but it was not like that. At the beginning we talked, for maybe 15 days, but soon the distances were so big that we could not contact each other.
“I talked with Ham radio, and it was the only contact that I have. In the Vendée Globe everybody talks with everybody else and at the end of the race it seems that we are quite a family. Here, I don’t know the others.”
Out in front with an advantage that at one stage extended to 2,000 miles, Van Den Heede found he had to motivate himself.
“I had competition only in the Atlantic really, and competition is fun. It is one part of the race. I was sorry that in the Southern Ocean, in the roaring 40s and 50s, I was alone. I just had to keep going round – it was a lot like my record. But even with the record I knew that I had to push the boat to be as fast as possible.
“But here I was 2,000 miles ahead of Mark, 2,000 miles is a lot so I just keep going and try not to beak anything.”
‘AFTER YOU LIVE THROUGH A CAPSIZE, YOU THINK ABOUT IT’
Disaster averted
As dismastings and abandonments wracked the fleet, Van Den Heede steered Matmut through the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean without incident.
“I had the first storm arriving in the Indian Ocean, the second big storm south of New Zealand,” he recalls. “But it’s cool, I could go through them without problems.”
Then in early November, approaching Chile, Matmut was knocked down to 150° in 65-knot winds and 11m seas. The rig held, but the connecting bolt which secured the starboard lower shroud tore down the mast, leaving a 5cm gash in the mast wall.
Van Den Heede thought his race, three years in the making, was over. He phoned his wife, Odile, and shore manager, Lionel Régnier, to tell them he was heading for Puerto Montt in southern Chile, planning to try and make a repair there, and possibly continue in the (non-racing) Chichester division.
“It was hard weather at that time, I was downwind with almost no sails, and you think and you think and you think... And I thought to myself that the mast is dead.
“So I said, well, I may as well try to repair it. If I break the mast it is not very important, so perhaps I can try to continue the race, and if I lose the mast I will just put up my jury rig and sail into harbour.”
Having consulted with Régnier on shore, Van Den
Heede rigged a repair from Dyneema and gaffer tape, lashing the fixing to the spreader. He notified race control that he intended to continue, sat out an 18-hour penalty for making satellite phone calls (when he thought he was going to retire), and set a course for Les Sables.
Now, his strategy was very different – he could no longer race hard, instead he became highly conservative. “I was very, very careful. I never pushed the boat, if I could sail one reef, I sailed with two. I was always underpowered.”
An element of fear had crept in also. “Before the capsize I was not frightened, but after you live that as soon the sea is very rough and you know there is a chance you can capsize again, you think about it. And if I capsized again I knew that the mast could not stay on the boat.”
To keep tension in the damaged rigging, he had to repeatedly climb the mast to work on his repair. He ended
up scaling the rig seven times, but the repair held for 9,000 miles. “I have to admit that climbing the mast is no longer OK at my age,” he conceded at the press conference after the finish.
Victory for the local hero
There were small consolations: in keeping with his bon viveur demeanour, while other competitors faced food shortages, Van Den Heede was eating well. His stores for the Golden Globe included foie gras, confit duck, terrines and cassoulets. There was still a month’s worth of supplies stashed under the saloon berths when he tied up in Les Sables after seven months at sea.
He also packed enough red wine for a couple of good glasses a day – starting with a precise daily ration of 25cl – although many of the cartons spoiled over the race.
As Van Den Heede sailed the underpowered Matmut up the Atlantic, Slats was able to close to within 100 miles on the tracker. But with more than half a century of experience behind him, Van Den Heede kept his cool. Smart navigation saw him pull ahead, and he finished three days ahead of his only real rival.
VDH is a Les Sables local – he has an apartment overlooking the sands, and big crowds turned out to welcome him home. He rewarded them by sailing all the way up the famous channel (having long run out of fuel) and breaking into song before he had even stepped off.
At the winners’ party that evening Van Den Heede took the microphone in front of his rock band and led the singing for hours. Despite seven months of broken sleep, it was his wife, Odile, who had to persuade him it was time to go to bed. Jean-luc was simply having too much fun.