Epic solo passages for Golden Globe skippers

Ahead of the September start of the second ‘retro’ round the world race, the 2022 Golden Globe

Race, several skippers have been undertaking extraordinary solo passages.

Mark Sinclair, who is aiming to complete his circumnavigation from the 2018 race in time to enter this year’s event, is sailing his 1980 Lello 34 from Adelaide to Les Sables d’olonne, France. Sinclair had crossed the Pacific by mid-february, but faced high winds and huge sea states ahead of his rounding of Cape Horn. After heaving to in a Force 9-10, he eventually rounded east-bound in 50 knot-plus winds and 6-7m seas, passing the landmark around seven miles offshore.

“I tried to come round in the lee of the islands there, but I couldn’t see them,” Sinclair told

Golden Globe organisers. He uses a tyre to slow down his long-keeled Lello 34, Coconut (pictured below), as he feels that it gives him more control than a conventional drogue.

“I had to keep gybing because I was worried about the islands and I didn’t know where I was. That kept me in exposed water so I got beaten up all the next day running under bare poles with a drogue out the back, up to Le Maire.”

“It was just like a washing machine. I could do nothing about it. I just had to keep persevering and clean up the detritus later."

Meanwhile Canadian entrant Kirsten Neuschäfer (pictured top), a former skipper for Skip Novak’s Pelagic Expeditions, completed a 7,700-mile Atlantic passage from Nova Scotia to Cape Town in 56 days. She plans to turn around her 36ft Cape George Cutter Minnehaha and make a second 6,500 miles northward up the Atlantic, to the race start port of Les Sables d’olonne.