Episode 04- Pip Hare

Oceans Unplugged | Pip Hare – Dismasting in the Southern Ocean & the Reality of Vendée Globe

In this episode of Oceans Unplugged, host Lee Gallacher sits down with offshore sailor Pip Hare for a powerful and deeply honest conversation.

Pip shares the story of one of the most devastating moments of her career — losing her mast at 2 a.m., 800 miles from land, halfway through the Vendée Globe. A race defined by endurance, isolation, and extreme performance… where everything can change in seconds.

In this episode, we cover:

• What the Vendée Globe really is — the toughest solo sailing race in the world
• Life alone at sea for months with almost no sleep
• Foiling IMOCA boats reaching speeds of 40+ knots
• The mental and emotional impact of failure in extreme conditions
• Problem-solving at sea when there’s no help coming
• Pip’s journey from beginner to professional ocean racer
• The future of sailing, technology, and women in the sport

This isn’t just a sailing story — it’s about resilience, identity, and pushing beyond your limits.

A huge thank you to our core sponsor YB Tracking. None of this would be possible without your help and the service you provide to thousands of people every day.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Oceans Unplugged. I'm Lee Gallagher, formal professional sailor, mariner, harbour authority, patrol officer, coast guard officer, and lifeboatman. In each episode, I'll be sitting down one-to-one with the people who push beyond the horizon. Ocean racers, explorers, rowers, and the leaders behind the world's most demanding expeditions. We'll expand on the guests as we get into it. Oceans Unplugged is proudly supported by YB Tracking, the global leader in race and expedition tracking technology, helping bring the world's toughest adventures to life in real time. This is our stories, unfiltered and in-depth. So for this episode, we've got Pip Hare with us. Thank you very much for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

No problem at all.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

So gonna take you back uh to uh probably what for you is quite a traumatic moment at two o'clock in the morning, eight hundred miles uh between Australia and Antarctica. Um and the rig came down.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Tell me about it. That must have been uh a frightful experience.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Yeah, I can I can pretty much say it's it is up there with some of my worst sailing experiences, but I think as a life experience it was also immensely devastating. Um, you know, exactly halfway through my second Vendée Globe, four years of training and development, building a team in the UK, kind of, you know, all that inertia from the first Vendée Globe, and very much looking for a performance finish in the top ten. And so, you know, the mast on a 60-foot roast boat coming down when you're alone in the middle of the ocean is a pretty difficult experience, but kind of you add to that effectively your dreams being shattered at the same time, and and and it's devastating.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Yeah, and for the people following us and and listening that don't know the Vondae Globe, uh tell me a little bit more. What how do you define what the Vondae Globe is? How would you explain it to someone who doesn't understand?

SPEAKER_01 2:08

So the Vondee Globe is the hardest race in sailing, full stop. Uh, it is single-handed, non-stop around the world, sailed in high-performance 60-foot ocean race boats. Um, it's kind of the pinnacle event in the world of solo sailing, and like many of those pinnacle events, it's only sailed every four years. Um, we've just had the 10th edition of it, and we're now sailing boats that fly above the surface of the water through this ocean.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

When you say flights, they're up on foils, uh, and the keel's still in the water, and the speeds must be phenomenally different to sort of the first generation uh open sixties, uh, and the noise must be phenomenally different as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yes, they're they're wild beasts. I mean, they're crazy insane. Uh, and they so they do lift out of the water on the foils, and they can lift kind of around two or three metres above the surface of the water. Um, and actually what happens is because we have counting keels, the keels start to act as a foil lifting the boat out of the water as well, which kind of blows your mind because you think the keel is designed to pull the boat down into the water. But when you're going at great speeds, then the shape of the keel fin and the fact that it's canted to one side means that that keel fin starts behaving like a foil and lifting the boat out of the water. Um, and uh the difficulty for us is we don't really have a way of controlling the ride height. So, in other foiling boats, you know, the America's Cups LGP, then they have um controls on their rudders that allow them to change the ride height of the boat and and and kind of stabilize the boat in that way. But in the Amoka class that we race, we don't have that. So they're kind of like wild beasts that leap out of the water and then crash back down into the water, and and you can control it to a certain extent, but the ride is very rough. Um speeds, uh, top speeds are now around kind of 40, 41, 42 knots, but that's kind of like top top speed. Um, my best average over 30 minutes is 28 knots. Oh um, but we're seeing boats now starting to average over 30 knots in in 30 minutes. Um and my top speed for making a cup of tea is 37 knots.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

That's that just sounds wild. It's like almost making a cup of tea on a rodeo horse.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

Well, actually, that's a really good analogy, and I could kind of try to describe it to people because you know the thing about the Vonday Globe is you know, we're not in a 45-minute race. We are racing around the world. It's one of the very few sporting events where um athletes are required to perform 24-7 for months, um, and we have to sleep as well, and so you kind of, you know, you look at all these other foiling boats uh and and you see everyone kind of constantly adjusting things and and managing the speed and steering all the time. And you know, we're alone in some of the most remote places on the planet, and we have to stick the autopilot on and go and make dinner or have a sleep or download some weather or or fix something. Um, and you get these crazy moments. I mean, I remember one of the one of the moments where I've actually kind of sat there and and thought to myself, is that what am I doing? Um, I was my my hydraulic, the hydraulics on my keel ram had sprung a leak. Um, and I was really close with another competitor, so I didn't want to slow down because the thing about foiling is the speed differentials are huge. You know, if you come off the foils, you'd be doing maybe 14, 15, 16 knots. But if your competitor that was alongside you is still doing 25 knots, then you know you're losing 10 miles in an hour that's really hard to get back. So you you have to try and problem solve at speed. And I was trying to sort out this hydraulic oil leak, and I just kind of remember um having my head and my arms kind of in a tiny compartment, and I was covered in oil up to my armpits, kind of sliding around. I had a helmet on, and the boat was kind of taking off and landing and lurching, and I was being thrown around, and I couldn't hold on to anything because I was so slippery. And I just thought, what am I doing? It's just really crazy. But I think that's part of the appeal of the race. It's it's out there, you know, it is absolutely out there for what we have to do as sailors and as human beings. It is absolutely crazy.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

I remember uh Thierry Dubois, a well-known Vonday Globe competitor many years ago saying to me that the Vondee Globe pushes the human body and mind beyond comprehension. Would would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Yeah, it exactly. You know, I I I remember kind of it after I finished my first Vonday Globe and and I was being interviewed and and everyone was saying, What do you want to do next? And I was like, Well, I don't want to do another Von Day Globe because I've never been so stretched in my life. You know, I've never had to perform at such a high level in so many ways, and it appeals to me as an athlete because the competition is huge. Um, you know, you you can have minutes between you after going around the world, um, but also kind of as a human being, it's testing your problem solving, your ingenuity, your self-awareness, your self-regulation, uh, your mental capacity, and all the time you are operating on 20 minutes of sleep and uh go. You know, it it who who would have thought that I would ever dare to climb a 30 meter mast on my own in the middle of an ocean on a boat that's moving? I did because I had to, because I was in the Vendée Globe, and and I love the person it makes me be.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

And if we sort of had that complexity of climbing that mast at sea in the Southern Ocean, and we put it back to, as you said, two o'clock in the morning, eight hundred miles between Australia and Antarctica, that could have been a moment that you're at the top of the rig and it goes. Does that go through your mind and kind of uh and quite often it is literally sort of a 20 pence ring pin that's failed or some sort of carbon failure?

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yeah, I mean, I don't so I guess the first thing is we don't know why my mast failed. There's we've got a lot of data on the boats, you know, we're we're kind of high-tech, high performance, and so we're measuring load all the time. Um, and uh and the boats are immaculately maintained, and and I put a new mast into the boat the May before the Von Day Globe. I um NDT tested the mast before it went into the boat. I did two transatlantics, I took it out of the boat, I NDT'd it, all the rigging was new, kind of that boat was beautifully prepared. And so I don't think that the failure was anything to do with the preparation. Um, and it wasn't from what we can see, the boat wasn't being sailed outside of its normal working loads. There was nothing strange about the conditions, in fact, they were reasonably benign when the mast fell down. Um, and we're not aware of any component failure that was obvious, although most of the wreckage went straight over the side, and yeah, you know, but I couldn't see anything at deck level that failed, so kind of the assumption is it actually was a failure of the mast itself. Um and that's hard, but it is you know, it's another thing about a race like the Vonday Globe. Not one single competitor who lines up at the start can guarantee that they will finish. We all go out prepared for as much as possible. We all go out with the intention to fix every problem. And you know, in my first race in 2020, I replaced a rudder in the Southern Ocean.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Yeah, we were stunderway.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

It walls underway, yes, yeah. And we were we were prepared to that level. But you have to acknowledge that there are some failures that you cannot overcome, and mast failure is one of them. And in the fleet in the four years prior to the 2024 Vendée, there was a 10% rate of mast failure per year. Um and and I guess you know, you when when you think about it, the the way I kind of describe the boats falling out of the sky, you know, they're foiling and then they fall. You know, imagine all of that energy that has to go somewhere, and so there's gonna be a point of failure somewhere. Um and that has been potentially the masts, you know, that load that goes into the mast. And you know, to the end of my days, I will be utterly, utterly devastated that my it was my turn and my mast at that time. Yeah, you know, I would have much preferred it was a transatlantic race than the Von Day, and I would have much preferred it wasn't exactly halfway around the world. Um but I knew it could happen, and it did happen.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

I've spoken to many um Von Day Globe skippers over the years um through different involvement, and if we look back at different skippers from uh Thierry Dubois, Tony Bullimore, um uh I think Patrice Carpenter may have had a failure as well. And you never know where things are gonna go wrong. Um also if we look back at uh other British Von Day Globe sailors, um Alex Thompson, he had internal failures on his uh um uh structure and he was constantly having to re-laminate and rebuild because of the impact loads that are are going. Because your boats are literally at that top level of performance, aren't they? You you're pushing those boundaries, and um yeah, you you can't sort of well, I suppose, plan for all of that. Uh and even though you're planning the structural loads and impacts, it's still you're testing it like a Formula One motor car, you're pushing it to its limits, aren't you?

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Yeah, and I think you know, one of the difficult things in particular for our class is that you know, the most brutal conditions are those conditions in the south. That's where the waves are absolutely huge, that's where the weather systems are relentless. And, you know, within my team, I probably sailed more than most. You know, my my philosophy was I'm just gonna go out and break this boat before the Vendée, so it doesn't break on the Vendée, and especially because halfway through my programme we retrofitted the big foils into my boat. So my boat wasn't designed with big foils. We worked with Jason Carrington and Guillaume Verdier to put big foils in, and so I very much wanted to go out and sail the boat hard to understand where the failures could be, and and kind of the first two transatlantics I did with the big foils, we discovered some um cracking in some of the reinforcing ribs inside the boat, which to be fair, pretty much every boat at the time was finding that because the models couldn't predict the the outcome from all of that slamming. Um, and so lots of people were finding that this secondary bonding on the ribs was failing, and so you know, we had a a lot of work done after that to cap the ends of the ribs, and so you know, I would go out repeatedly, much to the upset of my technical director who just wanted a perfect boat. Uh, you know, I would go out repeatedly and and and train hard, and and my aim was to come back with a broken boat because if we'd found that failure, then we could make sure that failure didn't happen again. But you can't replicate the Southern Ocean sailing from pool.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

No, definitely not. I mean, uh my trips through the Southern Ocean, I think the biggest weather we had was I think it was 67 knots sustained, and we had gusts of over 80 knots, and that was coming into uh Palater Bay in New Zealand uh from the Chatham Islands. So uh we weren't even in the Southern Ocean at that stage, and so for you to be in those weather conditions in the Southern Ocean with those waves that just there's nothing to stop them, they just grow and grow and grow. What what sort of was the biggest conditions that you had that it kind of you looked at it and went, whoa. Um or as you said, why am I here?

SPEAKER_01 16:47

So actually, uh you spent an awful lot of time avoiding them, and the bonus with the boats that we're sailing now is that we really can um we really can avoid those conditions. The weather forecasting is so good, and you're constantly adjusting your parameters around how big the sea state is and and um and how much wind you want, and so kind of you can see um each skipper taking their own individual risk profile, and the risk will change throughout the race. It changes if your boat's damaged, it changes if your competitors are doing something different, you know, you have to pick your line, and so you know, the waves are consistently four or five meters, not massive, um, but it's constant. Um, and the and the wind, you know, in the in the Indian Ocean this time, we had a very rough time in the Indian Ocean this time, and the wind was for two weeks between 25 and 30 knots for two weeks. Um, but the the boats are just going kind of so fast, and and the technique in the southern ocean is you're watching these weatherfronts approach you, and ahead of the weatherfront is slightly flatter water, which means you can sail the boat faster. So the idea is you kind of pick your line in relation to the weatherfront, and then as it's approaching you, you go foot to the floor, pedal to the metal, and he who dares wins, quite literally, you just go as fast as you can, trying to stay ahead of that weather front. Um, and then either when you need to, you know, you your little angel on your shoulder is saying, Okay, back off now, you know, either when you you back off or you break something, or you you can't keep ahead of the front, then the front will overtake you. The sea state behind the front is really messy, and then you have to slow down, and that's kind of the more violent conditions, then. But the the interesting thing is in the northern hemisphere the fronts go slower than in the southern hemisphere. So in the northern hemisphere, the fronts um move around but I think between 25 and 27 um knots. So in the right conditions, it's possible to stay ahead of a front for almost the whole Atlantic in the northern hemisphere, which is how they got the 24-hour records. Yeah. But in the southern hemisphere they go much faster through through the southern ocean, so they do catch you up eventually. Um, but I guess because of that, because we're kind of playing with the wind all the time in the south, the biggest conditions are when you get forced to go to a place because of geography, not meteorology.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

The islands they always get in the way.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so the biggest conditions are going to be passing through round Cape Horn, um, because you're forced through that funnel. Um, and then in my in my um 2020 Von Day Globe, um I went through the centre of uh a low pressure off the coast of Uruguay and and I saw 70 knots in the centre of that. But actually the south I was able to kind of manage quite well.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

So I mean, hearing all of these stories I w uh obviously I know a little bit of your background, but what what made you decide to be a solo sailor? Where did it come from? Because back back in the days of sort of um sun sail and and teaching sailing, where where was that sort of dream to go and be a pro sailor?

SPEAKER_01 20:55

So that dream was always there. I mean, I grew up in Huntingdon, in the middle of Cambridgeshire. Um I did sail when I was a kid, I sailed with my family, we went on family sailing holidays, but um you know, we didn't sail actively as part of our everyday lives. Um, you know, I wasn't a member of a sailing club, I just went to a regular comprehensive school, you know, there was nothing around me that you know said anything other than, you know, you're gonna get your A levels and then you're gonna go to university, and then that's you know, that would that was the path. Um and I went on a young person sailing holiday when I was 16 and just I just fell in love with the possibility and and the agency and the adventure. And so I started reading a lot of books about sailing. I was reading about the whip bread, and then I came across the Vonday Globe, and it immediately it was obvious to me that the yeah, I'd kind of already Decided that I wanted to be a professional sailor and I wanted to race. And and I suppose, you know, I fixated on the whip bread then. And then I read about the Vendée Globe, and the Vendée Globe is the whipbread course, but with no stops in the same-size boats, and it's and it's one person on board. I mean, that's the hardest sailing race on the planet. And so I just thought, well, if I'm gonna be a sailor, then that's what I'm gonna do. And you know, I but there is there's no there's more of a roadmap to get there now. But you know, I was leaving school in 1992, no roadmap to the Vonday Globe from Huntingdon.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

No, it's not it's not like a conversation with a careers advisor, is it? It's like, so what do you want to be?

SPEAKER_01 22:51

No, so you know, kind of the I made it up as I went along, and and the first thing that I decided I needed to do was to to get a sailing qualification and actually get a job in sailing, which is how I ended up, you know, teaching sailing and and running corporate regattas and those sorts of things. And I guess I thought I would find other opportunities from being qualified and working within the industry.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

So now obviously, as you say, now there's a bit more of a roadmap. Um, so in a couple of weeks, I'm travelling down to Lorient um to go and work with the guys in the uh Plastmo Lorient uh Mini 650s, and there's obviously a lot more like college environment there, and we're certainly seeing a lot more women coming into sailing uh recently D.Cafari and the team for the Jules Verne trophy. Do you see more of a career path and more women coming into sailing? And I mean, as you know, you've inspired my other half to really get into sailing, and she absolutely adores you. So, do you see any more of a change and and how do you see sort of that growing?

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Um there's been a massive change. Like it's it's uh in the last 10 years there has been a huge change. I mean, because even when I did the my first mini transat, which was in 2011, um there were 84 competitors and seven women. Um so you know, even even then the the numbers were light, but it's I think it's just being normalized a lot more. There's no through demonstrating that we can, then there's no reason why you shouldn't, which I think is a you know it's a subliminal message. Um there's a lot of opportunities now being created through various schemes for women, um, but um I think still in the UK there's a bit of a cultural problem with accessibility, and that's not just for women, it's for everyone. Um and for me, I went to France um from 2011 2012. Um I I went to France to go and train in the mini camps and kind of immerse myself in the culture there, and it was another world. I just had never felt so included and so welcome and so normal. Um, and I learnt a lot there, and I've seen that effect grow and develop in France, and uh it still is kind of confusing to me why we don't have that approach in the UK, but it's something that I desperately would want to change if I could.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

Do you think programs um like Tracy Edwards Maiden Project has helped uh at least generate a little bit more momentum towards that goal of having projects uh to inspire more women to get in and and train in programs in the UK like they do in France? Because I mean sailors, especially like Von de Globe sailors, in France, I mean it's your celebrities. Yeah, I've been on the docks and around uh Le Sable de l'Anne and seen all these kids like screaming and chasing people around, whereas here in the UK it's it's totally different. Um and in France, even people that don't follow sailing, they really still get into it. And it it's as you say, it's such a cultural shock.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

I think I think there are a number of programs in the UK that actually really do introduce people to sailing in a in an e an easy way, you know in and kind of those largely I think are the youth training programs. And I'm I'm a really big fan of sail training for not just for young people but for everyone. You know, I think it's a very overlooked path into the sport. When we kind of think of the high performance end of the sport, we always tend to think that people started racing dinghies in a club when they were kids, but you know, I know I'm not the only one that found my way into the sport through sail training, and I think there are so many ways to learn sailing, but in particular, so I'm a vice patron of the Ocean Youth Trust, and um I just every time I see their boat, it is full of enthusiastic, buzzing, happy, positive young people from all backgrounds, and it doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, what your parents do, where you live, it doesn't matter. Everyone's welcome, everyone has a job, everyone can find something. Yeah, um, and I would just love to see more programs like that opening up opportunities, not just into the racing world, but into the maritime industry careers, because I think there's so much for so many people to access.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Yeah, I mean, as you say, Ocean Youth Thrust, um, their yacht prolific. It's uh a lovely boat, and I've been out a couple of days with it. And as you say, to see the young people from all backgrounds on board um just having an amazing time, and you see them grow from like the second that they board, they're very uncertain of themselves and very uncertain of what's coming on. But when you see them leave after the two, three, four days or five days that they've been on board, they change massively, and that you see them really come out of their shells. Um, the confidence that they get, it's phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

I was um I was in pool at the end of the um association of self-training organization Regatta in in the summer, and I'd agreed that I would show the crew of Prolific, um, the OIT boat around Mayamoka, and um and I came down and the pontoon was just alive with just I mean, the energy you could feel it. Everyone had just had the most incredible week. They were all running between boats, you know, everyone was just kind of buzzing. Um, and and I showed the the crew of Prolific around and and uh and as I was showing them around, this kind of cue on the dock developed of all the other boats. I think I must have been there for about three hours, just with this constant stream of people showing them around. But it was such a it I just thought if I'd been them at that age, you know, I think part of the issue that we have in the UK is that all of the high performance expensive boats are behind locked doors. You know, you can't access them, you can't see them. Most of the time people won't talk to you. Um, and I just thought, one of these young people here, you know, they they're gonna see this boat, they're gonna, it's the same as me opening that magazine when I was 16 years old, you know. They're gonna see this boat, they're gonna be inspired, they're gonna believe that there's something flipping exciting out there for them over their own horizon. And and yeah, I mean, I was so happy to spend three hours showing showing young people around my boat answering the same questions over and over again. But when do you ever get to when do you ever get to do that?

SPEAKER_00 31:16

It's very rare. I mean, I remember um obviously it's not the Von Lee Globe, but for the BT Global Challenge during 2000, 2001, being in uh Wellington and in Sydney, and we had school kids come round, and uh by the time we got to the next port, uh the race organisers had a a package of papers and pictures and letters of these kids that were inspired, and I've oddly enough I've still got them. Um, and it's so nice to sort of see that inspiration, see that growth coming along uh in the industry. Uh in and as you say, it's not just organisations like Ocean Youth Club, there are others, uh Greek City Academy in a city London, yeah. Uh and to see some of the kids on those programs refurbish a boat and then train on it and go off to do the fast net race and not only do it, do very well in it. And it it's great to see those programs. We certainly need more of them.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

It's super cool, and I just think, you know, one I think one of the things about my career, one of the things I felt through my whole career was that I really didn't feel like I belonged because I was different, because I wasn't from the standard sailing community, because I was a woman, because I grew up in East Anglia. You know, I didn't feel like I belonged, and I think, you know, if we want our sport to grow and develop in the UK, we need to make more people believe they belong. That's the key to it.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

Yeah, definitely. And we are seeing more and more, but it it there's a long way to go in the UK, I think.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

So where would you like to see um uh more done, not just in sail training, uh within the industry itself. Um for instance, I was speaking to uh Royal Metal Yacht Club just yesterday um for their one of their coastal races called Vasca da Gama. Um and many years ago there was one particular boat called McQueenie, uh fast yacht, uh I think it was a 40 that did the Durban II Mauritius race, and unfortunately um they lost their keel, boat sunk, and unfortunately they they passed away. But one of the league guys on there um was involved with a charity in South Africa called iCare, and they basically took street kids, taught them boat building skills, and then taught them how to sail. And also now recently I've been involved in the Cape T Rio race, where Royal Cape Yacht Club have got an academy and they've been training sailors, and in fact the the academy kids have just won the Royal uh the Cape to Rio race, and these were all inner city kids in South Africa. Um so there are those possibilities globally. Um we need to see more of it though.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

Yeah, absolutely, and I think kind of I I think it's not just about the sailing as well. Um, you know, for for me I am driven to sail, I love sailing, but there is a whole career out there which is not just about the physical act of sailing, it is the boat building, it's the electronics, it's increasingly the IT, it's the sail making, it's the rigging. You know, within a professional sailing team, we do kind of fairly complex logistics. Um, you know, we have to manage um all sorts of buying and selling stuff, and and so you know, there's a a huge amount of possible career pathways, and it would be kind of really nice to be able to work with schools um to to help children or young people understand what they could do and where that could take them. And so kind of those are schemes that that feed into projects that then could feed people into jobs or teams, I think is is something I would like to see more of in the UK.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Yeah, I think I heard a statistic recently that the average age of a skilled marine craftsman in the UK was over 40 years old, which just blows me away that there isn't an incoming or I mean there used to be apprenticeships where you could go and do a lot more boat building or um sail making and stuff like that, and that seems to have thinned out. I did hear a boat builder say, Well, why should I take on apprentice? It's so expensive to to do, um, which is such a shame because we did have a big industry in the UK.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

Yeah, yeah, and certainly kind of, you know, I really only know about my very niche kind of end of things, but um much of the talent that that we would need to run a successful ocean racing team in the UK um ends up going to France because that's where most of the work is, that's where the hub is, that's where the learning is. Um and I would like to see a kind of a I guess an infrastructure in place in the UK that provided that expertise and routes to employment where multiple ocean teams could kind of tap in and out of a wealth of knowledge because I think that is what would help to build a culture.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

Yeah, very much so. I mean, you said also uh like the different parts of the industry, uh especially in electronics as well. Um a lot more boats are being built, a lot more technical than I used to race. Um, and I'm sure the systems that you've got on board, uh the Amoka, uh there's a lot more sort of software management systems on them as well. Um is that um rapidly changing to the point that um things are happening quicker than we can keep up?

SPEAKER_01 37:16

Um I guess it's a there's various levels. Um so the the existing autopilots are not the base level autopilots, the off-the-shelf autopilots are not developing rapidly, um but you know there's constant improvement in them. I think the big difference we've seen um in the general electronics area, I would say, is the development of screens. I think screen technology has got incredible in the last few years, but um what's happening is that there are now computer programs which sit above your standard autopilot, and they're kind of what you might call a smart pilot, and those computer programs are the ones that drive the boats really, really fast. Um, and they are learning all the time and developing all the time, and their test bed is the Amokas, the old teams, the multi-50s, you know, the wild ocean race boats they're being tested on. And then the next thing that is inevitably, you know, already starting to embed is AI. Um and I think you know, the the possibilities for AI on collision avoidance and and kind of um I guess the ability for AI to know how to drive a boat fast is is already there. Um but um yeah that I would say in the next kind of five years we're gonna see that side of things absolutely booming.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

Yeah, I I I can imagine that the AI side of things is really gonna come in uh with managing uh, as you say, those sort of performance steering systems. It's certainly something that um is on people's minds where when we're looking at electronics and navigation and AI, given global situations at the moment and GPS jamming, GPS spoofing, um is that kind of a massive concern at the moment for a mocker sailors or sort of solo sailors?

SPEAKER_01 39:32

Um no, I don't I don't think it is, no. Um I mean in general, you know, where we sail is not anywhere at risk, you tend to kind of encounter those sorts of problems in you know the at-risk areas, and there's not a lot of people down in the Southern Ocean. No one really cares. Um so so I don't think that's that's an immediate um issue that that I would worry about, but you know, there is a there is a level of security that we all need to have anyway, which is our um ancient seamanship, you know, because it's rather than kind of a GPS jamming situation, the most likely thing that will happen is you get a flood or you can't charge your batteries anymore, or you know, you just get a total electrical failure, a total power failure, and then you are back to basics. And so every one of us has to be sure that we can get safely back to the shore without all of those aids. So we need to know, you know, how do we sail the boat without an autopilot? We need to be able to dead reckon. You know, we've still got a compass, we can still look at the clouds and and our barom, you know. Well, I don't actually, I've only got a digital barometer, so I can't look at that. But you know, we and and and ultimately, yes, it is very high tech now. There's a lot to manage, but when you strip it all away, you still have to be a good sailor. Yeah. And that comes down to seamanship.

SPEAKER_00 41:32

But just on that, uh mainly for listeners, and I'm a bit intrigued now as well. Do you carry a sextant on board? No.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

No, no, no, but so in the in the mini class, we did have to carry a sextant on board, um, uh, but not in the emoka. And um I mean the I guess the reason part of the reason is that you know GPSs, handheld battery driven GPSs are prolific. And so, you know, if you think what's going to be less risk and more help, yeah, well, it's gonna be ten GPSs and and twenty spare batteries, and of course your yellow bit tracker.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

Yes, it does show the position if you ask it. On actually, while we're on the subject of that, and thank you for bringing me on to the subject. Specifically for emokas, yeah, because it's not a general uh product that we do for uh other boats, the emoca boats carry multiple backups of the obviously you have the built-in YB3i and you have your YB3 on the rail, but you also have a unit in your grab bag for capsize, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 43:02

We do, yes, yeah. So um the boats early on in the umokka history, well, kind of doesn't really happen anymore, but but there were in several instances of of keels falling off and boats turning over. And so for every ocean racing class, um you have to ensure that you have brightly coloured anti-fouling on your keel and your rudders and on a a portion of your hull so that you're easier to spot from the air if you turn upside down. But also in the Imoka class, we have two um patches in the hull that have less reinforcement in them than the others. So they're the soft patches through which you cut to exit. We have a life raft and Outside the boat and inside the boat. And then we also have a through hole fitting that we can either put a YB tracker antenna through or a VHF and uh no an Iridium phone antenna. And that's because the holes are carbon. Yeah. So inside a carbon hull you can't no nothing will admit out of it. But yeah, we do we do carry that.

SPEAKER_00 44:31

Yeah. So whilst Pip says about that, if you're using a YB tracker on any race, please don't put it down below because it's not going to transmit through the carbon. It does amaze me sometimes that we get uh like it's not working. Where is it? Down below in the nav station. Is your boat carbon? Yes, it is rather amusing. Um so you've got all of that safety equipment. I mean, you you said there was a period where keels were snapping off, um, and there was the famous ones of Tony Bullimore cat's eyes and being in his upturned boat for was it 24 hours, 30 hours, something like that? And the Australian Navy got to him.

SPEAKER_01 45:08

Yeah, it was if it was a couple of days, I think, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

Yeah, and then he sort of swum out from underneath.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

So um while we're sort of back onto the subject uh at the Vonday, where are we going now? What's the future like for Pip Hare and Pip Hare Ocean Racing?

SPEAKER_01 45:25

Um, well, kind of my biggest challenge at the moment is sponsorship. Um, I had a a great title sponsor for two cycles, but um as happens, you know, they decided not to sign for a third, and so kind of I am very much trying to find uh an appropriate partner to to get going again, not just so I can go sailing, but because kind of as I said before, I very much would like to have some sort of momentum in the UK with ocean racing, and yeah, and I'm still the only ocean racing team in the UK. Um, so you know it would it would be nice to be able to continue that and then maybe have other teams come and join us in this next cycle. Um so yes, I'm very much looking to race around the world again um and and to finish my third Vonday Globe.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

So if we have any businesses or sponsors uh or potential sponsors, how can they get hold of you?

SPEAKER_01 46:27

Uh through my website. Um so my website is pitpairoceanracing.com. Um and yeah, there's a there's a little button there that says contact me and they can just drop me a message. But yeah, I'd love to speak to them. I mean, I think more than ever, I think the stories that we share from the Vonday Globe resonate and they're authentic and real. Um, and you can't make them up. And and I think, you know, the the quality and the type of media that is now available from on board the boats is an incredible way for any business to to speak to potential and existing customers and clients and and raise awareness. It's it's one of those really wholesome sports to get involved with, and it's one of the few sports where, regardless of how well you do, there is still a story to tell. And I think the case in point is you know, halfway through my last Fond Day Globe, I dismasted, and I then shared my journey building a new mast and self-rescuing into Melbourne, and and that was watched by quite literally millions of people.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

Yeah, I mean, just before we sat down to record, I said to you that as you were approaching Melbourne, I had messages from friends around Australia that are like, Are you watching this? That the flotilla that came out to meet you and people actually coming out to give you uh some food and drink as well, like, welcome to Australia. That must have been sort of a bit overwhelming as well.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

Do you know it was it was actually really fantastic, you know. I was just I felt so alone and so isolated and such a failure. You know, I really it was a really hard thing to process and a really it was really hard. I you know, in a way I didn't want to come to the shore. I didn't want to come to the shore and have to acknowledge to everyone that I had failed. And to be met by such a crowd with nothing but kind words and support and love was just incredible. And and people flew from Sydney or you know, to to come and meet me. Um and it was it was the absolute silver lining to an absolutely terrible moment.

unknown 49:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:10

I can't even begin to imagine sort of that emotional roller coaster because literally you you'd put out a a post, I think, a few hours before losing the master, how happy and how great things were going, and then a massive change in in emotions.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'd really enjoyed the Indian Ocean, the boat was going really well, I could definitely see a path to kind of jumping into the next group. Um, I'd had some good banter with Benji and Rahman, um and and everything just felt good, everything felt incredible. Um and yeah, in it it's two two seconds, less than two seconds, and it's all gone.

SPEAKER_00 49:58

As is life sometimes, it can all change rapidly.

SPEAKER_01 50:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:03

So just as a uh thing from uh Deb, my other half, her son, has actually said that some of the stories that you told during your um Von Day Globe, but especially about moments of isolation, for a teenage boy here who was going through periods of isolation, your words lifted up uh so many moments. So the stories from the sea can transcend so much to land. And um thank you for coming on, and uh I wish you all the very best uh in the hunt for your sponsorship and for the next Vonday Globe and wherever it takes you. Thank you, Pip.

SPEAKER_01 50:40

Thank you.