James Harayda, the 24 year old British rookie skipper, completed a remarkable first major IMOCA solo race when he secured 14th place on the 12th Route du Rhum-Destination Guadeloupe crossing the finish line this Tuesday morning 23rd November at 03:38:25hrs UTC. His elapsed time for the course is 13d 14h 13m 35s, 1d 20m 37s 10s after race winner Thomas Ruyant.
Harayda receives two hours of compensated time as he diverted to help fellow skipper Fabrice Amedeo whose IMOCA caught fire and sank. He was stood down before he reached the zone but was given redress for his actions.
Considering the young, ambitious Harayda only launched his IMOCA programme in April when he purchased Stephen Le Diraison’s Finot-Conq designed A Time for Oceans and his only previous solo race was the September’s 48 Heures Azimut warm up race, his 14th place today is a very promising start to a long term campaign which he hopes will take him beyond the 2024 Vendée Globe to new boat programme for 2028.
Harayda grew up sailing dinghies and small sports keelboats in Singapore before moving to crewed racing on the major classics like the Sydney Hobart, the Middle Sea Race and the Caribbean 600. On hearing that a mixed doubles Olympic offshore discipline was slated for the 2024 Olympics he launched a campaign, Gentoo Racing, with British record-breaking yachtswoman Dee Caffari. They raced offshore for two years on a SunFast 3300. But when the discipline was then voted off the proposed Olympic roster, Harayda changed course.
Following in depth conversations with Caffari and Alex Thomson he decided the Vendée Globe should be the aim.
He has sailed a course which belies his years, making prudent early choices to stay south out of the worst of the first cold fronts but then moving slightly west of his rivals after the Azores before pushing the reliable, ‘bullet proof’ straight daggerboard boat hard in the tradewinds. By the Tete-a-L’Anglais mark at the north of Guadeloupe early this evening Harayda was up to 14th. He then sailed one of this race’s most accomplished passages round Basse Terre, hardly slowing at all during the Caribbean night’s light winds, the cherry on the top of a very strong first Route du Rhum.
James Harayda said, “It was a brilliant race.. At the start I could never have imagined coming in in 14th. It is amazing especially after the first week when I was really struggling getting the boat to perform the way I wanted it to. I knew my opportunity would come in the transition to the tradewinds.
And so I stayed a little bit north and trying to get west and west until I found a nice little corridor I could go down into. I think I was becalmed for about half an hour when it was shifty and weird. After that it was good sailing. The last day today has been long. I was nervous about the wind holes on the west side of the island and so I made sure to take the most offshore route that anyone had taken yet. I got sucked into one small hole for ten minutes but that was it.
The first week was difficult, it was all upwind, every day was the same, just constant difficulties. I had an issue with my keel ram which I had to fix, and then I got involved with supporting Fabrice with his problems. And then finally I made the transition into the tradewinds and the closer I got here the better the sailing got.”
I think coming into this race in particular I came in with no pressure, I was not coming in to make a result. I was looking to do the race and just get across the finishing line, always thinking – I suppose – what’s the worst thing that could happen? That worked really well. It is quite an intimidating boat to step into and start racing and with that mindset it let me enjoy it a bit more.
Dees messages?
I had the devil and the angels on m shoulders, martin and the guys on my team saying ‘have you slept? Take it easy. Just make sure you get the boat into Guadeloupe safely, and Dee was saying ‘right last 72 hours push as hard as you can, and so I was balancing that. But Dee has been great, we chatted at times through the race.
I basically broke the race into a few different sections. The first bit was always going to be difficult. I knew upwind was where I struggled with the boat but the objective there was to just manage the fleet so that when the upwind did end I was in a position to capitalise on the downwind sailing where the boat could perform and so could I. The second part was the transition and it was really difficult.
I knew that if I wasn’t positioned well on that upwind section then I the had an opportunity to get back. I saw most of the fleet go south to try and get into the tradewinds early and I was really tempted because after a week of upwind sailing it was really tempting, just to get south and into the warm and downwind, but I ran a few different routings, options came up and stay north and push on through and that ended up working. I was a bit nervous as I thought I was going to be the only one to do it but then I saw Pip doing it
And that last bit was just a drag race for me coming down from the north. I knew I had four days to try and get bow forwards on them so that I knew that when I go that shift I was already bow forwards on them. That worked. I was not quite close enough to get to the next group. I was impressed by Tanguy who managed to sail super low and fast.
I was very relaxed going into the race and just wanted to keep my eyes and my mind open. And even today when you are tired and just wanting to get home and sail the shortest route I could see what worked.
We went through a lot of trackings from previous races and the Caribbean 600 to see where people had slipped up. And the forecasts I had were very good.
Now we need to raise some money to secure a full year next year with the Fastnet, the TJV and so on it will be a busy year, We need to raise some money