Charting a New Course

We solo sailors like to be in control. Living 24/7 on a supercharged brute of a boat, navigating through some of the world’s most remote environments, being entirely responsible for our own safety and performance requires super vigilance and super control. We like to plan, we choose the course to steer, we define our parameters for risk and reward, we accept responsibility for our mistakes and take pride in our successes.
 
Of course, you learn pretty quickly that there are elements such as the weather that cannot, and will not, bow to our demands; but the rest of it we micro-manage to death. We are the ultimate control freaks: with eyes on everything, alarms set, backup plans made, deciding the path we will take, how hard we will push, when to act and when to wait.
 
To take control away from any sailor, will make them hurt. Our boats are beautiful pieces of manmade ingenuity, but without human input, they will drift and founder.  A boat needs a human to steer it on a safe passage and every sailor knows that the moment they lose control of their boat is a moment when our safety is compromised.

Since I stepped onto Australian shores in December 2024, after dismasting halfway through my second Vendée Globe Race, I have been dealing with uncertainty and the torture of being stuck in a cycle of waiting. The first five months of 2025 have been some of the most stressful of my career. I have had little to no control over many things, and for a self-starting, pro-active, doer, this has, and continues to be excruciating.

The combination of losing our title sponsor, as well as the huge length of time it has taken to get the boat back to Europe has meant that all our plans to be ready to race this summer have had to be shelved. When I initially came back from Australia in January, we hoped the team would be back on the water for the Fastnet race in July, but with each passing week, we have had to readjust our ambitions. It has been a time of huge uncertainty, with days of hope and disappointment closing chasing each other in quick succession. With the short-term landscape changing every day, it has been pretty obvious that to survive as a team we would need to be flexible, to be steady on what our long-term objectives and approach them with creativity and innovation. Just like in ocean racing, the fastest route between two points may well not be the straight line. We needed to lift up our heads and look for a new route forward. One thing is for sure, nothing will happen without our energy and determination.
 
It is this creative problem solving that led me in to conversations with Scott Shawyer, the owner and skipper of the IMOCA team Canada Ocean Racing. Scott started his Vendée campaign in 2022, with the goal of building miles and experience in the class with a non-foiling boat during the 2024 Vendée cycle, changing up to a foiler in 2025 which would set him up for the 2028 Vendée Globe race.

Following the success of the last Ocean Race (the fully crewed round the world IMOCA race in 2023) Scott decided to extend his program to include the next Ocean Race (2027) and I had already been talking to him about joining his team for the race. After dismasting our conversations accelerated, he knew it was going to be a fight for me to get back up and running again, and Scott had already bought his new foiling boat, which would need some expertise within the team to help get the boat flying and race ready for The Ocean Race Europe over the summer.
 
After many chats and idea swapping, Scott offered me a role within the team, running the sailing program and competing in the two-month Ocean Race Europe over the summer. I jumped at the opportunity to be involved in the project; it couldn’t have come at a better time and has shone a bright ray of sailing sunshine that I very much needed as we struggle to work out how to get our own project back on the water. 

Last week was my first full time with the project and together we are taking over the old Verdier-designed boat Groupe Dubriel, formerly 11th hour Racing, which was the boat that Sébastien Simon raced to an incredible 3rd place in the 2024 Vendée Globe Race.
 
We will be racing in The Ocean Race Europe, starting on the 10th August in Kiel. It is a five leg, crewed race around Europe, sailed with a crew of four sailors and an onboard reporter. There are currently six teams entered, all with foiling boats, and the race promises to be fast paced and full on.  Leg 1 is Kiel, Germany to Portsmouth, UK. Leg 2, Portsmouth to Cartagena, Spain, with a flyby off the coast of Portugal. Leg 3 is Cartegena to Nice, France. Leg 4 is Nice to Genoa, Italy. Leg 5 is Genoa to Montenegro and the finish.
 
The race will last around six weeks, at each stopover there will be race villages and opportunities to see the fleet and the sailors up close. The entire event will be shared the usual social media channels, and I, of course will be sharing our race with you.
 
Our team will be racing under the Be Water Positive branding, a cause Scott has been advocating for throughout his years of ocean racing. The slogan is a call to action for all of us to remember that water, whether in the sea or flowing from our taps, is a precious, life-giving resource that we, as human beings, have a duty to protect in every way we can.

Head to The Ocean Race Europe website here to find out more information on stopovers and dates.
 
It is exciting to be involved in this project, and I am looking forward to all that I will learn as being part of the crew. However, that does not mean we have abandoned our own quest for a future solo project. I still need to keep building on my skills and experience while we work on the next Pip Hare Ocean Racing campaign. But it is hard, the boat has been stuck on a ship for months, and without sponsors we are not able to invest the necessary funds to get us back on the water again after dismasting. In January, we really hoped to be racing again by the middle of the year, but the keel and the boat only arriving in Europe the week before last, it is clear now that trajectory is not possible.

Credit: Canada Ocean Racing LLC

So, we have had to adapt, to zoom out, think about the bigger objectives and look at all paths that will take us in that direction. The objective is to race solo around the world again and to continue developing the skills and experience of our team in the UK.
 
The major blocker for us at the moment is finding commercial partnerships that will enable us to get the team back on the water. All professional sport is now funded and maintained through these commercial partnerships, in that way we are no different to a football club or a formula one team. It’s unfortunate that we weren’t able to secure ongoing funding before the start of the Vendée, but we are where we are. We accept our situation and are focused on adapting to the circumstances.
 
This led to a moment of inspiration for us as a team. We thought about all of the skills and experience we have built and gained from running an international yacht racing team for the last six years and we realised that these skills could be put to use helping other people achieve their own goals and objectives, to help keep us on our feet while we are building our next campaign.
 
Within the team we have huge experience in project management, logistics, risk and crisis management, technical expertise, medical expertise, experience in comms, marketing and PR. We have taken an idea and made it happen, we have complied to international race organisation criteria, moved a team around the world to manage starts and finishes, written and delivered against plans and budgets for both long- and short-term projects. We have worked with sponsors and individuals, set up events, reported against contracts and helped the general public follow our own project. All of these skills we had to learn or recruit ourselves and it has not been easy or straight forward. But now we have them and we realised we could use these skills not just to help ourselves but also to work with others.

And so, Pip Hare Ocean Racing Services was born. We are offering our expertise on any project, it doesn’t have to be a sailing race, it could be a personal challenge, a boat refit, any sport or activity and of any length. We will work with teams and individuals, we can offer any level of support from a one-hour consultation to a fully managed project. To find out more about how the power and experience of the Pip Hare Ocean Racing Team might be able to help you please check out our webpage and get in touch to tell us about what you need.

We are already working with two Class 40 race yachts who will be competing in the Globe 40 Round the World event later this year, and really enjoying helping them shape up the race of their lives.
 
We can still feel the aftershocks that have followed the impact of dismasting last December, it had a big impact on me personally and on the team. But we are back up and moving forward and as confident and ambitious as we have ever been. We have a great summer ahead of us and working with other teams has injected energy and enthusiasm.
 
More than anything I am looking forward to some four months of training and competition and to collaborate with other teams and sailors is going to deliver incredible rewards.

Pip x