Image: DeVenir skipper Violette Dorange (FRA) is photographed after taking 25th place in the Vendee Globe, on February 09, 2025 in Les Sables d'Olonne, France - (Photo by Jean-Marie Liot / Alea)
Kojiro Shiraishi, 24th in the Vendée Globe
Japan’s most renowned solo ocean racer Kojiro Shiraishi (DMG MORI Global One) secured 24th place on the 10th edition of the Vendée Globe today when he crossed the finish line off Les Sables d’Olonne at 0936hrs (UTC) today. His elapsed time is 90 days 21 hrs and he finishes 34 hrs after 23rd placed Guirec Soudée.
At 57 years of age Shiraishi completes the solo non stop round the world race for the second successive time, this time racing slightly quicker than in 2020-2021. His finish today completes his fifth solo circumnavigation.
It is a major achievement for the solo sailor who has now been ocean racing for more 20 years, successively completing two stopping round the world races in 2004 and 2007 during which his primary objective was to continue the legacy of his mentor, pioneering Japanese former taxi driver Yukoh Tadah who Koji was apprenticed too after falling in love with the idea of sailing the world’s oceans.
Koji’s 2016-2107 Vendée Globe finished prematurely when he had to retire into Cape Town when the top of the mast of Spirit of Yukoh snapped off. Completing the 2020-21 race in 16th position came after he had to spend five days repairing his mainsail which tore at the level of the second reef when he broached violently in big winds on the edge of storm Theta.
He fixed the main and the battens and sought only to finish the race whilst limited to sailing with a reef in the main for the remainder of the course. But in so doing he finally became the first Asian sailor to finish the race, a particular source of pride being the Vendée Globe was one of the goals of the late Tada who had been invited to race in the first edition.
With only very light winds and flat, smooth seas after the start, the North Atlantic on this Vendée Globe proved to be an entirely new experience for Shiraishi as it was the very first time he can remember ever settling into an ocean race without suffering from debilitating sea sickness.
But even so Koji was almost immediately into repair mode, first needing to fix his watermaker and then deal with hydrogenator issues which compromised his early attack. Not making the best of strategic choices in the light, fitful winds he crossed the Equator in 32nd place, celebrating with a small Sake
But the highly experienced, charismatic skipper of DMG MORI Global One caught up in the South Atlantic. But not long after passing the Cape of Good Hope he broached, his IMOCA made two involuntary gybes which broke 5 battens of his mainsail. There was a certain unfortunate air of déjà vu as it took two days to repair and get back on track but having sailed up north to find smoother conditions it was here he lost touch with the main group he was racing with and ended up a weather system behind. Pain and discomfort from mouth ulcers make his life unpleasant, he hangs in there, his luminous smile never and humble appreciation for the life he has forged are almost always apparent. He makes better progress in the Pacific and by Cape Horn, he is 25th rounding only 20 minutes behind Guirec Soudée.
But the South Atlantic is a big, big challenge and as for Guirec at the same time, at the Falklands, Kojiro Shiraishi hits a storm which he describes as "the most hellish conditions" since the start of this Vendée Globe!
But after the storm there is a persistent calm and he spends many days trying to break through the high pressure. But by the Azores he is racing closely with and enjoying the rivalry with a group comprising Violette Dorange (DeVenir) Antoine Cornic (Fives-Lantanta Environnement) and Seb Marsset (Foussier), describing himself somewhat self deprecatingly as the ‘venerable old gentleman’ of the group.
Violette Dorange, youngest ever skipper completes Vendée Globe in 25th place
Violette Dorange completed her first Vendée Globe at 10:39hrs (UTC) today, after 90 days, 22 hrs, 37 min at sea, to not only become the youngest ever finisher on the solo round the world race at the age of 23, taking 25th place, but in so doing, the bright, vivacious, talented young French sailor from La Rochelle achieves a major new pinnacle in a career which started with her sailing the English Channel and the Straits of Gibraltar in a tiny Optimist dinghy as a 15 year old. Her success marks her out as her as a major ocean racing talent for the future.
In so doing the very natural, down to earth Dorange – a multiple youth world championship medalist in the 420 dinghy - has built a huge following, engaging and inspiring a fan base numbering into the hundreds of thousands, many of whom turned out in Les Sables d’Olonne today to salute the young, rising star of this Vendée Globe.
Her April 17 2001 date of birth makes Dorange eight weeks younger than the previous youngest ever finisher, Swiss skipper Alan Roura who completed the 2016-17 race on 20th February after 105 days, six days shy of his 24th birthday. Her accomplishment comes some 24 years after the second place of the legendary British sailor Ellen MacArthur, then aged 24, who completed her race in 94d04h25m.
Dorange has already shone on a well proven pathway from talented Optimist sailor to 420 youth world medallist. She completed the Mini Transat race at just 18 before three successful years in the Figaro class in which she broke into the Top 10 overall in 2022. She completed two double handed Transatlantic races, most recently taking eighth on the Transat Paprec with Basile Bourgnon in 2022 and racing with British skipper Alan Roberts on the Transat en Double Concarneau
Legnedary French veteran Jean Le Cam recognised her talent and an extraordinary tenacity and took her under his wing. It has been on his super well prepared and proven Farr designed IMOCA, which already has five round the worlds to its name and which started life as Michel Desjoyeaux’s 2008 race winning Foncia, that Dorange has completed her accomplished Vendée Globe.
Her enthusiasm for communicating in personal, non-dramatic terms has enchanted race fans of all ages. She enthused off the coast of Namibia that she had “never gone so far in her life"!
In her build up to the Vendée Globe she finished last year’s solo Transat CIC in 18th place on The Transat CIC and then 18th again in the race back across the Atlantic, the New York Vendee.
Her Vendée Globe has been characterised by her alternating between phases of fierce, close racing with her rivals punctuated by prudent moments when she took her foot off the gas when she felt her safety was threatened.
On two occasions, before the Cape of Good Hope and especially before Cape Horn, the skipper of Devenir chose to ease back "It's a difficult decision, but I prefer to preserve my boat, not go and smash everything because most of all I want to finish this race!" explains the former Figaro sailor as she throttled right back for three days approaching the tip of South America along with the more experienced Arnaud Boissières and Eric Bellion.
"I was too scared"
It was her seamanship and adaptability, her ability to successfully deal with technical problems like her pedestal winch and her engine that allowed her to finish her race
And the youngest skipper in this Vendee Globe had her fair share of problems. In the Indian Ocean she completely dismantled and reassembled her pedestal ‘coffee grinder’winch during seven hours. Then things got tough south of Cape Leeuwin, which she passed in 26th position in tough conditions. In a 50-knot squall, her FR0 tore and the runner block broke. "I thought the mast was going to break in two. I was extremely lucky," she said, before later facing a major engine failure reduced her energy generation capacity.
She did shared her anxieties and her hard times. On January 19 South of Brazil, she had to climb the mast for the second time in 20 knots of wind and 2 meters of swell! "Honestly, it was a nightmare. I thought I was going to hurt myself. I will never do it again in my life in such a situation because I was too scared."
She went from strength to strength, crossing the outwards equator in 21st position, ahead of Jean Le Cam or loving the moments when snow was falling on the deck of her IMOCA in the Southern Ocean.
All the way from the start to the finish line Violette Dorange has illuminated her race with all the joys of a successful first Vendée Globe, and for sure she is a sailor with a long and bright future.