En route to Australia on her ‘slow boat to Melbourne’ Pip Hare debriefs

I am absolutely fine. Everything happened in a split second, just a split second. The boat took off, it landed, the noise was different. I was sitting on my chair on deck but it was the noise, it was the quieter landing, oddly, and then I just looked up and the rig was over the side and everything was so quick. And for three hours I was in automatic mode, everything was cleared away and I had a jury rig up and I was sailing in those three hours. I was fine, I was just working. And then the reality of everything just settles on you. That is when you are not fine, definitely.

It is a gradual thing, processing it, but I have been so busy today trying to pimp my rig. My little brother has challenged me to do 10 knots under a jury rig which I don’t think I am going to manage and so I spent today just trying to reconfigure the storm jib and I am sailmaking overnight tonight to try and make a trysail and so I am trying to keep busy. And then there are a lot of things to organise arriving in Australia. The people in Australia have been so kind. So many people have offered help and support and I am going to be met by people who will look out for me which is incredible. So there is lots to do. And then in my down moments I do have to process it. But there are parts of me that just don’t want to. I don’t want to. It is such a massive loss…everything. But I have two weeks to get over that….so I don’t make Australia too damp with my tears.

I am really hoping I do arrive between Christmas and New Year, not at New Year as I am thinking the worst thing would be arriving on New Year’s Day when everybody is partied out.

I salvaged my windward outrigger straight away and so effectively it is the mast with my backstay runner tails, and extended tackline to the top of the outrigger but left the structural loops and then I attached my shrouds to the loops and the foot is against one of these cups with ratchet straps. It has been a bit slow today. I have done 130 miles in a day and now if I do my overnight activities I am hoping to be turbocharged. But the problem is a front coming through in a couple of days and that is going to be 35kts northerlies. And I am just hoping that won’t just blow me back to where I have come from.

I am in a high pressure at the moment but then there are two consecutive fronts coming over, but so long as I can kind of hold station during the fronts, in the northerlies, I don’t mind being pushed back south again. What I don’t want is to be pushed southwest. As long as I can hold station in the northerlies then there are some goo easterlies coming and I should be able to make five or six knots directly down the rhumb line or slightly east to give me a bit of safety room. It is not too bad. Other than one day I should have breeze all the way.

I am still using my routing software and I am doing 12% polars, but on Day 1 I was doing 20%. And my sail selection chart is quite easy at the moment. But I will be fully pimped by the time I get to Melbourne.

In the 24 hours after the dismasting that was my lowest point and I struggled. I struggled to think about a comeback. It all seemed so hard. But what we have achieved in the last six years, me and my team, getting to where we have got to in the IMOCA fleet I am just not ready to let that go. I am not ready to let that knowledge and experience go. And I have such drive and passion for this sport. I want to be better. I want to do better. We are coming back in 2025. We are coming back.

Failure is a horrible word and talking to anyone else I would say it is not a failure. But in terms of everything I hoped for and the way the race was going, and it is just hard. It is the hardest thing. 

I am in contact with quite a few skippers still, following the race vicariously, and I wish them all the very best, I really do. I hope every one of them gets to the finish. Both Benjamin and Romain have sent me really lovely messages and we were having a really brilliant race, it was awesome. They are great sailors, I was proud to be with them.