Before he started his Vendée Globe campaign 51 year old Hungarian skipper Szabolcs Weöres was a total rookie when it came to the IMOCA class and, indeed, solo racing. He started sailing Optimists on Lake Balaton and progressed through the dinghy classes but his offshore racing was mainly crewed. He became a boatbuilder and professional rigger working with the South African Shosholoza team on the 32nd America’s Cup, graduating to run his own rigging business.
But the Vendée Globe became his dream, partly inspired by Nandor Fa his Hungarian mentor who has completed the solo round the world race twice. They have remained close but Szabi is very much self taught, scaling a near vertical learning curve. But since day one his methodical approach, ‘take one step at a time and then another one' has stood him in good stead. His low point was being forced out of his first big solo race the Vendée Arctic on the first night with a small electrical fault on his keel, but since then he has completed all the major Transatlantics and now feels ready to try and follow his Vendée Globe dream sailing the Owen Clarke design which started life as Dee Caffari’s Aviva and raced the last Vendée Globe as Ari Huusela’s Stark IMOCA.
