Ollie Heer didn't come to ocean racing the usual way. There was no childhood on the Brittany coast, no Mini 6.50 pedigree, no French sailing club groomed him for Les Sables d'Olonne. He grew up sailing Optimists on Lake Zurich, studied international business and Mandarin across Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, then settled into a corporate job — until February 2014, when his father died of a cardiac arrest at just 52. Convinced that overwork had killed him, and seeing his own path in the mirror, Heer quit on the spot, packed his suit away, and drove a 60-year-old campervan from Switzerland to Hamble on England's south coast.

The first months were unglamorous: eight months living out of the van with no running water or electricity while he completed his Yachtmaster Fastrack with Sailing Logic. But he moved fast. A late-notice skipper job led to running Giles Redpath's Lombard 46 Pata Negra to overall victory in the 2018 Round Britain and Ireland Race, then a call from Alex Thomson landed him at the bottom of the Hugo Boss IMOCA team. Over roughly 50,000 miles with Thomson — including a dash to Cape Town when a rudder snapped during the 2020 Vendée Globe — he rose from junior crew to boat captain and co-skipper. It was Thomson, on a delivery home across the South Atlantic, who told him he should race the Vendée himself.

The solo version has been anything but smooth. His first campaign, on a 2007 daggerboard Farr IMOCA, ran on a fraction of the typical budget — he estimated a competitive campaign needs around $2.5 million and he had $500,000. There were moments when he and his wife Theresa, now his team manager, literally split a 90p baguette for dinner. The boat was damaged at the Route du Rhum start, lost its forestay a day into the Transat Jacques Vabre, and was knocked flat in 40-knot winds during the Transat CIC, forcing him to hand-steer solo across an Atlantic with dead electronics. He still scraped together enough qualification miles to claim the 40th and final slot in the 2024 Vendée Globe, finishing 29th.

Rather than stop there, he's doubled down. Funding came together in December, leaving three months to raise over €2 million, and the team bought a proven 2018 VPLP foiling IMOCA — the former Charal/Teamwork SNEF sailed hard by Justine Mettraux — complete with its drawings, polars and pilot settings, a shortcut that could have them sailing near the boat's limits within a year. Now branded Embrace the Challenge, with 15 staff and sponsors like Burgerstein Vitamine on board, the team has moved from Port la Forêt in France to Endeavour Quay in Gosport, aiming squarely at the next Vendée Globe.

For travellers, this is a good reminder that Hamble and Gosport — an hour from London — are living centres of offshore racing, not just pretty riverside villages. Marinas, boatyards and race training schools there welcome visitors, and watching IMOCA refits at places like Endeavour Quay is a free spectacle in itself.

Story first reported by Yachting World.