“Sleep on an Imoca (the class of monoccosium boats on which the competitors of the Vendée Globe, editor’s note) sail, It’s a bit like taking a nap in a 30 -knot shaker. ” When she described the sleep that awaited her on becoming, her overpowered 60 -foot boat (18.28 meters), Violette Dorange spun the metaphor, before starting, on October 30, 2024. A handful of months later and at only 23 years old, the youngest of the Vendée Globe became the youngest navigator to have finished the round of the world, solo non -stop and without assistance, 10 p.m. through the planet’s oceans. Twenty-six days after Charlie Dalin (Macif Santé Pngoyance), the big winner of this tenth edition and new record holder of the event.
With around 45,000 kilometers to go, the race is considered the most difficult in the world, hence its nickname “Everest des Mers”. Constant stress, sleep debt and caloric loss: the bodies and spirits of the Skippers of the Vendée Globe are subjected to the test. While thirty navigators rallied the Sables-d’Olonne (Vendée), after all left the same place on November 10, 2024, three are still in the running and must arrive before the deadline set for March 7, 2025 at 8 a.m., if they want to be officially classified, while seven had to abandon.
During her journey, by publishing many videos on social networks in which she told her adventure, while reinventing communication in the sailing world, Violette Dorange conquered the hearts of the public and became the darling of the race. In her testimonies published regularly on Instagram or on Tiktok (where her audience exploded), she showed the reality of solo life on a boat: both certain technical aspects as the tests she had to go through, but also her daily life, what she eats or how she sleeps.
Sleeping on an Imoca is a bit like taking a nap in a 30 -knot shaker. On the menu: micro-sests, rocked by waves and on-board alarms! pic.twitter.com/vceeavupw0
– Violette Dorange (@violedorange) October 30, 2024
A split “night”
But precisely, how do you sleep when you are alone aboard a boat spinning at a top speed between 30 and 40 knots, between 55 and 75 km/h, through the ocean? The navigators take shelter in a special bed that forms a shell, called a “bannette”, the feet forward and a foam mattress to absorb shocks and limit the “shaker” effect. They have a mask on their eyes and a pillow that holds their heads, but above all an alarm clock to sleep only in short periods.
Indeed, it is unthinkable to dive into the arms of Morpheus for a night of six to eight hours, leaving his boat drift unattended on the sometimes very agitated waters of the route. It would risk risking an accident and seriously put yourself in danger.
Thus, during the two to three months of racing, the solitary navigators of the Vendée Globe practice a fractional sleep: they sleep only by slices which last between twenty minutes and an hour and a half and limit their sleep time. Between these restrictions and the essential rest time to avoid drowsiness and the error that can be fatal, sleep management is a major issue for these high -level athletes. But how do they do and what does it teach us about segmented sleep?
Sleep debt and hallucinations
“I am a little tired, I feel that I am no longer too lucid. (…) Sometimes, when I am burnt in my boat, I am convinced that there is someone who is in the cockpit, maneuvering or adjusting in my place. But really, it’s a feeling, as if there was someone, what. In general, it’s Alan (Roberts), my Coskipper. He is there, I don’t have to worry. While in fact, I am all alone. I think that’s a sign that you have to go sleep! “ On January 5, 2025, after fifty-five days of racing, the skipper Clarisse Crémer (L’Occitane en Provence) thus testified in a video of the hallucinations caused by the sleep debt.
🧠 After almost 2 months of racing, fatigue is felt for many skippers in the Vendée Globe which put their bodies and their minds to the test. 😮💨
This is particularly the case for @Clasurlatlantiq in the grip of hallucinations at the moment.😵💫
Stay lucid, … pic.twitter.com/q64f6qqhpz– Vendée Globe (@vendeeglobe) January 5, 2025
As much as the management of the boat and the course, sleep management is one of the major axes of the performance of browsers and navigators. Limiting sleep debt to maintain your cognitive capacities is essential to analyze the situation and quickly make decisions. In the extreme situation that is navigation around the world alone and without assistance, the slightest error can seriously endanger skippers and their boats. “Seventeen hours of active watch is equivalent to a rate of 0.5 gram of alcohol in the blood”recalls the road safety site, which encourages drivers to take breaks regularly to maintain a good degree of vigilance.
Even more serious, too much sleep debt can cause hallucinations to fall asleep during moments of drowsiness – which is called “hypnagogical hallucinations” – as those described by Clarisse. It can also cause confusion to awakening, called “sleep inertia”.
“I think I have a little hallucinations of fatiguealso entrusted Parisian skipper on January 5. There, for example, the sea is very bizarre, it has lots of different components. Suddenly, we go up, we go down, but it makes zigzags. For a few seconds, I felt like I was in Auvergne on a hill riding and descending hills. It’s not a dream, it’s not something you imagine in your head. (…) It’s as if you were transposing yourself elsewhere for a few seconds. It’s really a realistic feeling. ”
3h40 sleep per day
Like Violette Dorange or Clarisse Crémer (eleventh at the finish and second woman in this edition), they are twelve navigators to have started the Vendée Globe since the creation of the race in 1989. One of them, Pip Hare, 47 years old at that time, completed the world tour in 2021 on Medallia. The British skipper had then been the subject of a careful study of her diet and his sleep.
During the more than 95 days of racing she needed to go around the world, in addition to a deficit of 27,900 kilocalories (Kcal), its sleep debt was very important. While its average is eight hours a night in normal times, it was reduced to 3:40 on average during the Vendée Globe, with an extreme of only 2:41 when it crossed the South Pacific, part of the route particularly at risk.
Another study published in 2020 and conducted on the forty-two solo navigators from the Mini Transat La Boulangère (which links the Sables-d’Olonne to Guadeloupe) showed that more than half of them were preparing before the race lengthening their sleep time-to prepare for a debt-and starting to practice a fractional sleep in several periods. Indeed, to reduce their sleep time while preserving their vigilance, skippers use this type of roller.
Polyphasic sleep
While our usual sleep is said to be monophasical, that is to say that we sleep in one go, solo navigators, they practice a so-called polyphasic sleep, in several periods of twenty minutes to an hour and a half, like infants. Indeed, the important thing is the number of hours of sleep per twenty-four hour tranches.
Sleeping in a single -handed manner has not always been the rule. For example, in the Middle Ages, the habit was to sleep in two stages (biphasic sleep): we got up in the middle of the night before going back to bed then for a “second sleep”. Sleep has only become single -handed single, especially with the arrival of electricity, which made it possible to delay the bedtime.
The DR Bertrand de la Giclais, head of the Argonay-Annecy (Haute-Savoie) and PR Damien Léger, head of the Center for Sleep and Vigilance of the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital in Paris, have published several articles on sleep in extreme condition and they advised skippers on its management. One of their studies, published in September 2016 in the Revue medicine du Sommeil, thus recorded the sleep of seven navigators during the Route du Rhum, a solo race through the Atlantic, between Saint-Malo and Guadeloupe, which lasts between six and about twenty days (depending on the categories and the different levels).
“During the period at sea with polyphasic sleep, the total sleep time of the solo navigators is halvednoted the researchers. But the deep sleep time decreases much less, allowing relative recovery. ” Indeed, sleep is divided into several phases, including slow and deep, more restorative sleep, and paradoxical sleep, useful for memorization.
“If it is well conducted, polyphasic sleep has restful sleep in significant densitycontinued the specialists. Thus, after twenty-four to forty-eight hours of the sea, episodes of sleep from twenty to forty-five minutes are enough to obtain deep sleep and paradoxical sleep, which contributes to giving polyphasic sleep a quality equivalent to that of monophasic sleep on the ground in terms of recovery. ”
The researchers also noted that the skippers chose special hours-evening, night and early afternoon-for these sleep phases. They then called them “sleep doors”, schedules allowing this restful sleep to be more easily obtained.
A good idea for those who stay on the ground?
What can sleep in these extreme conditions can teach us about our sleep to us? “This work could help to demonstrate that polyphasic sleep is good and therefore constitute a strategy to avoid sleep debt under other conditions, as in posted workers, for example”suggest the authors of the study mentioned above. The employees posted are the people who work alternately early in the morning, late at night or at night. “It would thus be possible for them to sleep day at less restrictive hours by choosing slots from” sleep doors “, that is to say in the early morning, then in the afternoon”they conclude.
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Other high -level athletes also practice fractional sleep, such as Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, to whom it was advisable to sleep in six naps of 90 minutes each day, rather than during a night of several hours in a row. He was even advised to sleep alone to avoid being woken up by his partner. But beware, only before competitions. Because if this can allow better recovery, or even save sleep time, this rhythm can also seriously harm social life.
