The mini globe race is a solo around the world race where participants sail on an extremely small sailboat, a “Mini”. There are 15 boats participating this year. The course takes them from Antigua to Panama where the boats get put on trailers and driven across the Panama Isthmus to the Pacific Ocean, where they go to Fiji, then Capetown, and finally back to Antigua. But before any of the boats could even start the circumnavigation, they had to do a transatlantic as a qualifier.

`The boats are a Mini 5.80 class that are built by each competitor. Competitors have multiple options to build their boat. They can buy the plans for their boat and cut all the wood themselves or they can buy a kit with all the precut pieces. They also have the option to send the plans to a boat builder to get it built for them. 

Despite being a one design class, everybody has a couple of choices regarding the companionway and the cabintop. For the cabin top, It is either a normal cabintop with windows on the side, or a bubble on the roof that offers a 360 view of everything around you. For the companionway you can kind of do whatever you want with it, but most boats have something like a typical deckhatch placed nearly vertically at the front of the cockpit.

There are some limitations and things you can't do, for example, having wind instruments or water generators. The spirit of the race is that it is a cheap, affordable way to race around the world, and if somebody doesn't have the budget to get equipment that other people have, that would give them a major disadvantage, so they eliminate all of the unnecessary expensive tech.

The overall length is 5.80m, the beam is 2.27m, and the draft is 1.4m. They have a displacement of 950kg and a ballast of 244 kg. Sail-wise, most boats have a main and jib, and a few downwind sails.

We were all sailing along a similar route and we had seen them twice before, in Tahiti and in Tonga, so while we were both in Vuda Marina in Fiji, we finally decided to talk to them. I managed to talk to 4 participants and ask them some questions about what they were doing, what it was like living on board and why they wanted to do this race.

First up was Renault, from Switzerland and sailing on Capichunette, his boat that had its hull built by a factory and the rest built by himself. He told me that he had wanted to do this ever since he saw the finish of the mini transat in guadeloupe as a kid. I asked him some questions about what life is like onboard, the first one being “what is your sleeping schedule?” He said that he slept in one hour intervals, he slept for an hour then looked around to make sure everything was alright, then slept another hour. I asked him about food as well, and he showed us his stores, rice, pasta, normal food items, nothing special, and how he cooked them on his little gimballed stove top.

Next was Adam, from Newcastle, who was sailing Little Wren. He decided to buy the kit since he wasn’t an experienced boat builder, it took him a year and a half to finish the boat. He wanted to go further in sailing and decided that this was the way to do it. I also learned from him that all the participants are required to do a lot of safety training as well as a transatlantic on their boat before the start.

The next Person I interviewed was Pilar, from Barcelona, and sailing on Peter Punk. She said that she loves being truly alone and sailing, and this was the best way to do it for her. From her I learned how she got a sponsor, and that only about half of the boats were competitive. She worked at a yoga place and asked some of her friends there to sponsor her, and they agreed. She also has a GoFundMe page that will be linked below.

Finally I talked to Christian, from Germany who had built his boat Argo, number 103, from the kit. When I asked him why he wanted to do this he said that he had always wanted to do this, and that it was important to him that he built his own boat because his dad built his own boat too. He put a lot of effort into making the interior of his boat look nice and homey, and certainly succeeded. He named it Argo after his grandfather’s boat that he spent a lot of time on as a child.

He showed me a lot of his systems, like a really cool Vesper VHF that looks like a phone and has AIS and GPS data on it as well. He was also in the process of trying to find a sponsor. I also found it interesting that while Renault had a small stove top, Christian had a little portable camping stove that got mounted onto the inside of his cockpit.

We will be following the same general route as the race so we hope to see them again and maybe even do followup interviews someplace else, like in Capetown.

One thing that I have noticed about big yachting races is that they all have a special factor that appeals to an audience, and the racers. For example, the Americas Cup has massive foiling boats, going super fast that are match racing each other. Or SailGP which also has big foiling boats, but this time they're fleet racing. This race, however, has a very different factor, it's not particularly fast, and they are certainly not big boats, but it's still appealing to follow. The main reason, I think, is that sailors are alone, and that fascinates people.  Being completely alone on a small boat in the ocean is terrifying to most people, me included. The sailors enjoy it though, and that is amazing.