Back
News

Hubert Lemonnier interview : Adrena, an essential tool for Vendée Globe race direction.

 

Hubert Lemonnier, race director, is sharing with us how he uses Adrena, a key tool to manage this mystic race. From preparation to follow up at sea, Adrena stands out as true mate helping decision making and insuring all competitors safety.

 

Preparation before the race

From the very first step building the race, Adrena plays a key role.

First, we set up the date of departure and then from it all topics. We work on harbour facilities, we check the bathymetry and charts.

Adrena is really useful for the exchanges with the maritim authorities, to provide  views and drawings to exchange with them our ideas, our intentions and putting pen on paper what we decided.

The tool also enable us to define areas, like forbidden areas, ice spots… and all what could represent a potential danger. Thanks to Adrena, we create roadbooks, we use waypoints files and we can modify them.

At last, we rely on Adrena to organize the 40 boat arrivals as they had to be docked before oct 18th, noon! The tide function, that we use for depth, helps us to schedule boat entry and exit and to set up departure time from deck.

 

Race follow up

From nov 10th, we use Adrena for weather routings. Weather routing, weather prediction, monitoring, media communication… Each of the 40 boats are equipped with a tracker and their position are automatically integrated in Adrena. so we can monitor their progress in real time and to react quickly if needed.

The race control is on deck H24 like in a real IMOCA at sea! We organize sifts with the 5 members of the team to monitor the fleet. we always have one person dedicated to the fleet and another one to answer specific demands, interviews…

Adrena is our central tool to manage, monitor and create our work environment .

 

 Zoom on two features : Weather routing and the Hazard Button

These features enable us to fulfill our two fundamental missions. Race tracking: ensuring that a boat is on course with a consistent speed in relation to the goal and the weather.

And also, route information: retrieving information and distributing it to the fleet so that they are aware of their competitors position.

The Hazard button is a great new feature. It allows us to detect the presence of obstacles at sea. This feature has already enabled us to detect cetaceans, drifting beacons, abandoned boats, sunken boats, containers, pieces of wood, platforms, unidentified fishermen…