Dating back to the last Vendée Globe sailing competition, pictures have been recently awarded at Sportel Awards 2017 as one among the best sport footage of 2016. On November 30th 2016, Hervé Borde filmed Armel Le Cléeac’h’s Banque Populaire and Alex Thomson’s Hugo Boss sailing yachts off the Kerguelen Islands, in the south Indian Ocean.
https://vimeo.com/239498205
The French videomaker’s footage clearly shows the harsh conditions met by the two sailors. Harsh, yes, but not unusual for those latitudes. Part of the French overseas territories, Kerguelen Islands raise in fact in the South Indian Ocean at 49° 20′ S and 69° 20′ E.
Desolation Island is the main island of the archipelago and the third largest one of French islands after New Caledonia and Corsica. The place was so named by Captain James Cook, who visited these islands in 1776 after the first discovery by Yves Joseph de Kerguelen-Trémarec four years before.
