Pen Duick VI

Pen Duick VI is shown here leading the fleet during leg 1 of the 2023 Ocean Globe Race, heeling under full sail on the open Atlantic with a distant cargo ship on the horizon. The low afternoon light picks out her hull and the sweep of her sails — a silhouette largely unchanged since her launch fifty years earlier.

Built in 1973 at Chantiers de l'Atlantique in Saint-Nazaire for the legendary French sailor Éric Tabarly, Pen Duick VI was designed specifically for the inaugural Whitbread Round the World Race. At 73 feet she was the largest yacht in that first fleet, and her aluminium hull — radical for the time — gave her a significant weight advantage over fibreglass rivals. Though dismasted in the Southern Ocean in 1973, she returned to win the second Whitbread outright in 1977–78 under Tabarly's command.

The Ocean Globe Race, launched in 2023, commemorated the 50th anniversary of the original Whitbread by requiring pre-1988 yacht designs and banning modern electronics. Pen Duick VI entered as a fitting tribute to Tabarly's legacy and led the fleet south through the early stages. This painting captures that moment — an historic yacht still racing hard half a century on.