The 26 year old who grew up in Singapore and has only been racing in IMOCA since 2022 after transitioning from crewed racing through double handed racing and training with Dee Caffari, has now completed three good solo IMOCA races – the 2022 Route du Rhum on which he finished in 14th, last month’s westwards Transat CIC also in 19th and now a solid result on what has been a slow, difficult, atypical race from New York to the Vendée.
As the second youngest racer in the fleet who works with a meagre budget and a very, very small technical team, Harayda has acquitted himself flawlessly, sailed smartly and competitively and on all his races so far has had no significant technical problems. Like his French rival Violette Dorange who has raced these two back to back Transats, Harayda represents the next generation of IMOCA sailors.
His race in figures
Finish time: 17h 47min 27sec (french time)
Elapsed: 14d 21h 47min 27sec
Delta to first: 4d 18h 02min 57sec
Distance covered: 3 754.32 milles
Average speed (on the great circle route): 8.86 knots
he said
"It was much more challenging than I think anyone expected. Today was probably the hardest, the sailing part was not too difficult, there was mainly light winds and the boat did an amazing job in staying together, but I think mentally it was very tough. But I am happy, I am happy to be here and happy with the result. If you had asked my if I would have been happy with 19th place 48 hours ago I would have bitten your arm off. But if you had offered my 19th place on the third day of racing I probably would not have been too pleased. Early on in the race I had wanted to go north and do what Boris did and had lined myself up with the fleet as I saw it as an option so that if I saw one or two other boats go I would have gone, but I did not want to do that myself. And so the weather files changed and Conrad, Clarisse and I started working our way south and then two days later I had done 300 miles south, and then I looked at the new weather files closely and saw that we were going to get shut out and the door would close on us…so we weren’t able to head south. So I effectively had to do a U turn and head all the way back up north again. And that was the hardest part for me as I knew I would be in last place. So that was the hardest part. But the last 48 hours were good and I wriggled myself through."
