Italian skipper Andrea Lodolo announced his retirement from the 2026 Golden Globe Race on 8 November following a knee injury in the midst of the Southern Ocean.

In an exclusive satellite interview just hours after the announcement, Lodolo tells YM, ‘Morale is high.’ He’s proud of what he’s accomplished.

‘There’s remorse, because I know I could have done well, but there’s no disappointment. Up until the injury, I felt good, I felt fast. I did some days under spinnaker where the boat was flying.’

Lodolo was advised by Hamble-based MSOS, an offshore medical provider, not to continue in the race.

Until his injury he was placed third, behind Damien Guillou and Ertan Beskardes.

Live from the Southern Ocean

Lodolo is sailing smoothly at over 6 knots under staysail and a main (2 reefs) when we call on Sunday evening.

He feels lucid. The morphine he’s under isn’t impacting him mentally, though the resulting stomach acid is making it difficult to eat.

While he’s still offline, he has alerted his family that he is safe (and that he’ll be home for Christmas), spoken to the medics, and alerted race organisers.

He gives us the play by play of the past three days.

Injured in between two storms

Lodolo was sailing southeast when he received the storm announcement.

Though he tried to keep sailing upwind Bibi, his Rustler 36, couldn’t make progress against the waves. He turned Southwest and for a while had no further problems.

Until the tempest subsided.

Lodolo had just set back on course when he went down into the cabin to retrieve a wrench.

The boot of his back foot caught in the companionway. He fell into the cabin, directly onto his left knee.

Though he felt an immediate pulsing pain, he still believed it was a minor injury. He took Ibuprofen and lay down in his bunk, determined to carry on.

Through the night, the pain never subsided. He tried packs of crushable ice, spray ice, stretches to release the nerves.

He called MSOS at first light. They assessed the damage over the phone, and within minutes had realised it was a severe injury.

Deciding to retire wasn’t much of a decision, Lodolo says. The medics said it was necessary.

‘I did what I could to medicate myself, but when the professional says it’s time to turn back, you have to listen.’

By then Lodolo could not bend his leg, lie on it, or climb into his bunk. He had curled up on the floor, with a spinnaker as his cushion.

MSOS gave him exercises and prescribed morphine, then counciled him to seek immediate specialist care.

They offered emergency rescue, which he declined.

And then came the second storm.

One leg to face the storm

Just after the injury, Lodolo was hit by another storm with winds over 50 knots and 3 metres of wave.

‘To protect the boat, I needed to meet the storm with my storm jib up,’ he says.

Lodolo keeps his storm jib on a removable stay that he always leaves rigged, a system he believes he may have invented.

The base of the sail is connected to a sheet that sends back into the cockpit. When the storm jib is up, he can regulate it from inside the cockpit, and how high he wants it to fly.

But he still had to connect the head.

Injury and all, Lodolo had to somehow get himself to the bow, change the halyard from the staysail to the storm jib, remove the lashing from the sail, and make it back to the cockpit.

‘When you can walk, this job is easy. But I had to do it dragging myself along the deck, pulling myself along the lifeline with my hands, not moving my left leg.

I managed to remove the staysail that I was using to sail upwind, and once the wind went well over 40, I sailed with the storm jib and 3 reefs in the main, still upwind, steering slightly into the wind.’

While this was by far the most painful manoeuver, any task on board became painful, and more complicated.

‘Every once in a while I also have to drag myself into the companionway cover. I’ve now set up a primitive system where I can reach the sheets just going into the cockpit to the hip.

Now I have 2 reefs on the staysail. Putting the second one in was an endeavour. Usually you work from above a winch, but I was working from below. That made everything more complicated.’

What’s next for Andrea Lodolo

By Sunday evening, the conditions are already less extreme, with no storms on the horizon.

Lodolo is 42 degrees South. It’s 4 degrees below deck and 50 knots of wind above.

“I’m still in the Southern Ocean,’ Lodolo points out. ‘It’s very humid. I need to force myself to eat, but even standing up and balancing to boil after in the jet boil to make food required me to stand up and balance. It’s not a simple endeavour.’

On Saturday 7 November, he reports logging more than 140 miles.

But he’s still got 1800 miles to go til Cape Town, injury and all.

He expects to arrive around next Sunday, and will be met by assistance.

‘I’m in no conditions to moor singlehanded. I can’t even stay upright in the cockpit to steer,’ he says.

The first thing he’ll do on land?

Ever the pragmatist, Lodolo says, ‘Go to customs.’

Then he wants to put Bibi in drydock, clean the hull, wash the interiors with fresh water and vinegar. He wants the wood to dry out, take down all the sails and send them for servicing.

‘I don’t have this smania to get back to land,’ he reflects, using an Italian word that means urgent need, or fervor.

‘Honestly, the only smania I have is to set my boat in order.

Making sure the boat is in order makes me feel good in my soul. I’m not getting in, dropping everything, and running back to Italy first thing. The boat takes priority.’

Only once he’s satisfied that Bibi has been looked after will he get a comfortable flight home.

Bibi, 2 months in

Bibi held up remarkably well through two months of intensive, nonstop sailing.

Lodolo casts about the cabin around him in real time to identify any failures and fixes.

‘I broke a few sheets, the head of the spinnaker pole, because I gybed with the spinnaker when there were over 20 knots. That was a mistake. But I had the spares onboard, and I fixed it.’

He changed out lots of small lines, ‘They’re polyester, so every three weeks I took a metre off everything and had to stitch it up with whipping thread.’

He used part of the portable sail locker he invented to patch a minute water ingress from a porthole.

He changed the jetboil and changed its position after salt spray creeping in through the companionway caused rust.

Otherwise, he calls most of the other onboard fixes ‘micromaintenance.’

‘I kept a list of all the odd jobs, actually. I think I reached 130.’

The Aftermath

‘I’m feeling positive, and I’m not giving an inch,’ Lodolo says of how he’s feeling now.

‘Even the doctor was surprised by my reaction. He kept asking me how I was feeling about having to retire, if I was disappointed.

But I’m not someone who seeks compassion. It’s not in my character to wallow in self-pity.

When you play this game, there are outcomes you have to forsee. Accidents, dismastings. Non bisogna farne una malatia,’ he says, an expression close to ‘no use crying over spilled milk.’

‘It’s no use feeling guilty. The sailor has to meet life with positivity. He’s at sea in elements he cannot control. Ultimately, he’s not responsible.

If we can eliminate the sense of responsibility, we’re actually more ready to overcome momentary difficulties.’

When he’s back home, he’ll take some time to let the events of the past months settle.

‘I believe that everything in life is like eating, there’s a moment to eat, and then a moment to digest. Over the next weeks I’ll digest this experience, from various points of view.

But I’m not holding anything against myself. I gave my all to this event. I have nothing to regret.

Of course I would have liked to finish. But I’m 54. I have my whole life ahead of me.’

Biggest lessons

However he did make a few mistakes, Lodolo takes care to point out.

‘I went east around Cape Verde, which lost me a few days.’

Still, he wouldn’t change much about the voyage. These two months have sailing have made him, ‘a better sailor and more self-aware, with more experience.’

His biggest lesson overall is that overconfidence cause accidents.

‘I went down too quickly. The old adage of ‘one hand for you, one for the boat’, is true.’

Fermezza e lentezza, slow and steady, is the motto, he says.

Before the accident, he was feeling, ‘like a gazelle. I was light and happy. I’d actually lost over 10 kg. But when you go too fast, this is what can happen. Maybe I should do some Judo, to learn how to fall.’

‘Also, I could’ve brought more desserts, more music, more books. Vary my provisions more, but these are all small things.’

Stepping away from Window Live

In the weeks before the accident, Andrea had stopped streaming on the Window Live.

‘When I left, I knew I had to get in touch with my internal rhythm. That took me almost a month, and I didn’ t want any interference.’

He also lost an antenna in a gust, but, ‘Honestly, it just wasn’t a priority for me. I wanted to focus on my sailing. Regulation and rhythm, and regulation and routine.

I thought I’d maybe switch it back on in the Indian ocean, but I wanted to keep my focus onboard. I didn’t want any concerns other than trimming the sails, and just going.’

He even stopped attending most of the group skipper calls.

‘I tuned in a few times, but I couldn’t sit on the radio and talk about food. It’s just not my nature. It’s not me, and it interrupts my routine.

I didn’t want distractions in my bubble. I even skipped a few interviews, and the organisers asked me to tune in more often. In the text updates, I kept it simple: ‘Bibi OK.’ I think they were hoping for something more,’ he laughs.

Andrea Lodolo looks back at his Golden Globe Race

Until the injury, Lodolo’s voyage has been smooth.

‘I had a few days of light winds, but I used them for maintenance. I read some amazing books, most recently one on the Soviet Union.

I’m actually seeing more and more similarities between life onboard and life in a Siberian hut. It’s a different world.’

But he doesn’t see his life onboard as one of deprivation, or even sacrifice.

‘You have to live being happy with what you have. That’s intelligence, finding the beauty in everything you do.

One cannot live in the misery of what they don’t have. We need to live in the fullness of what we do have, and in the ambition of obtaining what we want.’

The original interview was conducted in Italian. All comments appear in translation.

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