There were already solo riders who had grouped together for some joint training in order to share the settings and try to get everyone up. Thomas Ruyant and Sam Goodchild have pushed the needle even further by setting up a stable where “everything is open”. To a lesser extent, Jérémie Beyou and Justine Mettraux, who bought the former's boat, did the same.
“When we started with Sam (Goodchild), from the first exchange, we tried to see how we could collaborate intelligently. The idea was to define what we could exchange and share. And quickly, we said to ourselves that there should not be any barriers or filters. In fact, we do everything together,” explains Thomas Ruyant.
“We no longer leave the pontoon alone”
As for Justine Mettraux, the collaboration with Jérémie Beyou is a little less extensive but it has saved her time: “All the data between our two boats is quite transparent even if we have very different boats. When I got my boat back, I was able to have all the polar data, settings, the entire boat operation table. We have all the monitoring of the two boats on the various damages, the problems that we may encounter. We try to sail with two boats whenever we can. It doesn’t happen often because the programs are super busy.” On the other hand, at Vulnerable, it's the opposite “we never leave the pontoon alone again”, says the man who will be setting off on his third Vendée Globe. “When we went out to sea, it was the same person who did the analyzes for both boats,” adds the British skipper.
Briefings, debriefings, everything is done together. “It’s a team: some of the people work on both boats. In technical terms, there are people who are dedicated to each boat but otherwise everything related to management, vision, problems, we all do the same. It brought me a lot to prepare for a Vendée Globe in a team that has already done it. It’s super reassuring, super enriching,” explains Sam Goodchild.
With two boats from different generations, they nevertheless managed to put the two projects at the forefront in all the races… “We have a generation gap between our boats but Sam's boat was a reference. It is a very good boat which has strong points. And that was what was interesting, being able to release a new boat and have the reference boat in the class next to it. It's a Vendée Globe boat so it's efficient at certain speeds and less so at others. It made it possible to identify this very quickly and to quickly progress where we had gaps, deficits,” says Thomas Ruyant. Sam Goodchild continued: “The objectives are not the same: Thomas is going on his third Vendée Globe. He's going there to win. I have a little more pressure to go all the way already. And the boats are not the same so obviously the sail choices… are not the same. But we still went together to see North Sails (the sailmaker) because the sails are a key element.” So even with different projects, the ambitions are the same: “The basic objective was to improve the performance of both projects. And I think that’s the case (laughs),” concludes Sam Goodchild.
