She's at the start! “Who would have thought it,” she said in a burst of laughter. Clarisse Crémer finished 12th in 2021, telling herself that she already wanted to go back. Four years later, after a few “storms”, the 34-year-old sailor leaves again. At the helm of a foiler. “It’s been a few weeks since I realized that I’m finally going to be there. There, I returned to the stress of the race. But I very clearly see a parallel world where I am not at the start of the race. I’m really happy to have managed to get this far.”
“I was exhausted and angry but not dejected”
After giving birth to her little Matilda, she goes back to sea. Heading for a second world tour. The path to get there is winding. A sponsor who lands her, a race against time to put together a project and cover the miles necessary to validate her qualification. “When we had to recreate a project from scratch. I was exhausted, angry but not defeated and the outstretched hand of Alex (Thomson) and l'Occitane en Provence sparked immediately: it made things possible.”
This year was also complicated with a suspicion of cheating in the previous Vendée Globe and a tense return to the pontoons: “I needed my loved ones even more because sailing, for me, is something poetic , magical. And that didn’t correspond at all with what I was experiencing.”
Angry. Touched but still not sunk, it bounced once again. “Anger isn’t the feeling I’m thinking of right now. I worked a lot on this. I have to find the narrow border between convictions and anger so that it allows me to move forward. »
A Top 10
She used this revolt to get her place at the Port Olona pontoon. “My co-skipper Alan Roberts told me a basic phrase but one that works well, even at sea. A quote from Winston Churchill: “When you're going through hell, keep moving forward.” »
That's what she did. After a first Vendée Globe in discovery mode, she sets off again on a high-performance boat, the one that crossed the line first four years ago with Charlie Dalin: “I have a great boat but the fleet has also evolved a lot. There are 13 new boats that are absolutely going to win. When someone tickles me for a number, I say Top 10. We never announced that we were going there to win so there is no pressure on that side.”
A machine to master
If she feels good aboard her foiler, she must succeed in taming it: “On my fin boat, even when it was going fast, it was quite intuitive to find the limit. On the foiler, there are times when the movements are not intuitive. Especially when they go fast. It requires finding your bearings for a performance mode.”
Four years ago, Clarisse Crémer took 87 days to return to Les Sables d'Olonne, becoming the fastest woman on this solo round-the-world trip in an Imoca. With the boat she has in her hands, she should go faster: “The faster it goes, the more it hurts but the shorter it lasts.”
