Guirec Soudée is in a hurry. He has already taken on many challenges at sea by sailing and even rowing. Alone or with Monique, her hen around the two poles. On November 10, he will set off on his new adventure alone on an Imoca: “I have ants in my legs because I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Even when I was on board my first sailboat, with Monique, I had the goal of doing it.”
And the one who lives on Yvinec Island, in the town of Plougrescant, has plenty of projects: “It won’t stop at the Vendée Globe: I have a lot of projects. From time to time, I try to refocus on the objective of the moment but it’s too much for me, I already want to know what’s next.”
“It’s a long time to go”
Soudée is active, a bulimic of adventure… Things have to move. He likes to challenge one another, it’s vital: “There’s one thing that’s very hard for me since I started this project: it takes a long time to get going. All the adventures that I launched before, they started very quickly, once the idea came. Afterwards, this time that I had before the race is important, even essential.”
Because in addition to the personal challenge, the Vendée Globe remains an intense competition: “I want to tell things, to experience emotions. I’m not saying that I don’t experience it, but it’s not enough for me. It’s like rowing: when I arrived in the Caribbean, I already knew that I couldn’t stop there. To do it well, we would need a Vendée Globe every year (laughs)…”
The adventurer will discover this race which lasts between two and three months. Perhaps when he returns to Les Sables d’Olonne, he will need to settle down.
Meeting with Éric Dumont
It was a meeting that brought him to this starting line: “It hadn’t crossed my mind once that one day I might take part in it. It was when I made a stopover in Saint-Barthelemy, in 2014-2015, that I met Éric Dumont, who did two Vendée Globes (4th in 1996 and retirement in 2000), who had a few adventures” .
On his first sailboat, Yvinec 1, he invited him to sail and the two sailors exchanged: “He told me about his offshore sailings, his Vendée Globe. It seemed crazy to me. And he said to me: “We haven’t known each other for long but I see how you work and the Vendée Globe is a race made for you”. I replied: “The race? But no, it’s not made for me! Adventure yes but not racing. Later, the young Costa Rican understood that “the Vendée Globe is an adventure. When I heard everything that had happened to him… It never left me.”
Audigane, Jourdain, Douguet…
Seventeenth in The Transat CIC, between Lorient and New York, but second boat with straight daggerboards behind Tanguy Le Turquais, he learned quickly. This former windsurfer prepared himself well for this new adventure: “Unlike the hard-core racing side, where I have shortcomings compared to the others, I have surrounded myself well. All these years that I didn’t do Mini, Figaro… I had to work hard and I said to myself that the best thing was to go sailing with people who had skills in this field: Sébastien Audigane, a super sailor, Bilou (Roland Jourdain) who had a lot of experience in Imoca, and Corentin Douguet has a very good routing/weather side. We talked a lot, everyone played the game. They saw that I was super motivated and that there was perhaps a way to get something out of this “little Breton from 22”,” explains he in a broad smile.
“It’s good to be afraid sometimes, it prevents you from doing stupid things”
It is with humility that he embarks on his first Vendée Globe but with desire and determination: “Mentally, I am ready. And the mental trainer is me (laughs)! People often ask me if I have a mental trainer but no: I don’t feel the need. It’s good to be afraid from time to time, it prevents you from doing stupid things.” Because as this now father of two says: “What’s hard is leaving my two children on the ground. But I’m so good at what I do. Before, I had a lot fewer ties: I left, I was alone. Now, I know that I am no longer alone on Earth and that makes me want to go faster to get home but also to be more careful.” The first objective of this adventurer, who has become a professional skipper, is already to make the complete tour.
Senegal
