the sad fate of the double winning boat

The only double-winning boat in the Vendée Globe has been rotting for 12 years in the port of Brest. Passionate people are fighting today to bring it back to life.

In a race like the Vendée Globe, the non-stop, unassisted round-the-world sailing trip, sailors form a very special relationship with their boat. “I know my boat by heart: every sound, every sensation. I am truly one with him.”explained Alan Roura in mid-December, in an article in Temps which had the title “Vendée Globe: a symbiosis between sailors and machines”.

“Sometimes it tires me because it makes a lot of noise, it’s uncomfortable,” continued the Geneva skipper. It's a bit like a love and hate bond. I use it as a work tool. I'm not afraid to break things, I shoot them, but it's clear that we're related. We complement each other, we need each other, we form a pair. He sometimes has his moods, I have mine, but we work well together!”

This couple between man and machine often lasts for many years, the time for the first to tame the second, but it also happens that their paths separate, and that the boat has a very difficult time. This is what happened to the Imoca first named “PRB”, then “Roxy”, and finally “Fruit”. But this is not just any boat:

Michel Desjoyeaux (2001) and Vincent Riou (2005), above during his victorious round-the-world trip, both won the Vendée Globe on this yacht, which then allowed Samantha Davies to place 4th in 2009.Image: EPA

The 60-foot (18 m) Imoca is so famous that it has a Wikipedia page dedicated to it. However, despite his notoriety, he is going through a difficult period: it was abandoned by its owners (a Polish market gardening company) in 2010 because it was deemed non-compliant to participate in the Barcelona racethen it languished in a marina in Brest, until it was reduced to a wreck.

“But this is not the end of his adventures”, wants to believe Kieran Le Borgne. With a group of enthusiasts, the Breton skipper has been fighting since last summer to bring back to life what he describes as a legendary boat, now renamed “Aïto”. To get the boat afloat again, these myth lovers need money (250,000 euros); and to find some, they opened a participatory pot on the Internet.

The boat was taken out of the water to be restored.Image: YouTube

In the message that describes the project, Kieran Le Borgne (us) asks: “Isn’t letting heroes die the same as letting go of old dreams?” He then explains that the restoration of the Imoca will begin with the creation of a participatory project in which volunteers can come and help renovate the boat while learning technical know-how.

If the budget and volunteers are there, the famous Imoca could return to competition in two years, during the Route du Rhum 2026, and relive a passionate adventure with its new skipper.