Guirec Soudée is a man in a hurry. Looking forward to the adventure of a lifetime. “The hardest part is waiting to leave,” says skipper Guirec Soudée, who is busy on Monday October 21, on his Imoca Freelance.com, moored at the port of Les Sables d'Olonne (Vendée). For his first participation in the Vendée Globe, the 32-year-old Breton is not aiming for a ranking but wants “simply” live your adventure to the fullest and complete this sailing trip around the world, alone and without stopovers or assistance, “in the best possible way”.
Since his youngest years, Guirec Soudée has been driven by his need for adventure, space, and freedom. Even when he was little, he spent all his time on the water, on his native island of Yvinec (Côtes-d'Armor). “I had my first boat at 7 years old and I went fishing for whole days. And through the stories of my father, who sailed with Eugène Riguidel [navigateur, vainqueur de la Transat en double en 1979]I dreamed a lot of going to cross the oceans by sail. The little seed was then planted in me, and then germinated.” says this young sailor whose face is still youthful despite his slight beard.
At 18, he can finally fully express his desire for adventure. He leaves his native Brittany for Australia “hands in pockets” with the objective of working to buy a boat and “go on an adventure”. “He left with 200 euros in his pocket and not speaking a word of English. Arriving at Sydney airport, he called me because he didn't know how to fill out the customs paperwork. Then he got away with it.” says her older sister Nolwenn, who adds: “With Guirec, it can’t be too easy. As he likes to say, the adventure begins when the problems arise.”
Two years later, he returned to France and bought his boat. “The adventure began from that moment and it never left me,” he remembers. His record of challenges proves it. In 2013, at the age of 21, he began a world tour, “which he understands like his own studies”, slips his sister. This one will last five years, accompanied by his hen Monique, who will offer him company and fresh eggs. During this trip, he crossed the Atlantic alone, without means of communication and in total autonomy, then winters for 130 days in the same conditions, in the ice of Greenland. “One of the most beautiful moments of his life” but also “the hardest”, he admits, due to the extreme conditions and the death of his father which occurred the day after the start of his project.
“My father was truly my pillar, testifies Guirec Soudée. Starting the winter with the hardest news I could have learned, and knowing that I was going to have a lot of problems behind me, it wasn't easy but it was reinforcing. And it was an additional source of motivation that helped me in tough times.” Will still follow the crossing of the prilleux Solo North West Passage – where he becomes the youngest navigator to achieve this feat – roaring forties, the screaming fiftieths and the crossing of the legendary Cape Horn. As if that wasn't enough, it crosses into 2021 l'Atlantic rowing without assistance in 74 days then returning in 107 days.
One more, Guirec Soudée is fully in his element. Besides, his relation to the sea, he evokes it with a certain emotion. “They say I have sea water running through my veins. It’s not completely false,” he smiled, his eyes full of mischief. “Every time I see the sea, it's moving, he continues, sitting cross-legged at the front of his Imoca, looking out to sea. I really feel like myself there, and it's one of the only places today where you can still have complete freedom.”
This hyperactive person, who learned navigation on his own, has always felt “the need to be outdoors” et “to use one's hands”, while he was never able to fit into the mold of the school system. “He has a project at the minute. And he can sometimes disperse, but never on his support, when he is at sea”, confides Lucie Queruel. The captain and technical director of the Vendée Globe project, who gave her sailing lessons when they met fifteen years ago, also emphasizes “his mind of steel, his greatest strength”, et “his superb learning capacity”. “It's a joke, confides her older sister Nolwenn. He has boundless energy, and he always follows through on his ideas. He's so into everything that sometimes it's a little tiring, but that's part of his personality, the extraordinary mentality necessary to do everything he's accomplished.”
And it's not the skipper Roland Jourdain, double winner of the Route du Rhum in an Imoca in 2006 and 2010, and third in the 2001 Vendée Globe, who will say otherwise. Guirec Soudée convinced him to enter the Transat Jacques Vabre with him in 2023 (they finished 20th), aboard Freelance.com (Imoca with which Roland Jourdain won the Route du Rhum in 2010). “When he can't get in through the door, he gets in through the window. You can't say no to him,” jokes “Bilou”, who also welcomed him to his premises in Concarneau (Finistère) for his preparation for the Vendée Globe.
“Guirec is a rare character. He is one of the 'illuminated and illuminating' people. He has this way of transforming a very dark situation into a small burst of light.”
Roland Jourdain, skipperat franceinfo: sport
Determined, without being a hothead, he nevertheless calmed down after the birth of his children. “I pay more attention when I go to the front of my boat and it 'rocks', whereas before I went there without thinking,” recognizes the skipper. Sunday will also be synonymous with the start of his next adventure, as he is still discovering the world of ocean racing.
“Clearly I'm the one with the least experience on racing boats, but I still have some strong points which should not be overlooked, he smiled, serene and confident. Il “However, I had to work very hard over the last three years to make up for all my shortcomings that I inevitably had, by being thrown directly onto an 18 meter racing boat.” notes this sailor, for whom the Vendée Globe “is much more than a regatta”.
“If there is one race that is made for him, it is the Vendée globe, because he has great mental strength and such experience of life at sea, with the elements, that I do not no worries for him”assures Roland Jourdain.
Is this first participation the beginning of a specialization for the Breton? “What interests me is to try several supports, I don't want to do Imoca all my life. It's just a step.” he decides, even if the new idea of competition does not displease him. But once is not customary, ideas burst into the sailor's head. “Perhaps once this Vendée Globe is done right side up, I will do it backwards, he recalls, mischievously. What is certain is that waiting four years to travel around the world is simply impossible for me.”
