Sébastien Destremau is a sports journalist, accustomed to regattas, but not to single-handed sailing, which he has tested "for about ten days" throughout his career as a "sailor". On 6th November 2016, he set off on his first Vendée Globe aboard TechnoFirst - FaceOcean, an IMOCA from 1998, stripped of all artifice to make it as simple as possible. His aim was to share his round the world voyage - lasting 3 months ½ - with as many people as possible, taking his time, but completing his circumnavigation of the globe! With a passage across the Equator on 19th February 2017, 43 days after Armel le Cléac'h, Sébastien Destremau is beginning to find the time long, especially as he's been stuck for three days off Brazil, over 3200 miles from the finish... He's also going to have to manage his food supplies, as he has discovered he has "lost an entire bag of food when my boat flooded due to a disconnected hose. Before that, I had enough to last just until March 4th... but I'll get there later, maybe around the 10th."
The opportunity for us to publish the interview of the sailor, carried out 15 days before his departure from Les Sables-d'Olonne..
This is your first participation in the Vendée Globe, what motivated you to take part?
I participated as a technical advisor, at the beginning of the film's writing Alone with François Cluzet, released a few years ago. It interested me more than just a spectator or a journalist. And then, in 2012, at the start of the last Vendée Globe, I found the moment so exciting that I decided to take part in it! It just fell on me like that!
You don't come from that background? Have you ever done any ocean racing?
Not at all. I did 20/25 years of racing as a professional, America's Cup type. I've done more of a sprint, whereas the Vendée Globe is a marathon. It's got nothing to do with that!
I'd done a bit of ocean racing with the Fastnet or the Sydney Hobarts or a little bit of Volvo, but not great sailing. The longest time I've ever spent at sea was 11 or 12 days and it happened once. It's not something I did every day!
You're leaving with an old boat, from the 2008 generation. What is your ambition? Your state of mind?
First, I wanted to share my adventure with as many people as possible. I'm a bit of a Virtual Regatta game journalist and I wanted to correlate the virtual and the real.
It's also a huge personal challenge to face this precipice that the Vendée Globe can be. Not just the race itself, but also the whole project: the preparatory phase and the race phase. It is a huge personal challenge, which represents several years of preparation for three months of racing. The Vendée Globe does not start on 6th November 2016!
As you don't necessarily have any experience, you have chosen a very simple boat. What did you do to simplify your navigation?
I wouldn't say it's going to make navigation any easier. A very simple boat doesn't make it easy to navigate. Leading a boat isn't the most complicated thing when you've known how to sail a boat since you were a kid. Having a simple boat is a general idea of the project which is "The simpler the boat is, the fewer features and options there will be that may make the boat go faster and make it easier for the skipper to manoeuvre, but require a lot of tuning and maintenance." However, in a race like the Vendée Globe, from the moment you don't have a goal in terms of results, as you know you can't win it, the goal is to finish it.
In the end, the aim is to have the simplest possible boat, stripped of all the tricks that can blow up in your face. It's a concept. It doesn't mean it's simple, nor does it mean it's going to hold up all the way, but everything we've got we're not going to break it!
But your boat technically has the capacity to finish the Vendée Globe?
This boat has finished 4 times around the world out of 5 attempts so it knows the route. Then am I going to break something on my way out of the Bay of Biscay? That's something else.
How did you prepare yourself, knowing that you had one of the smallest budgets in this Vendée Globe? And what difference does it make? ( NDRL: 350,000 euros)
We count every euro we spend and we are very careful not to go out in voices that could cost money without producing results. As the money comes in, work or modifications are undertaken. It is a day-to-day management for the suppliers and so that everyone is paid, so that there are no debts. But you don't hire more than you have.
Sometimes it's frustrating because there are things you wish you had or supports that come very late, but that's the way it is. And it doesn't matter. It's the nature of the project itself that's like that.
We wish we had more money, but that would mean more ambition and more pressure. Today, we have no pressure from our partners on what we should or should not do. We have a free hand and we manage our project on a daily basis.
Did you manage to find enough sponsors to go?
Definitely! We have 43 partners, so there are 6 main partners, including the first one: TechnoFirst. We've managed to meet the budget we'd set ourselves to leave with a boat in good condition and sufficient equipment. It's true that the breakage of the mast a month ago ½ put us under pressure and the boat didn't arrive in Les Sables-d'Olonne in perfect condition. But we still have 15 days to finish.
What is your biggest apprehension about this Vendée Globe?
November 6 at 10:25 a.m... People have to realize that it's 3 or 4 years of thinking and setting up a project and 18 months of non-stop work for a whole team, with a significant increase in pressure with deadlines, difficulties such as dismasting, but also joys... Throughout this project, we've had a lot of fun..
It has to be said that arriving in Les Sables-d'Olonne, with a crazy people is insane! We're two weeks away from the start and there's a lot of jostling on the pontoons... All this pressure is building up until D-Day... We're the penultimate boat to reach the channel.
On D-Day, at 10.25 am, you cast off and set sail... And there you find yourself with 10 people, your close entourage, who take you to the starting line and two hours later everyone disembarks... In the space of two hours, you go from complete hysteria in Les Sables-d'Olonne to being alone... That's scary! It's a scary moment, but then you get back into the routine and go boating.
At that moment, he fears... And that's the first stage... After that, the second stage is the arrival... After 3 months, where we've only taken care of his navel and his 6 min 2 s, we find ourselves in the world of the earthlings... Of course there is the joy of coming back and finding his entourage, his relatives, but also the aggression of the world, noise, traffic jams, horns and everything else we don't have at sea... It must feel funny... We'll see when we get there! We have time to think about it! (chuckles)
How will you manage the family separation for 3 months?
We've got plenty of communication systems on board to keep us connected to his crew and his family. But for three months we're ultra selfish, nothing matters to us, except our children's health of course... nothing that happens on land matters to us. We need to be focused on ourselves and the boat to keep it moving forward and to see it through to the end..
Are you bringing anything unusual with you?
No, nothing at all. I don't need a robot or a stuffed animal... I'm taking a good duvet and a good kitchen and go ahead Guingamp..
How will that cheer you up?
If you have a drop in morale, you call someone... I don't need any tricks... I don't read, I don't need to listen to music... Calling someone is better... We're still a bit alone so talking to someone from time to time seems to be a good remedy.
How many days do you expect to eat?
120 days: half freeze-dried and half normal food. I feel like eating well... It's also nice to peel a potato, make a dish, try to cook or mix something..
It's nice and it gives me a moment that I don't mind and so I do... Time I'll have it! It's also linked to the fact that I've got a boat that's oversimplified... I don't have tons of things to do even if there will be things to repair, but much less than the others... So it's not a problem to prepare a good pasta dish with parmesan..
No kidding, we're not going to eat only freeze-dried food for 3 months... Some people will do it because they don't have the same goals as me..
Will you have moments of relaxation, and how will you keep them occupied?
It depends on the conditions, but I like to get outside and look at the sea. Just watching the sea, watching your boat sail... It allows me to get away from it all for a while... I can do that for hours... That's when I write articles, sea reports, stories..
I'm going to do it with short formats to share the emotion on the boat, with videos, with newspapers, especially as it's my job to make TV news. So we're going to try to do it from the sea.
Are you seasick?
Well, no... I've never been seasick. That doesn't mean I won't get it..
