The view
If I feel so good out at sea, even beyond a race, it's partly thanks to the starry nights. Imagine... a deep black. Hardly any human light at all. Just the red and green dots on the mast, the beam from the headlamp, the halo on the computer screen... Nothing more. Everything else is just natural. And what else is there? The immense sky, everywhere punctured by a multitude of stars so luminous. The entire Milky Way before our eyes. And shooting stars that cross this celestial landscape, so numerous too, one per minute! Unbelievable. And this sky, which seems to never stop, plunges into an equally deep sea. It too is lit up by a kind of luminous torpedoes... It is the dolphins that we do not see in the night, but whose games, jumps and undulations can be guessed, thanks to the phosphorescent algae that they move. They are of a greenish blue colour that also greets the boat's progress at the bow. Magic, magnificent.
The touch
The Tour of the British Isles is a reputedly very tough race in terms of sailing conditions. It starts in the Isle of Wight. It takes the competitors around Ireland, then to the very northern Shetland Islands. There, you are closer to the North Pole than, when you are at Cape Horn in the southern hemisphere, to the South Pole! And even though it takes place in August, it's very cold. The temperature of the air, but also the water... So after a week's racing, and hands already badly bruised, chapped, attacked, almost raw, every movement was nothing but pain. I had to go and change a headsail. But with these hands so sore and swollen, it took me ten minutes to just put a tack snap hook back on! Ten minutes during which the frozen water kept stiffening my fingers... When I got back into the cockpit I had a strange feeling: a sort of heat created by the tingling due to the extreme cold. My hands were blue, as if frozen... It seemed that I couldn't control them, that they weren't mine anymore! I heated some water, and dipped them in it... The first sensation was not so pleasant: like needles stuck in the muscles. Of course, then it passed and I was able to really warm them up. It makes memories, and then they say that if it doesn't hurt, it's because you haven't spent enough hours at sea... so...!
Hearing
A racing yacht is very noisy. But in this environment, the skippers manage to isolate the good sounds from the bad ones... even the most discreet ones! I remember something I heard in 2018 during a solo race starting in La Trinité and arriving in Cherbourg: the Dream Cup. I was on the third day of the race and, at night, I was climbing up under spinnaker to the Fasnet.
There were 25 to 30 knots of wind. The sea was high, the waves were not so high, but their frequency was very short. I'd put on the automatic pilot and allowed myself, for the first time since the start, to sleep in my bunk. And then I was woken up by a sudden noise, like a tyre squealing on the ground when you brake hard... It was the rudder shifting, and instantly breaking the boat's sound harmony. This constant and sustained whistling, which is a little more acute, indicates that you are accelerating, and a little more serious, that you are slowing down. It was this noise that made me understand that something was happening, I felt it in a fraction of a second when I heard it. One more, just enough time to open my eyes, and I was already flying my boat: the autopilot had stalled, the boat had gone into a heap and the spinnaker had exploded!
Taste
Haribo seawater candy: it's my sweet sin when I'm on board. And yet, I'm usually pretty "salty". For example, I eat a lot of sea-dried meat. But here, the smurf soaked in salt water, I attack it with pleasure ... I always take a bunch of them with me on the race! I remember, in 2018, a rather complicated sailing moment, during the Normandy Channel Race. With my co-skipper, Gary Atkins, we'd just rounded Cape La Hague. We were against the current...and over there, that's saying a lot! We were advancing towards the tip of Barfleur, sticking to the coast, to take advantage of the little wind there was. We were going over the rocks. And every 20 metres, to stay in this narrow corridor, we'd turn around. Might as well tell you that we were burnt out... Not enough sleep, not enough food, and therefore not 100% lucid, I have to say, but some of us had to remain hyper concentrated. There was no room for error! It's at times like this that I appreciate Seawater Smurfs even more: a good sweet and salty taste drowned in a very gelatinous paste..
The sense of smell
I was in a deckchair on a classic boat. And, one day, a whale calf got close. Very close, because he was only 20 meters away from the boat. He was watching us: the boat and us on deck. He was curious about these men in the middle of the ocean, no doubt... Certainly, because I felt a sign of recognition on his part. A magical moment, this kind of connection between him and us! And then he left again, and just as he was about to dive, he took a deep breath. A very special smell escaped from his vent. A real contrast with the few smells that are out there. It was obviously very iodized, but it also had a rather sweet side... Neither good nor bad smell. It's difficult to explain, in fact, because it's incomparable in the first sense of the word: I'd never smelled anything like it before. In addition to the more identifiable fragrances, there are of course those that come from the earth. In particular, I remember smelling strongly the earth when I passed near Gibraltar: a mixture of heat, sand... In short, the desert, but a desert covered with plants around here!
What about fear?
Early November 2019. I'm racing the Transat Jacques Vabre. With my skipper, who has just woken up, we are inside preparing the nav'. There is wind, but not too much. Same for the sea. The conditions are quite bearable. We're upwind. And then we both heard this noise: a part had obviously broken and the mast had simply fallen... A racket that's not possible! Not one, not two, we put on our vests and went out. It took us two hours to free everything! We were able to hold and retrieve the boom, and build ourselves a makeshift rig. We changed course, of course, and headed for Portugal... We were only making 4 knots. We had the time to realize what had happened and how lucky we were to be together, at that very moment, in the cabin..
