Thibault Vauchel Camus delivers in this podcast the emotion he feels on his arrival in Guadeloupe

I'm Thibault Vauchel Camus. I am skipper of the multi 50 Solidaires En Peloton - ARSEP. I wanted to share one of my greatest memories of my young ocean racing career. It was at the finish of my second Route du Rhum in 2018 in the multi 50 category. The race had been very complicated before. The conditions in the lows at the start were very tough, and we got through them pretty well. The race is going well, we have a problem, we make a stopover, we have to stop, the race is almost abandoned. We set off again and our damage to something quite incredible. I have to get to the top of my mast. The situation is moderately prepared, which I managed to do, but I don't want to go through it again. Trade winds that have been complicated to deal with. And now we're reaching Guadeloupe... that's the island where I grew up. The island that made me go sailing. The island from which I left to sail at a high level in metropolitan France. The island that forged my experience to have my ocean racing project. It's a homecoming for me. To find the coast again, to recognize the coasts of Guadeloupe that I've known since I was very young. It's about rediscovering smells, rediscovering the colours of the sea, rediscovering the sea states, and above all it's about finding my first faces again. They are faces of childhood friends from Guadeloupe who now live in Saint-Malo, who came specially to Guadeloupe to welcome me. It's finding smiles again. It's about finding voices, encouragement and shouting again. We've obviously left the context of the race a bit behind us. We're purely immersed in the emotion of a finish. And to think that the 12 days spent at sea have been just as great. They put us in such an emotional situation that to be reunited with your loved ones after this form of isolation is something incredible. We've only just arrived in Guadeloupe and we're going around it. As time goes by, more and more boats come to meet us. You can hear the sounds of the land. You can hear the comments as you pass close to the coast. We hear music. We hear cars honking their horns. We always have more and more faces, more and more boats welcoming us, faces we recognize, faces we don't know, but who know you. Who encourage you, who say bravo, who say thank you. As time goes by, there are tens, boats, hundreds of people, until there are thousands of people. Including your relatives, your partners, your daughter, your darling, who are waiting for one thing: to find you, to congratulate you and to find theirs. All this in an atmosphere in Guadeloupe which is unique and fantastic. The generosity of the music, the hugs, the encouragements... Just talking about it, I'm getting back into it and frankly I was overwhelmed, because arrivals like that, moments like that, it's just unbelievable.