My exceptional moment was rounding Cape Horn during the 2016-17 Vendée Globe. It's an incredible moment, as it comes after almost two months at sea alone.
When you set off from Les Sables-d'Olonne and sail down the Atlantic, once you reach the Cape of Good Hope, you're plunging into a tunnel in the deep south. You know that you're going to be alone and far from everyone, far from help, far from everything... Once in this tunnel, you have to reach Cape Horn. This cape really marks the success of the crossing of the Deep South and the circumnavigation of Antarctica and the return to the Atlantic. A place that we know better in the end.
So this arrival at Cape Horn, with its snow-covered mountains first and then this rock, which is just finally a point to go around. I found myself in a moment of enormous joy. Certainly the race was going to continue. I still had a month at sea to sail up the Atlantic and return to Les Sables-d'Olonne. I'd beaten the South. In any case, I'd managed to cross the South, alive and well and return to the Atlantic. It's really an incredible passage, you can see this rock, you can see the sea starting to calm down. It's calming down so much that once we round Cape Horn when we get into Lemaire Strait, there's no wind, we're not making any headway any more! But that's not serious, we spend all this race trying to make as much headway as possible,
but for the moment we don't care, we're just happy to enjoy the moment. I've left the South, I'm in good shape. I can see Cape Horn, an incredible place with this feeling of joy to pass this rock. It's extreme. It's a bit euphoric to be alone on your boat. You can't stop laughing, making films, taking pictures. The VHF is ringing, you can hear the guy on the end of the receiver, it's the lighthouse keeper at Cape Horn. He's a Spaniard, who has to spend a lot of time alone, as you can imagine, so he's happy to call all the boats passing by, especially the Vendée Globe competitors. I found myself chatting with him in English/Spanish, which is fairly approximate, just so that he can wish you a good passage around Cape Horn. He tells you a bit about his life. It doesn't last long, but it's true that this little phone call (from VHF) I remember it well. It's surreal, all alone at Cape Horn. You're liberated, you're so much in a moment of intense happiness, you're happy to chat for five minutes with someone.
