Salvador (Brazil) (AFP)

He just finished the Transat Jacques Vabre and it's a feat. But Damien Seguin, born without a left hand, sees bigger still: the Vendée Globe, the legendary race around the world alone, he will be the first sailor with a handicap to face in 2020.

"What happiness!" launches with a broad smile the navigator of 40 years on his arrival monday evening in Salvador de Bahia (Brazil), having crossed the North Atlantic in the South since Le Havre.

Aboard the red monohull Group Apicil, the three-time Paralympic medalist and her team-mate Yoann Richomme have just finished 14th in the Queen Imoca category of this 14th edition of the Route du café.

At his side, Yoann Richomme, recent winner of the Solitaire du Figaro, praises the sailor.

"Damien impressed me, we went from a Class40 of 12 meters to an Imoca of 18. It's still not obvious.It started last year in Imoca," he recalls. The duo had participated in 2011 and 2013 in the Transat, but aboard a Class40, a monohull of 12 meters.

The two sailors have taken 15 days to travel the theoretical 4,350 nautical miles (8,000 km) of the course, against 13 for the tandem of winners Charlie Dalin and Yann Eliès (Apivia).

But just the race ended, the sailor born September 3, 1979 in Briançon (Hautes-Alpes) and father of two children, is already thinking of his next challenge, the Vendée Globe, this extraordinary race where sailors face loneliness, cold or even disproportionate waves.

"In a little less than a year it will be the start of the Vendée Globe, the Everest of all sailors," he says in an interview with AFP. "I am going to be the first skipper with a handicap to participate in the race", hastens to add the one who lived child about ten years in Guadelope, where he discovers sailing.

- No specific arrangements -

"It seems a little crazy for a lot of people, but I managed to adapt to the boat," says the browser.

His racing monohull, developed with Jean Le Cam - which will start in 2020 in search of a fifth Vendée Globe -, does not include any specific development except for a mouthpiece placed on the "coffee grinder" ( winch) of the cockpit and intended to receive his disabled arm.

"I find little tricks to be able to do the boat like the others, in the same way that I learned to make my shoe laces with one hand ... and in the end it was perhaps more complicated to do that, "he laughs in a laugh.

"Damien is better than some sailors with two hands, he is super versatile, he finds solutions to everything," still judge his teammate.

The sailor, who leads two quarries, one in Paralympic sailing - he is triple Paralympic medalist in 2.4 mR, a 4.20 m keelboat, and quadruple world champion in this discipline - the other in the race to broad, still had to pass specific tests to validate its participation in the Vendée Globe, as the one evaluating its ability to go back on a boat after falling into the water.

"He passed all the tests with flying colors", assures Jean-Yves Chauve, historical doctor of the offshore races, praising his capacities of adaptation and compensation.

A validation that was denied in 2005 when he wanted to participate in his first race offshore, the Solitaire du Figaro.

Determined to favor the immersion of the handicapped in the sports environment of the valid ones, the one who is also professor of physical education in Auray (Morbihan) had then created the association with the explicit name of the feet and the hands.

© 2019 AFP