Rennes (AFP)

Like the 33 sailors in the Vendée Globe, some 200,000 virtual skippers will be at the start of the round-the-world non-stop and solo on Sunday on the "Virtual Regatta" sailing simulator, whose success was confirmed during the health crisis.

At 56 years old, Yann Doitté will take to the seas on Sunday not from Sables-d'Olonne, but from ... Cape Town, in South Africa where he is based.

"It was the Covid that put me back in it and it's true that I'm a bit bitten", explains this event organizer who is part of the gigantic community of "Virtual Regatta" players, connected to computers or smartphones.

The enthusiasm for this 2020 edition of the Vendée Globe is strong: there were 189,717 registered on Thursday at 6:00 pm, according to the organizers of "Virtual Regatta" which totals 1.5 million registered.

Once again this year, the virtual solo round-the-world race without stop will be joined by certified skippers: the experienced Loïck Peyron but also Yves Le Blevec (winner of the Jules Verne trophy in 2002), Jacques Caraës, race director, or the MCES esport team including "five of the best e-skippers on the planet".

Created by Philippe Guigné, a former skipper at the head of the eponymous company based in Issy-les-Moulineaux (Hauts-de-Seine), the game was launched on the occasion of the Route du Rhum 2006. Starting with 50,000 players , he rallied the nautical world, in particular with Loïck Peyron after the abandonment of his Vendée 2008.

- The Covid accelerating -

"He broke his mast, he brought his boat back and when he returned to France, he asked me: + Could you recreate my boat where I broke my mast and revise the South Pacific to finish my Vendée Globe? + ", tells AFP Philippe Guigné.

In "Virtual Regatta", the player is entrusted, like a real skipper, an Imoca, and chooses his sails and "foils", those wings which make the boats "fly" above the water.

He can then participate in 50 eSailing races organized each year and in the most prestigious such as the Route du Rhum, the Ocean Race, the America's Cup and the Vendée Globe.

"The little surprise is that the Covid has really accelerated things, esport has gained two years in two months of lockdown (confinement, Editor's note)", rejoices Philippe Guigné.

François Gabart has already tried it.

He sees "a very interesting educational tool, because our sport is very complicated: why we cannot go upwind, why a boat which is not the closest to the finish line, is a priori in the lead (...) why are we circling around an anticyclone ", explains the winner of the Vendée Globe 2013 to AFP.

- Sleep management -

It also helps bring the youngest to sailing.

This year again, the French Sailing Federation (FFV) is organizing, with the support of the Ministry of National Education, a challenge on "Virtual Regatta" reserved for primary, middle and high school classes and even universities.

If the software is free, the SME and its fifteen employees derive their income from sponsorship and online purchases of improvement cards.

In 2017, it achieved nearly one million euros in turnover.

E-Skipper on the Vendée Globe 2016, Yann Doitté was doing "a bit of sailing for leisure", until confinement, when "a friend asked me to join him".

He even created a fun channel on Twitch "yannctv" which broadcasts regatta games live.

With offshore races, it can rub shoulders with the fading of esport with the difficulties of navigators: route calculation, weather forecast, sleep management.

Especially since the physical weather forecast for the game, updated four times daily, is that of the Vendée Globe.

But according to Yann Doitté, "Virtual Regatta" can "quickly become time consuming".

"There, we leave for two and a half months" underlines the fifty-something who remembers having suffered during a race over four days.

"I locked myself in the bedroom, I ate in the bedroom, I was just taking an hour ... I was dead not managing my sleep," he slips.

© 2020 AFP