Paris (AFP)
Alone in the most remote and frightening areas of the planet, Isabelle Joschke is doing a remarkable race for her first Vendée Globe.
Installed in the Top 10, she finally gives herself small pleasures after six trying weeks.
“Tonight, it's risotto with roasted mussels!”: Isabelle Joschke (MACSF) monitors the cooking of her rice while chatting.
It's pitch black outside, somewhere in the terrible Howling Fiftieths.
“I find it amazing how scared I was to cross these southern seas - it made me shiver just thinking about it - and now that I'm there, the pleasure I have. From New Zealand. at Cape Horn, I am going to cross the end of the world, that is to say the Nemo point, this most remote place of any land, I am going there and I am delighted ", confides to AFP the Franco-German sailor.
"And I find that magical, I see that my fears have calmed down or in any case I managed to transform them. Today I feel perfectly up to the challenge. The more it goes, the more I settled in This race, the more I take the measure, the more I feel in my place ", continues the skipper, ranked eighth on Wednesday (out of 27 still in the race).
- Magnifying mirror -
The first few weeks were not easy, however.
Left at the rear of the fleet, she was convinced that her race was already folded.
The Atlantic was then very rough, between violent conditions and multiple repairs on his boat, a 2007 Imoca brought up to date with foils (appendages allowing the boat to fly).
But this graduate with a master's degree in classical letters, a professional sailor for 18 years, held on, battled relentlessly to get back into the game.
"A race like that only reveals who we are. The Atlantic has revealed qualities and it also put me in front of my faults, things that are not necessarily easy to see in themselves. It's the magnifying mirror" , notes this 43-year-old woman, whose father is German and the mother from the south of France.
Exhausted, she decided a few days ago to take time to "perk up", by concocting "super good" little dishes that she creates as on land: the "Pacific risotto" or a dessert cream, "the cream Leeuwin (in reference to Cape Leeuwin, which she crossed on December 14).
- A bike on board -
The road is still long - it has only traveled half the round the world - and this small 53 kg template handling a nine ton boat, wants to have the necessary resources "to face whatever will happen. again".
Rigorous by nature, it leaves nothing to chance.
She even had a "recumbent bike" installed whose pedals are on the winch column (winch with crank for adjusting the sails).
"In a boat, we do not use our legs in the effort, the legs atrophy over such a long period, the idea is to keep the legs strong enough. It is energy reserves".
Isabelle Joschke wants to complete, and in the Top 10, the successful project she has been carrying for four years, under the direction of Alain Gautier, winner of the Vendée Globe 1992/1993.
And that now passes through the most emblematic cape of the solo round-the-world race: Cape Horn.
"I left a bit for that, saying to myself: I'm going to see the southern seas and Cape Horn. If I don't see all of that, I'll be really disappointed. I'm not there yet, but if I pass it, there will be in me the feeling of having accomplished something. It's really important. And it's a place that makes me want, that attracts me, that I would like to visit elsewhere. It's not just the idea of spending it, ”says Joschke, who should experience this moment around January 5.
© 2020 AFP