"My story with the Vendée Globe is not over," promises Thomas Rouillard

Thomas Rouillard, minutes after his return to earth -

TB Press

• Thomas

  Rouillard

  (

  LinkedOut

  ) finished the Vendée Globe in 6th position.

• He spent 72% of the race time in the top 3 and crossed the line in 4th, but then lost two places in the compensation game awarded to Herrmann and Le Cam.

• A little frustrated but proud of his round-the-world tour, the northerner skipper looks back on the highlights of his Vendée Globe.

An eventful return to earth for Thomas Rettant, sixth in the Vendée Globe, who is

enjoying

his first days of life outside

LinkedOut

in 2021

rather well.

“I had a lot of friends who came to see me at the finish, it feels good .

»A little indiscretion behind the scenes: it was also a chance meeting with friends that forced us to postpone our call to the northerner skipper to the next day.

"It will be calmer, we can talk better," he smiled on the phone.

It is therefore Saturday morning, after a precious family breakfast, ("the kind of moment that feels good and that we are happy to find again," he says), that the fourth man to have crossed the line in Les Sables d'Olonne took care to remind us.

Proud to have been able to complete his first round the world solo, nonstop and unassisted, but frustrated to finish the race outside the top 5 after spending 72% of the adventure in the top 3 - there is indeed something to be enraged about -, Thomas Rettant does not want to retain "only the positive".

But he gladly tells about his foil galleys in a spirit of sharing whose adventurers often show return from a long journey and has, whatever one may say, an unshakeable faith in these latest generation boats.

Interview debrief.

What conclusions do you draw from this Vendée Globe where you have been ahead all the time?

My first desire was to finish.

I completed my round the world tour and it is a great source of pride.

We gave ourselves the means to have a successful project, a great boat.

The objective was to navigate at the forefront and we managed to do so.

I didn't want to have any regrets about this race and I put all my energy into it.

I have no regrets today.

The film of the race is that I am 6th in the standings.

It's a place I have never sailed on during this round the world (

laughs

) so it's amazing.

There were some race events, some weather conditions that meant that on the scoresheet at the finish, I was 6th.

I'm not going to watch this too much.

It's a Vendée Globe where the weather prevented you from taking off, especially Charlie Dalin and you.

With the exception of the trade winds on the descent of the Atlantic ...

Yes, for me it remains the best edges of the race.

I have a boat at 100%, I am comfortable, I realize that I manage to be the fastest of the fleet at important gaits.

I am very confident with my boat and therefore I can set a pace for the race.

That's what I said to myself along Brazil when I manage to fill the 200 miles on Alex Thomson who is in front, to widen the gap on Charlie, to take the lead with 80 miles in advance.

It's a very pleasant feeling.

To have this leadership at one point was a great time.

But behind I quickly farts my foil.

And I know that the race is going to be sporty complicated.

So I hang on, but with a lot of frustration, because I go from a mode where I impose my rhythm, to a more complicated mode where I have to find different solutions in terms of trajectory.

I have relearned how to use my boat without a foil.

I managed not to lose touch too much thanks to the weather.

And I'm glad I'm not that far.

I have often managed to stay in the top three, but it's complicated and frustrating because, for example, this long tack on the Atlantic climb until the finish, it was typically the big highlight of my boat if it had had its foil.

Did you feel restrained, helpless?

Completely.

Afterwards I sailed with a very canvas boat the whole race.

I really charged to try to fill the gap but never really did.

I sometimes tried different trajectories with varying degrees of success (

laughs

).

I'm glad I managed to keep up the pace a bit.

Tell us about the sacrifice of this foil.

In what state were you, morally?

Obviously, we ask ourselves the question of abandonment because the damage is serious and it can lead to other collateral damage.

But in the end we looked for a solution quickly enough to set off again so that we could complete the world tour, our first objective, in complete safety.

So the right solution was to limit the power of the appendix which had cracked at the elbow.

It had not broken clean, but on the other hand I could no longer sail on starboard tack because otherwise it would end up breaking.

So I cut the part that pushes to be able to keep the piece of elbow that was left.

I manage to leave like that.

Today, the foil is delaminated everywhere.

The remaining stump is in an advanced state of degradation (

laughs

) ...

What did you hide during the race in terms of damage besides that?

Lots of little things, but that's the lot of all boats.

This is the Vendée Globe.

You have a shit a day to deal with because these are extreme and very technical boats.

What I'm happy with is that we managed to manage these damage outside the foil without losing performance.

I climbed the mast five times to fix hook, weather vane, etc.

Each time we managed to do it at the right time, in the right timing of the race.

It's not that easy because when you have something going wrong, ideally you have to fix it right away.

But we really tried to analyze the weather conditions to find the best windows to intervene at the masthead.

Thomas Rouillard's boat suffered severe damage, but it finally held up to the shock - TB Press

And then there was also this waterway in the Indian ...

There, I am in the lead, I go back to Charlie and at this moment, I am in contact with Yannick.

This is where he takes the lead and manages to get through.

During this time, I stop for eight hours.

I am driving due north when it is not the way at all.

But I have to stop the boat because there is 15 tons of water in the bow.

What causes the water leak?

A careless mistake?

It is not at all a relaxation.

The deck cover at the front, the hinges at the front have taken a bit of play over time ... The power of the waves in which you come in at 25-30 knots has caused the waves to gently open the two front hatch hinges and brought tons of water inside the boat without me realizing it right away, because the whole compartment is closed and watertight.

It went very quickly, in thirty minutes, the front compartments filled up.

You were afraid ?

At the time, yes, because I didn't understand what happened right away.

In fact, when I wake up, the boat luffs, that is to say it changes direction suddenly.

At first I don't understand why, I try to get my boat back on the right track and I can't do it.

I can feel the heavy boat, which has an abnormal reaction.

I go inside the boat and I see my water sensor LEDs on the front.

I go there to open the hatches in order to inspect the front of the boat, and in fact, I can't open the hatch because there is water pressure on the other side pushing.

And I'm like, “oh damn, that's not good.

»I have to go through the outside and therefore through the front hatch and there I realize that it is… The hinges are open and the boat is filled like a pressure cooker.

I have two big pumps to drain the water on board and it takes 7-8 hours to fix everything.

In front, Charlie and Yannick pack up.

And then to top it off, you hardly ever got to sail on your safe side unlike what you expected.

No.

Each time, we had weather in the south with a lot of starboard tack.

And on the way up the Altlantic at the end, we know there is starboard.

The last leg is very long and with each classification, I took a slap.

Because I always went one knot, a knot and a half, two knots slower than my competitors.

So there's bound to be a bit of frustration because I had the weapons to do a great thing.

But it remains a great pride to have sailed at the forefront and to have come full circle.

There were good times anyway, especially this option in the West Falklands after Cape Horn which puts you back in the game ...

Typically, with the descent of Brazil on the first leg, this phase after Cape Horn where I feel an opening in which I can slip, I'm on the right track (

laughs

).

This is a great moment, if only because I have just passed Cape Horn.

I slip into the Strait of Le Maire where it is really magnificent and as a bonus I find flat seas, I find myself on the port tack after a south where I have done only starboard.

I found my boat, I felt the weather option in which I rushed and I managed to come back to Charlie.

I still climb 300 miles in two three days.

It was a very good phase of the race for me and unfortunately the moment I regain contact we switch to starboard tack and things get complicated again.

It was at this time that the weather allowed the fighters to re-glide on the head of the fleet.

Much has been said about the disappointing rendering of the foilers.

The last ones launched quickly gave up.

And despite your constant presence at the forefront, you and Charlie had some issues.

What is your view on the issue?

I think we are in a real technical transition in ocean racing.

This is the first generation with such large foils and boats that can literally fly.

We are still learning from these boats.

Typically, there are plenty of standard parts on my boat that have been tried and tested for years and have not held up because we have moved into another world.

We are still in this transition.

We have to learn the lesson of this Vendée Globe and find the solutions to put in place so that the boats can sail around the world.

But I am convinced that the future is these boats.

Even if there, some boats can still be fragile, we will know how to progress and make our boats reliable and go even faster.

Now, the class that governs boat tonnage will limit things like the size of the foils.

In the end, the talk of depreciation only holds because the fleet arrived grouped together and there are older generation boats in this peloton.

But the lead we had with Charlie during the descent of the Atlantic, if we had had the right low [which is normally the classic scenario] to take us south, we could go 2,000 miles at all. world and the question would not even have arisen.

Michel Desjoyeaux says that with the weather conditions of four years ago, you would surely have beaten Armel Le Cléac'h's record ...

But yes !

We quickly forget the conditions we had in this race to draw conclusions on the merits of the new generations of boats.

We had special conditions but we have exceptional boats and there are still reliability problems since we are in a period of technical transition.

It doesn't happen like that.

But we have very efficient teams and we will have to debrief this round the world to make these boats reliable.

Do you still lack the confidence in these boats to push them 100%?

I had absolute confidence in my boat on the descent.

I was really comfortable, I was going fast.

And, after my little problems with the hook, the pilot, the foil that breaks… There is inevitably a loss of confidence that sets in a bit.

After in the South, this is not where the foilers make the difference.

Where the difference is on a world tour is on the descent and ascent of the Atlantic.

But in the South, whether you have a daggerboard or a foiler, you go at the speed of the systems.

You can make big gaps if you have a weather system in advance, but it never was.

But yes, you still have to sail, go for miles to have confidence in the boat.

One can think that the recent machines on this round the world tour will be mature in 2024?

These boats will progress and other new boats will integrate all our debriefings on this Vendée Globe.

Today I don't know what the right boat would be, but I know what the right ways will be to allow me to have a boat more suited to a round the world trip.

This Vendée Globe was a good life-size test even if normally it doesn't have to be.

But we already have plenty of ideas for the future.

For the Vendée Globe 2024?

I arrived not too long ago, I still have to digest my trip around the world.

But my story with the Vendée Globe is not over.

Sport

Vendée Globe: A slower edition than usual, failure or inevitability?

Sport

Vendée Globe: How the "painter without canvas" Bestaven overcame his Brazilian galleys to clinch victory

20 seconds of context

Partner of Thomas Rettant during the Transat Jacques-Vabre in October 2019, 

20 Minutes

 continues to support the northern skipper on the Vendée Globe 2020.

• Sport

• Navigator

• Vendée Globe

• Sail

• Interview