“In a few seconds, everything changed”: Armel Le Cléac’h recounts his shipwreck, a week after his accident on the Route du Rhum

He's back on dry land. A week after its capsize, Armel Le Cléac’h landed in the port of Norfolk, Virginia (United States), Wednesday November 11. He was able to reunite with his wife, Aurélie Le Cléac’h, and the sporting director of the Banque Populaire team, Sébastien Josse, before giving the first details of his accident. "Before the accident, everything was going well on board, I think we had a good start to the race. Me, the boat and the weather team, we were in the match with SVR-Lazartigue and Tom (Laperche). We were very close", says in a video the skipper of Banque Populaire XI, who left Saint-Malo with the hat of favorite.

"I was going to cross a passage of a little stronger wind with a shift in the wind. I was getting ready to prepare a tack because I knew that I had to prepare for a head-on passage. I had reduced the sail. And in a few seconds, everything shifted very quickly, it was really very brutal. (...) It was dark, the boat turned on its side very quickly. Even the anti-capsize systems were not enough to compensate for the brutality of the moment", he explained. The gust of wind which caused it to capsize reached 40 knots according to the skipper's team, or nearly 75 km/h.

“A lot of alarms ringing, it’s a blackout”

Armel Le Cléac’h quickly understood the seriousness of the situation. "The first instinct is to hang on. I'm in the cockpit and I manage to hold on by rushing into the entrance to the companionway of the central hull. I manage to get inside quickly without being caught by the water and by the movements of the boat. And then, of course, it's complete capsize, a lot of alarms sounding, it's a blackout," he remembers. Without thinking, the skipper takes safety measures: take shelter, trigger his emergency beacon, equip himself with his survival suit and take out all the safety equipment provided in the event of an accident.

"It's like a nightmare because it wasn't at all planned. Everything changes in a few seconds. It's incomprehension. There's the feeling of having ruined everything, a huge disappointment especially since at the moment, I'm not out of the woods yet."

“A little later,” he confided, “I learned that a cargo ship would arrive in 7 to 8 hours. I know that I need to rest because maneuvering with the cargo ship can be very physically demanding. I managed to collect some water, a little food and I forced myself to eat and drink to be able to have the strength to be evacuated.” The Panamanian cargo ship (Palexpo) which came to rescue him had never before rescued someone on the open sea. Several attempts were necessary to recover the sailor.

“It’s not easy for them to position themselves without potentially putting me in danger and completely damaging the boat. I prepared my helmet and my harness. But it was complicated, I found myself in the water at sea level, with the cargo ship about twenty meters away, hanging on by a rope which kept me alive,” recalls Armel Le Cléac’h.

"There is obviously relief, but the next phase is decompression and the feeling of being destroyed. I end up on a cargo ship in the middle of the Atlantic, it's hard to accept. But I'm lucky to be alive, to not be injured, so I also try to put things into perspective," he says again. For the skipper's team, there still remains a delicate operation to carry out, that of towing the boat, still capsizing in the middle of the Atlantic.