Route du Rhum: “I’m lucky to be alive”… back on land after his rescue, Armel Le Cléac’h recounts his terrible capsize

Armel le Cléac’h is back on land. Safe and sound but obviously marked by his terrible misadventure on the Route du Rhum, with the capsizing of his Ultim Banque Populaire on November 4 in the northwest of the Azores, while he was in a regatta with Tom Laperche, the future winner. Rescued after a few hours of waiting by a Panamanian cargo ship, the three-time winner of the Solitaire du Figaro and the Vendée Globe was welcomed in Norfolk, Virginia (United States), by his wife Aurélie and the sporting director of Team Banque Populaire, Sébastien Josse. And he was finally able to recount the circumstances of his capsize.

“Before the accident, everything was going well on board,” he confided in a video broadcast by his team. 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, with Tom (Laperche), we were very close. I was going to cross a passage of a little stronger wind with a wind shift. I was getting ready to prepare for 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 changed very quickly, it was really very brutal. It was a very violent gust of wind. Afterward, my team told me that it had gone up to 40 knots. It was dark, the boat got on its side very quickly. Even the anti-capsize systems were not enough to compensate for the brutality of the moment. »

A sailor hit but not sunk

And the sailor recounts what happened next, and his good reflexes which allowed him to avoid the fatal accident: “I quickly understood that something really very serious was happening. The first instinct is to hang on. I am in the cockpit and I manage to hold on while rushing into the entrance to the central hull companionway. I manage to get inside quickly without being caught by the water and the movements of the boat. And then, of course, it's complete capsizing, lots of alarms ringing, it's a blackout. Afterwards, I will quickly put myself in a safe situation and trigger the emergency beacon. And then I will equip myself, put on my survival suit, take out all the safety equipment that is inside, provided in the event of an accident. Unfortunately inside the boat, everything is made of carbon so the satellite signal with the emergency phone has difficulty getting through so it takes a little time to pick up a good network to be able to send a first message to shore to say that I am safe and that I am not injured. »

Armel Le Cléac’h then goes on to talk about what he felt at the time and afterwards, when a team went looking for his overturned trimaran to try to save it and bring it back to shore: “It’s like a nightmare because it wasn’t at all planned. Everything changes in a few seconds. This is misunderstanding. There is the impression of having ruined everything, a huge disappointment especially since at the moment, I am not yet out of the woods.” And regarding his feelings today, the sailor appears very marked: “There is obviously relief, but the next phase is decompression and the impression 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. I was greeted very kindly by the crew of the freighter. During the six days at sea with them, I learned a lot. We will have to think about something else when I return to France but also take stock with the team to understand everything that happened to me. But here, I mainly try to move forward day by day. »