This is the crazy story of the start of the Vendée Globe.
A sailor saved in a previous edition who returns the elevator by rescuing another navigator.
Eleven years separate the first episode experienced on January 6, 2009 from the second settled in the early dismal hours of Tuesday, December 1, 2020. With, at the heart of the plot, a certain Jean Le Cam.
The oldest of this round-the-world trip, who after losing the tip of his keel during the Vendée Globe 2008-2009 and spending fourteen hours inside his returned sailboat without being able to give any news, had been recovered off Cape Horn by Vincent Riou, skipper of the PRB boat.
Winner of the previous round-the-world edition in 2005, beating Le Cam by six hours, Riou saved the life of his runner-up, then, in the process, lost his mast affected in the rescue ...
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Kévin Escoffier, shipwrecked Vendée Globe:" You see the films on the shipwrecks, it was the same and worse "
Eleven later, therefore, Jean Le Cam succeeded in his turn in rescuing Kevin Escoffier, also navigator of a PRB boat, after a night of research and anguish.
The 40-year-old Malouin could have done worse.
As much for the skills of his rescuer as for the quality of the atmosphere on board the boat that took him in.
"He stumbled upon a good house," laughed Le Cam, happy with this dramatic outcome after having experienced the terrible reality of seeing his young competitor on his arrival in the zone and then losing sight of him in the waves of five. meters breaking in the South Atlantic, southwest of the South African coast.
"I must have been two hours from PRB, so I was the closest," said 'King John', his nickname since his third victory in the Solitaire du Figaro, after having picked up his visitor from the ocean.
I go to the position where the beacon said the boat was in distress.
I arrive in the area, and I see Kevin in his raft.
Impeccable.
I told him “I'm coming back, we're not going to do anything”.
I had two reefs in the mainsail, with 30-32 knots, and with the sea there, it was not easy to maneuver.
I come back to where I had left it ... And there, no one.
"
"You go from despair to crazy stuff"
Jean Le Cam
It takes more to throw off an experienced and stubborn sailor like Jean Le Cam, 61, and a fifth participation in the current Vendée Globe.
“I came back 5-6 times.
I say to myself “you stay on stand-by and you wait for the day”.
And I told myself that the light (from a flashlight) is better seen at night than during the day.
For a moment, I was standing on the bridge and I see a flash.
In fact it's not a flash, it's a light that appears in a wave.
An apparition.
I say “it's not true”.
And I go on and the more I go on, the more appearances there were.
And then you say to yourself, it's good.
You go from desperation to crazy stuff.
I put myself in the wind.
I see Kevin, I tell him “we do it right away, I'm not coming back”.
I throw the red buoy at him, the banana species.
And he gets to have it.
In the end we succeeded.
And there is happiness.
"
By his side aboard the Yes We Cam! Boat, Kevin Escoffier sailed Tuesday morning between smiles and tears.
After endless hours of waiting in his tiny liferaft, nervously exhausted, he revealed the circumstances of his damage which dragged his monohull 60 feet to the bottom of the ocean: "Do you see the films on the shipwrecks? the same and worse… The boat folded in on itself in a wave at 27 knots.
I heard a crack but honestly it didn't need the noise to understand.
I looked at the bow, it was 90 degrees.
Within seconds, there was water everywhere.
The stern of the boat was underwater and the bow pointed skyward.
The boat broke in half forward of the mast bulkhead.
He sort of folded up… Between the moment I was on the bridge adjusting the sails and the moment I found myself in TPS (the survival suit), not even two minutes passed.
It was extremely fast.
"
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The Cam tells about the rescue of Escoffier:" You go from despair to the crazy thing "
Very appreciated by the general public, Jean Le Cam will see his popularity certainly explode after this successful rescue of the extreme and honoring the solidarity of men at sea. Author of a magnificent start to the race on his old boat from 2007 not equipped with foils, he had stunned the rest of the fleet by resisting the assaults of the latest generation foilers and camping for nearly a week in the lead, before stepping off the podium at the exit of the Saint Helena high.
True to his tradition, he had made Vendée Globe enthusiasts laugh by comparing his boat to a wingless 4L and tasting a cassoulet just before a storm hit.
With a tiny budget of 700,000 euros, "roughly the price of a pair of foils" for big budget teams, he set off with envy in Les Sables-d'Olonne for a fifth participation, obvious to him.
“Being at the start with a successful boat is already a victory.
So I'm fine with my boat without foils, even though we are living through wonderful times ”, he confided to us before the start.
"I'm not dead yet"
Jean Le Cam
A colorful character capable of making people laugh with two-word sentences, as with endless formulas, but often full of common sense, this old-fashioned sailor remains an unrivaled figure in the Vendée Globe.
And a unique navigator, who has helmed all types of boats, with one, two or three hulls.
As good at deciphering the sky as at drinking a beer or tinkering with an essential piece in order to save his race.
A Breton tough against evil and poles apart from the new generation of engineers who now reign at the top of ocean racing.
"Papi" does better than resistance.
It shows that a sixty-something can believe in his wildest dreams.
And frenzied.
"I'm not dead yet," he exclaimed before leaving Anne, his wife and number one supporter, to try to complete the world tour in less than 80 days: his goal, after his second place in 2005, then his fifth and sixth places in the two editions following his rescue by Vincent Riou.
May his (many) supporters rest assured, the time taken to save Kevin Escoffier will be counted and returned to him by the race jury.
A podium is not impossible for the three-time winner of the Solitaire if the foiling boats keep breaking down one after the other.
Stainless, Jean Le Cam resumed his journey towards the Great South while waiting to be able to entrust his castaway around December 7 to a French Navy ship crossing in the vicinity of the Kerguelen Islands.
The hardest part is yet to come for him as for the other survivors, in this Indian Ocean famous for its poisoned arrows then this Pacific which has only the name.
He knows it.
But he likes “the human side” of the Vendée Globe too much to resist the call of the sea.
Read also
The Figaro archives: In 2009, Le Cam saved from the waters by Riou