The Great Stories - Vendée Globe: Jean Le Cam, the great man and the sea

Only he could do that. This Friday January 21, 2021, a few hours after finishing his Vendée Globe, Jean Le Cam is holding a press conference in the form of a one-man show. In the middle of the night. Audience conquered, half-fascinated, half-hilarious. In form, he is a lord. Verve of the juggler, the right word, innate sense of the formula. But it also gives substance. Tell and tell. Three quarters of an hour like that. Worship. Then Jean starts dancing, as he had done on the deck of his boat in the early evening when he entered the channel. The public of Les Sables d'Olonne had braved the curfew to welcome him. Not as a winner, but as a hero. If everyone drinks their words, it's also because they evoke the unknown. Sailors belong to a universe that lives in its own world. That of the imagination. At a time of immediacy and the massification of information, where certain sports are obsessed with shortening in the face of the alleged inability of the public to stay focused for more than a handful of hours, ocean racing remains a special case. This is particularly true of the Vendée Globe, its flagship. 80 days of a competition of which no one sees anything or almost, apart from the start and the finish. But this is perhaps the key to the enthusiasm it arouses. Great StoriesA sailor and a legendary boat vanished in the ocean: 1978, Manureva's last voyage04/19/2021 At 9:32 p.m.The open sea ignores the cameras. The Vendée Globe is one of the last major sporting events that we imagine more than we look at. It is the Tour de France pre-television era. "It makes the imagination work. And making the imagination work is called dreaming, says Jean Le Cam. All the people I meet all tell me the same thing: 'Thank you for making me dream.' A tennis or football match has other values. But it does not work the imagination. Tennis, we are in the concrete, ball in the net, straight lines drawn, 15-0, 30- 0, thing. For us, it's something else, and we have to preserve that. "As long as there are Le Cams, the evocative power of offshore racing will not risk much. His record, in particular his three victories in the Solitaire du Figaro (1994, 1996 and 1999), earned him the nickname "King John" in the industry, but concerning him, it is another resonance that reaches the general public. The Breton has never won the Vendée Globe. It's not for lack of trying since he took part in five editions, which makes him the joint record holder in this area. He swears, his absence from the list does not constitute a "regret". “There is only one who wins. So, if not winning the Vendée Globe is the misfortune of your life, it is better not to try, because you risk being disappointed”. However, if he likes navigation, the sea, the open sea, he defines himself above all as a competitor. The first words of his autobiography, All Sails Out, are moreover devoted to this confidence in the form of an update: "The sea, my sea, is only speed. I never imagined it as a fisherman or merchant's sailor. Speed, sailing, competition. That's all I've ever liked. I've never imagined sailing any other way. I could never see it differently. And that remains my only passion." suggests that, if he had been born in the depths of Cantal or in Besançon rather than Quimper, he would probably not have practiced the sea but would have, in one way or another, competed, no matter the discipline, he acquiesces without elaborating. "It's likely, but if we put Paris in a bottle. It so happens that this story was created like that, that it's part of my life. It's true that I've always loved the side of the competition. Very early on, I did. I can't stand not going to the maximum of my boat. It's part of my DNA to go as fast as possible. "For the journalist, Jean Le Cam is a marvelous and difficult customer, not granting a false confidence to his interlocutor. Endearing but uncompromising, never trying to seduce. He is no longer the age and probably never had the character. "An unbearable but brilliant boy", according to the definition of Jacqueline Tabarly, Eric's widow, to whom he remained so close and who considers him "one of her sons". He listens to questions with ever watchful eyes. The gaze is not far from mistrust. When he answers, the same gaze, far from yours, often escapes through the window, as if he still needed a horizon.

Copacabana, rats and brothels

In fact, like all silent people, like all sailors, he hates talking to spout emptiness and expects the same from you in return. If your words lack interest, his face will let you know. Among these people, we don't have the futile verb. So when they talk, we listen. "Tabarly was silent, he recalls. We also say that about me. We also try not to speak to say nothing. And the more it goes, the more these words have meaning." "Le Roi Jean", Le Cam knew Eric Tabarly well. The ultimate sailing legend. As on all those who marked him, from his father who died when he was only 19 years old and whom he says he taught him "the most", to his great friend Hubert Desjoyeaux, Michel's brother, him also disappeared too soon, it is inexhaustible on Tabarly. He was 22 years old when he met him for the first time asking him to do his military service on Pen Duick VI. He was in his little shoes. "I didn't show up and say 'Hi buddy, don't you want to take me on?', it wasn't really that, no, he laughs. But I didn't want to find myself I don't know where. It would have been difficult to do it. " His year in the flag, Le Cam therefore spent it with Tabarly. This is the adventure of the Withbread, the former name of the Volvo Ocean Race. Pen Duick VI, renamed Euromarché for the occasion, does not have the means to compete with the fastest boats. It is therefore during the long stopovers of several weeks, which intersect the four months of navigation, that this somewhat crazy epic takes on its full potential. Like this hitchhiking expedition to reach Mar del Plata and Rio de Janeiro, which the young Jean dreamed of discovering. He attends the concert of the group Police there, sleeps on the Copacabana beach infested with rats at night or in a seedy hotel transformed into a brothel. With Tabarly, he learns, discovers, learns, even if he does not hesitate to demystify it. "I loved Eric but he had a very annoying irresponsible side", he writes in his book, also recalling his shortcomings in multihulls. They sailed together once again, in 1989, during the double-handed Transat, Lorient - Saint-Barthélémy - Lorient. A fiasco ended by a shipwreck. "I demystify it because I knew it well, he tells us. When you know the myth, it is no longer one. Eric was a fairly simple person. He was a precursor, with all his victories, against the English in particular. He gave impetus, including for sailing schools, knowledge of boats. Then he had exceptional seamanship." Subsequently, Jean Le Cam first wrote his own legend alone, even if he never denied his first collective love. "I like both, I like to change, admits the Finistère. These are different things. When you sail with others, there is also this notion of sharing. If you only go solo, you don't learn nothing from others. So you don't just have to do that. The difference is that alone, when you do something stupid, no one sees it. That's the good side." After the time of triumphs in the Solitaire du Figaro, his great affair of the 21st century will be, like many of his colleagues, the Vendée Globe. To define the importance taken by this event, Le Cam has his own maxim: "La Solitaire is our Tour de France. The Vendée Globe, our Olympic Games." Even without ever winning the gold medal, he will become a central character, according to pages that have become legendary to compose his own novel. His first participation, in 2004-2005, leads to his best ranking. In Les Sables d'Olonne, he took second place, seven hours after the winner, Vincent Riou, with whom he fought an epic battle. At the heart of this duel, a magical moment. One morning, as the two men race towards the Roaring Forties, they find themselves almost side by side. They wave to each other, call each other for a brief conversation. On the Vendée Globe, the loneliness is lasting and profound. But the competition is fierce. Hence the ambiguous feeling of Le Cam at the evocation of this memory: "I thought that I had sown it and in reality it was there. I am happy to see it and at the same time, it annoys me. But being close to a competitor is a highlight."Strong, but less and less exceptional. The trajectories taken by competitors are often the same today. A phenomenon due both to the extreme precision of forecasts and to global warming. “The last blow (during the Vendée Globe 2020-2021), there were even four or five of us, says the Quimpérois. There was a regrouping, it came back from behind we all found ourselves in a very small area. The weather forecasts have improved and the melting ice prevents you from going around more than before. "Besides loneliness, danger is the other breast of the Vendée Globe. Alone at sea for almost three months, the sailors are always on the edge of a precipice. What the Cam sums up with a pithy formula and a bit chilling: "You fall into the water, you're dead." However, tragedies are rare on the Vendée Globe, which has been bereaved "only" three times, the last in 1996 when Gerry Roufs disappeared in the South Pacific. "The waves are no longer waves, they are high like the Alps", he said in his last message sent to the race headquarters. Since then, death has sometimes lurked in, but never knocked. "It's 'funny' because, over the years, knock on wood, there are not many fatal accidents, recalls Le Cam. Maybe the fact that this notion of danger is omnipresent means that no one falls in the water. We are very secure in the equipment but still, you can slip, it goes quickly. But you don't think about it. C is ubiquitous in fact, but not in mind." Whatever the cost, even in the worst case scenario, the skipper must stay on his boat. Even in the event of a capsize. Twice, almost twelve years apart, King John found himself confronted with this crisis situation. In 2008, he will be saved. In 2020, the savior. By a strange link of fate, in both cases, an echo of the duel of 2004 will resound. It was Vincent Riou, his great rival four years earlier, who came to his rescue during his second participation. And when he in turn went to help Kevin Escoffier last year, the latter was sailing on PRB, the same sponsor as Riou's boat when he won in 2004. "It's true that it's completely crazy , you're wondering if it's not a little tricked, it's so unlikely, Le Cam laughs. save him. The circle was complete." He does not necessarily believe in the destiny of sailors any more than in that of men, but all the same: "At such times, you no longer know what to think, it's so incredible. Yes, there is this connection to PRB. It's crazy." Tuesday January 6, 2009. Approaching Cape Horn, Jean Le Cam is in third place behind Michel Desjoyeaux and Roland Jourdain and just ahead of... Vincent Riou, with whom he talks regularly. "My great opponent from 2004 has gradually become a good companion," he wrote. The irony, again, is that at the time of the disaster, he was right in the middle of a discussion with Riou. The shock is "enormous, frightening, totally unforeseen." "I'll leave you, there's something weird," he says to the title holder, having the reflex to communicate his exact position. Fifteen seconds later, his boat, VM Matériaux, rolled over on its side. The Cam understood: it will sink. He barely has time to call Michel Ollivier, his team manager in France. It's night there. Ollivier is asleep but luckily he picks up on the first ring. "Michel, I'm lying on the water! I'm going to capsize, I'm going to capsize! Note my position: 56° 17' south, 73° 46' west. Michel, it's turning!" The satellite antenna, now submerged, will not allow him to say another word. The water, devastating and pernicious, invades the cockpit and then all areas of the boat. Jean Le Cam ends up taking refuge in a small closet, at the very front of his boat, the last dry compartment, protected by a watertight door. He wipes his body somehow with paper towel, puts on dry clothes and his survival suit to protect himself from hypothermia, sworn enemy of the castaway, takes bottles of water, food and a headlamp. Here he is in the dark, holed up "like a rat" in this curious box. In his book, he writes: "My survival is organized as much as possible. Time is a friend. It's up to me to remain calm and lucid. I control myself as best I can without nervousness. If I get excited, if I panic, if I'm 'freaking out', I'm putting myself in even more danger." "You're in a situation where you have orders of priority, he explains. always in action. You go from one thing to another, you always try to predict what's going to happen. Obviously, it's going to take time to get you back, but they'll get there. You know that it's going to take time, so you have to rest, set yourself small goals that you'll more or less achieve, but use this time in a more or less comfortable way, even if it's not the right word ."

Only one bullet in the barrel

Was he afraid? Afraid it all ends there? "No, the notion of fear does not exist," he says. The castaway is too busy surviving to be afraid of dying. “The sailor always thinks of the worst, when it rarely happens. So I try to keep in mind that it will go much better than you imagine. On the other hand, you have to be careful of the accident. It could be the distress flare gassing me inside the boat, what happened to me, that kind of bullshit." The rest is no longer up to him, but he has to master what is within his power in the face of this extreme situation. He believes he can hold out for three days provided the boat doesn't come apart for good. Fortunately, VM Matériaux will withstand the shock. Without a watch, he struggles to keep track of time. Manages to get some sleep. Can't help laughing when, opening the pocket containing his second survival suit, he finds a bottle of champagne that Philippe De Villiers, president of the Vendée Departmental Council, offered to all the competitors. They often stay on the ground but Michel Ollivier had slipped it there before the start. "Here I am shipwrecked off Cape Horn trying to organize my survival in the company of a bottle of champagne..." Hidden in the bow of the boat, Le Cam is waiting. Until, seventeen hours after his shipwreck, he heard a repeated metallic noise. He fears the worst. In reality, it was Vincent Riou who, to make him understand his arrival, threw boxes of butter on the hull. Then he hears his first name: "Jean! Jean!" The shipwrecked man waited for him while dreading it. That's the whole paradox. He has never been closer to being rescued, but will now have to put himself in danger to leave this uncomfortable but safe haven. "I had only one fear, it was that he would come out and that we would not be right there to catch him. Then he took his courage in both hands and he went out," said Vincent Riou. "If I go, I don't do it halfway. Once outside, I can never come back to the shelter in the hull. I only have one bullet in the barrel," summarizes Le Cam. Rarely has the expression "Jumping into the water" taken on such meaning. In apnea, it joins the outside, then climbs onto the hull by clinging to it. With his PRB, Vincent Riou revolves around VM Matériaux, or what's left of it. On the fourth attempt, he got close enough. Jean Le Cam manages to grab the rope that will allow him to win PRB. He is saved. But in the maneuver, Riou hooked the floating hull of the wreck. He will be forced to give up in turn but reclassified 3rd for this rescue. "It was the least of my worries at the time, will say Riou. The important thing was to recover Jean."

The rider and his horse

Once on PRB, Jean le Cam takes a last look at his boat which cannot be saved. Years later, a piece of hull marked VM Matériaux will be found off the Sandwich Islands, in the South Atlantic. For a sailor, it's always heartbreaking. Even if the main thing is obviously elsewhere in this kind of circumstances. "You just saved your skin, so the boat, at first, it does not exist, he slips. He catches up with you for financial problems afterwards, but at the time, you don't care like of the year 40. Anyway, you know that the boat, you won't get it back, that option is dead. Afterwards, you try to save your life, that's it." The fact remains that the relationship between a skipper and his boat is part of a special relationship, probably unaffordable for anyone who has never sailed offshore. “Some people take it as a tool. I don't. Especially in a race like the Vendée Globe. The boat is still the one that brings you home. boat on arrival because, when you had problems, you thank him for having brought you back." A metaphor is suggested to him: the link between the sailor and his boat would be similar to that between a rider and his horse. "There is a bit of that, yes, especially in the most tense moments of the race", confirms the Breton. Sometimes anthropomorphism is not far off. During the last Vendée Globe, at all scores, Le Cam's boat appeared under the name "Hubert", in homage to Hubert Desjoyeaux. The boat, the sailor talks to it, kisses it, yells at it too, sometimes. "But not too much. If you yell at him too much and he starts pulling his face, you're in trouble. On a world tour, it's a couple. The two are intimately linked. That's why "Abandoning a boat is always heartbreaking. But that's life."Twelve years later, the memory of his shipwreck will come to the surface. This time, Jean Le Cam will play the role of the saviour. Not the most comfortable, contrary to what one might imagine. "The rescued is still very confident of his situation, according to him. He knows where he is. When I capsized, I knew I was alive. Outside, no one knew. That's the reality. So anxiety, it is with the savior, it is not with the saved. Uncertainty is 'when', not 'if?' Kevin, he was zen, he knew that we were going to recover him "Kevin is Kevin Escoffier. On November 30, 2020, three weeks after leaving Les Sables d'Olonne, the bell rang in all the boats. The Malouin sent a distress message. When he had just lowered a larger sail to gain speed, he hit a wave in a stormy sea. A "planted", according to the marine language: the nose of the boat enters the water, at the bottom of the wave. "When the nose came out, the front was at 90° to the rear. It had broken in two", explained Escoffier. Four competitors were diverted, including the future winner, Yannick Bestaven, and Jean Le Cam , the first to arrive at the sinking area. "It's the worst you can imagine, he breathes. We have no news from him. Is his boat at the bottom? Is he himself on a life raft? Or even worse..." The sailor always imagines the worst... The anxiety is all the greater for Le Cam that after having seen Kevin Escoffier's lifeboat, he will lose it, the time to a maneuver. Hurry up. In 2009, Le Cam was able to stay in his boat. On a canoe, Escoffier can quickly drift very far and the battery of his beacon is not eternal. Night has fallen. Jean hesitates to wait for daybreak. He wanders. The sea is rough, the wind angry, but the moon is full, offering satisfactory visibility. So he resumes his search. At two o'clock in the morning, Le Cam renews visual contact. He says the following: "The life raft passes a meter from my sailboat. I grab a kind of red pool noodle attached to a rope that I had carefully prepared. I throw it. Kevin catches it , attaches around the waist. (...) And we each pull on our side. Gradually, Kevin approaches the boat which dances in the waves and whose rear rises according to the hollows, the menacing propeller regularly coming out of the water. After ten minutes of effort, he manages to hook the transmission bar between the two rudders, at the back of my boat, while paying attention to the sharp blades of the hydrogenerators . I help him get on board. It's won. It's happiness. We fall into each other's arms. I'm no longer in the race but I have nothing more to do nothing !"

Prank and video with Macron

In France, between fears and hopes, until the happy ending, the general public followed this episode. Without seeing anything, without knowing anything or almost, at least details. The saved and his savior will spend five days together aboard Hubert, alias Yes we Cam!, the time to join the Nivôse, a frigate of the French navy. Five memorable days. Escoffier is a merry fellow, and his host takes advantage of this unexpected company. The requests to tell this adventure are multiplying. Media, of course, but also presidential. Emmanuel Macron in person asked to exchange video with them. These are memories for a few lifetimes. From the essential, this happy ending, to the accessory. Like this hoax set up by the two accomplices. In a maneuver, Le Cam injured his cheek. He is bleeding, and Escoffier at the idea of ​​making believe in the attack of a flying fish. Many will take the bait of this imaginary fish and the video will make a nice buzz on social networks. Before leaving, the guest had time to empty some of his host's food reserves. "He eats a lot. Much more than me," laughs Le Cam, who will be supplied accordingly by the Nivôse to compensate for these losses. "Kiss my quail, thank you", slips Kevin Escoffier before being recovered. There are only humans here. The competition is far away. These few hours of anguish, these few days of complicity, engendered a special bond. "It brings us closer, yes, says Le Cam. It creates memories, and it was the same with Vincent Riou." Even if, once ashore, the sailors are like everyone else, caught up in the infernal rhythm of everyday life. "With Kevin, we have to eat together but we can't find the time to see each other. Time passes, it's the same for everyone." Perhaps it is also to escape all that that they leave again and again. “I felt good there,” said King Jean after completing his first Vendée. "Over there", in this almost infinite sea, it's everywhere, it's nowhere, but especially not here.

Jeannot la Bricole

Like Vincent Riou three editions earlier, Jean Le Cam will not be rewarded for his good deed by the gods of the ocean. Less than 24 hours after leaving Escoffier, he discovered that his bottom of the hull was delaminating. If she yields, he too will find himself in a few minutes in a lifeboat. The sailor is a manual. King Jean puts on his panoply of Jeannot la bricole. Drawings on the menus of his daily meals, adhesive tape, resin, cutting ballast plates with a grinder... To save his boat, he transforms it into the local Leroy Merlin. For a few days, the makeshift repair holds up. Before slowly slipping away again. So he does it again. The Cam goes through the month of December "the ball in the stomach". He is convinced of it, he will not go further than Cape Horn. On Christmas Day, obsessed with the fear of damage, he films himself, with these words: "To all those who are alone, I am alone too. We are together." Sharing, even in the most extreme solitude. That's all Le Cam. Its hull will hold until the end. His Hubert, far from being the most modern, is not equipped with foils, these fins which transform boats into planes by almost making them fly on the water, but he has heart. He makes her see it, though. The shits sail in squadrons. In the ascent of the Atlantic, her main sail tore. He has to go up several times to the top of the mast to keep it upright. He has sea legs, but heights are not his thing. The exercise puts him off but he complies with it. "When it's necessary, it's necessary, and when it's done, it's done". Pragmatism according to Le Cam. Again, he tops it all off with a video, offering an unobstructed view of his boat and the ocean. On January 28, at 8:19 p.m., he was the seventh to cross the virtual finish line in Les Sables d'Olonne. But the hours of compensation due to the rescue of Kevin Escoffier allow old Jean and old Hubert to officially rank fourth. A double achievement. Because it was not, on paper, the most competitive. And because he came back from hell. "From start to finish, as he says. I've never experienced a Vendée Globe like that. I have the oldest boat, I'm the oldest, I finished 4th and I saved a guy. It was not a happy end written in advance”, he recalls. 50% Poulidor, 50% Zorro, 100% Le Cam.

Ready to put it back

Of the Vendée Globe, he has therefore never been the king. A prince, rather. The Cam was brilliant, unhappy, miraculous, miraculous, savior, saved. Until this 2020-2021 campaign which gave him unprecedented popularity for a sailor in the 21st century. He does not seek it, generates it almost in spite of himself. More than his place as runner-up in 2005, this "con place at the foot of the podium" in his words, will perhaps remain his great accomplishment. The sea carries its galleys, its tears, sometimes its dramas, but also its happiness and its pride. project, yes", launches the Quimpérois. A boat "of modern design but simpler". It remains to find the investors. Despite its strong popularity, they do not jostle enough at the gate. But he keeps the faith. And his beliefs. No, he will not give in to foils, whose ultra-rapid evolution in recent years he considers unreasonable. After exchanging days with Kevin Escoffier after the sinking of the latter, he is convinced that the foils have something to do with it. "Yes, the boats go faster with the foils, but what's the point? The proof, the fastest took six days longer than four years before, he recalls. The foils are adapted to certain bodies of water But on the sea, the problem is that there are waves! The most important thing is not the technique, but the knowledge you have of it. "He does not like everything that is likely to distort the nobility of offshore competition. Along with the foils, communications are his other pet peeve. He puts a coin back in the machine: "I'm thinking of Whatsapp for example. It's assistance. I thought it was forbidden, I discovered that when the Vendée Globe arrived. Today, with increasing data, communication will go three times faster, you will be in constant communication. It's a solo race around the world without assistance so, for a moment, it becomes unacceptable to be able to communicate like that all the time. The guys are plugged in like at home. Well, afterwards, as long as they do that, they don't make their boat move forward so that suits me, everything is fine. But the organization has to be attentive to that. “He also rejects the mental trainers who flock to others. "I do a bit of imagery, I like that, but that's it." He gets angry sometimes, which is not a bad sign. But the sea, it does not change. When he sets off again from Les Sables, Jean Le Cam will be 65 years old. He swears, the victory, the podium, all that will not obsess him. "It's no longer my story", guarantees the Breton. To have. Until then, he will remain accountable for every word, to better prepare the acts. True to its motto: "Too much to say makes people laugh, to silence them well." 42