Volvo, “blow” by Team España: Michel Desjoyeaux arrives!

Borrowing an overused term when it comes to soccer marketing, we could say that the biggest “coup” ahead of the 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race (which will start next Oct. 4 from Alicante, Spain’s Spaniards have made it. Team Espana has revealed the names of the crew members who will take part in the round-the-world stage race, and towering above them all is Michel Desjoyeaux, known as “le Professeur”, one of the world’s strongest ocean sailors (he is the only one to have twice won the Vendée Globe, the nonstop solo round-the-world race). The Frenchman is no stranger to this challenge: this will be his fourth participation. His first experience was in 1985-86, when he was still called Whitbread, aboard the Cote d’Or captained by the legendary Eric Tabarly. He then participated in the 1989-90 and 1993-94 editions, albeit for only one stage. A few years ago, in the March 2009 issue of the Sailing Newspaper, we told you his story, which is worth repeating:

WHO MICHEL DESJOYEAUX IS (FROM MARCH 2009 GDV)
Michel, the Hero with the Impossible Surname (Desjoyeaux), is at the counter of La Hune (the crow’s nest), Mr. and Mrs. Coic’s bar-brasserie in Port La Forêt. He talks about sailing, with a lisp. Indeed, “thundering,” the noise the Breton language makes according to the French. Now, someone who at 44 years of age has won two Vendée Globe, three Figaro, a Route du Rhum, an Ostar and a Jacques Vabre-just to name a few successes-will have some to tell about, won’t he? Although, as he is an “aremoric” (those who live by the sea, as the Breton Celts called themselves, from armor-mare), but more importantly a true sailor, we like to think that he must not be properly a storyteller. And what does Michel say? He talks about his record in crossing the “baie.” That of La Forêt-Fouesnant. The bay in front of his house, in short. It might appear almost blasphemous. In fact, a mockery. Instead, it is serious. Which can help, perhaps, to better understand the Monument. AKA le Professeur (copyright Damien Grimont, the 1991 Mini Transat winner), for all sailing enthusiasts. Aka Mich’ Desj, for his fellow Ocean.. First, in these waters, the Hero grew up and confronted people like Le Cam, Jourdain, Guillemot, Nélias, who made La Forêt – called for this reason “vallée des Fous,” valley of the madmen (copyright Olivier de Kersauson) – the capital of solitary navigators. It is clear that if you can put the sea in your pocket here, amidst storms, rocks, tides and opponents of such caliber, you are ready to face the course au large head-on.

FAMILY AND FRIENDS: HIS “BEACONS”
Also, the “lighthouse effect.” Simone Bianchetti, our loner who had managed to earn the respect of the Bretons, used to say that a navigator must always have a beacon to show him the way home, giving him a reason to return. And Michel has his own personal ray of light. He brings him back to his wife Régine, with whom he is “complementary and inseparable,” as Grimont says, “when I think of her, I think of Michel, and vice versa.”. He leads him to his sons Adrien, Jeremie and Tristan, who follow Dad’s exploits on the globe. It brought him closer to Henri, his father, one of the founders of Glénans, who moved to Port La Forêt in the 1950s to open the region’s first shipyard, where Michel began to stroke boats. She takes him back to his siblings, he the last of seven (it is their mother May who educates them, in the beginning, because home is too far from school), among them Hubert and Bertrand, who lead the Cdk shipyard, opened in 1983 with Le Cam, where the Hero builds his “bolides”: from PRB, with which he won his first Vendée (2000-01), to the current, equally glorious Foncia. And again, a beacon that brings him together with friends from “Pole Finistére Course au large,” the national top school of offshore sailing, and with those of “Mer Agitée,” his stable, started in 1999, where the exploits-from boat to sponsors-his and other rank-and-file soloists take shape. And then, the light that makes him re-embrace the nearly 3,000 residents of La Forêt-Fouesnant, who take to the streets with each victory to celebrate him. Do you want to put the power of this energy beam? When you’re down there, among the gray and cold of the Southern Oceans, it’s something that warms you, makes you stronger. It makes you less lonely. And it gives you that serenity, clarity, balance that makes you regain the harbor from where you started. The primacy of “baie,” however, also stands for simplicity, sobriety, humility. All qualities that make the sailor and enhance the champion. Because le Professeur may appear, given his icy appellation, to be a Monument, but he is actually a man. “His image, the one that commands respect and awe in his opponents, is that of an uncompromising, even before himself, and demanding sailor,” Grimont says further. “It is clear that sometimes he is monomaniacal, who thinks of nothing but the boat. But Michel is also something else: a man with friends, who likes to sit in front of a good bottle of wine, who likes to laugh. He is not, in short, a hermit locked in his ivory tower.” And he is a man they like, on balance. “He is in people’s hearts. His image comes across well: it is that of a simple, natural, politically correct, generous and open person to others,” is always the friend speaking. A person who, reading one of his e-mails sent in these last tremendous months from the Ocean, admires among others-in no particular order-Fellini, Tintin, photographer Robert Doisneau, Bernard Tapie (“who is not afraid to speak his mind”), Jean Todt and the Ferrari team (“who can fix your tree in ten seconds”), Hitchcock, Bill Gates (“not for his money, but for his ability”), Dior and the Pope (“who is supposed to spread the Good News”).

BY SEA FOREVER
Of course, then there is also the champion. “First of all, he is a winner,” confirms Eric Coquerel, his manager and longtime friend. “He doesn’t race to please people, he races to win. When he is racing, he is very calm, he never loses control.” Proverbial is his knowledge of the vehicle, his fussiness in the preparation phase, his technicality combined with an innovative spirit (his was the idea for the first canting keel in the Minis), and his license as a meteorologist and expert strategist. A rudder ace who never uncovers his cards before he drops them on the table. In the last Vendée, just to understand, he gained water on his opponents only at night and then continued to cover them during the day. A champion, a self-made man. He began to become familiar with boats and the sea, we have already mentioned, with his father’s shipyard. He goes fishing in the archipelago des Glénans, he pulls edges in his “baie” with everything he can get his hands on: Caravelle, Vaurien, Kid. He spends more hours on the water, with his friends in the Cap Coz gang (Jourdain, Le Cam, Nèlias, Juhel), and with Dad’s sails and especially the latter’s clients, than he does in school desks. In 1983 he helped Roland Jourdain prepare a Muscadet for the Mini Transat, then seasons on Eric Tabarly’s Pen Duick VI and Philippe Jeantot’s trimaran. In his 20s, the big leap into the blue: the Whitbread with the Breton “mountain.” Yes, Tabarly. His master. Michel knows how to constantly renew himself: in 1986 the first Formula 40, then the Transat en doble with Jean Mauriel, Alain Thébault’s Hydroptére. And the Solitaire du Figaro, which is his breakthrough: in 1990 he is the “premier bizuth,” the best rookie; two years later he wins (ten participations, two more victories, the last in 2007). That same year he also took home the top spot in the Ag2r Transat. His career, and his palmares, take off from here. Consecration came in 2001, with the Vendée Globe: he pulverized the previous record, with 93 days and 3 hours, leaving in his wake (25 hours) Ellen MacArthur. Then, he returned to multihulls, throwing himself headlong into the Orma circuit: he won the Route du Rhum in 2002 (at the helm of the trimaran Gèant he extinguished with 8 days and 8 hours the smile of Francis Joyon, who four years earlier had taken 38 hours longer than him) and the Ostar in 2004. In the past, only Philippe Poupon (1986 and 1988) had scored this one-two punch. Which, however, missed the feather in the cap of the nonstop world tour.

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How well Zorzi and Gamenara did at the Mini Transat! And meanwhile, the Class 40s at the Transat Café l’Or…

THE STAGES OF TRIUMPH
These, the foundation of the Monument. Shall we also talk about the last Vendée? Michel leaves on November 9 from Les Sables d’Olonne, Simenon’s vacation beaches, with more canvas on shore than the others. The next day he is in sixth place, 9.6 miles behind Marc Guillemot, who leads the fleet. With 200 miles to go, however, it stops: the engine apparatus floods, the electrical system blows up. Hero calls ground, “I’m going back.” The pit stop is worthy of the Formula 1 pit: one of his own even jumps into the water, along the harbor exit channel, to disembark and not let Michel lose another second. On November 12 the Hero is 451 miles behind the leader, Jean-Pierre Dick; on the 15th the miles become 670. Race over? One must wait until the Roaring Forties, however, to hear the sounds of charging. Michel hoists the new canvas, calibrated for the Southern Oceans, in Cuben fiber, which holds impossible gusts and goes flying. On Dec. 3 he moves up to 10th place, on the 8th-a month after leaving at the Good Hope Crossing-he is sixth, 90 miles behind Dick, who still leads the way. In the middle of the Indian, ice in sight, le Professeur still crushes, from gas up to 30.44 knots and covers 466.6 miles over 24 hours. But it is on December 16 that everything changes: Paprec-Virbac collides and Dick goes out of the picture; Mike Golding leaves the Ecover 3 tree in the water and Mich’ Desj gains the first position. Which he will never leave again, being right in all storms and breakdowns. Upon arrival on Feb. 1, he stopped the stopwatch at 84 days 3 hours 9 minutes 8 seconds and pulverized another record, that held by Vincent Riou, which improved by 3 days 7 hours 39 minutes. Super!
“Michel is of the same temperament as Tabarly: he never gives up,” explains Damien Grimont. “However, don’t think he is only a technician of anticyclones and depressions. He is also sensitive to the beauty of things.” The Hero, the Monument, le Professeur. Mich’ Desj, in short, on the dock in Les Sables d’Olonne confirms, recounting the excitement of the finish: “It was incredible. The sun was also coming up, I saw a little ray come out…. A magical atmosphere.” Even the sunrise, admiring it from the victory podium, looks more beautiful.