The boats have been ready for weeks. The weather files have been studied, every detail checked, dozens of scenarios imagined. Yet as nine skippers stood on the verge of the Vendée Arctique’s Sunday start from Les Sables d’Olonne, none of that preparation could touch the one thing they could not control: what they felt.
In those final hours before departure, the paradox runs deep. These sailors have waited for this moment, worked toward it, thought about little else. And yet as it arrives, some want only to slow time itself, to steal a few more hours with family and crew ashore. Others are desperate for the waiting to end.
Manu Cousin knows both feelings well. The two-time Vendée Globe finisher, sailing Coup de Pouce from his hometown, doesn’t treat these pre-race hours lightly. “The hardest part is the night before race day,” he said. “You want to slow the clock, to enjoy those last moments with people you care about.” Yet he carried a different weight too. “We’re lucky to be here on this start line. I’ve done a lot of mental work over recent months to arrive in the best frame of mind, and today I feel quite calm.”
Nicolas d’Estais, aboard Café Joyeux, felt the pull in the opposite direction. “At some point you just have to go,” he said with a grin. “The last few days you’re busy all the time, but nothing really happens. You watch the weather, prepare everything, bite your nails a bit.” What he wanted was release. “Often as soon as the gun goes, the stress just disappears.”
Between those two opposing forces lay the real texture of these hours: the desire to hold time still, matched equally by the hunger to finally begin.
The mind works in strange ways before a big race. For some, anxiety lives in their thoughts. For others it interrupts sleep or moves into the body itself. Corentin Horeau woke in the night drenched in sweat, though he’d slept well. “The mind is working,” he said, laughing it off. “It’s normal. I’m still new to IMOCA.” Sam Goodchild felt it too, describing that peculiar moment where everything stood ready but nothing had yet begun.
What binds all nine skippers is the same knowledge: the race exists now only in their heads. Once the gun fires, the uncertainty transforms into the clarity of open water, where preparation meets reality and emotion becomes irrelevant.
