He left in mid-June from the small town of Cape Cod, in the northeast of the United States, for a crossing of the North Atlantic by oar. With only the strength of his arms, Guirec Soudée has already crossed the Azores, an archipelago off the coast of Portugal. A last piece of land that he will not even have seen, he who has been deprived of all means of communication since a big storm which overturned his rowing boat on July 3. Since that day, the relatives of the Breton adventurer, known for his exploits at sea and on the ice with his hen Monique, have not heard from him. Only a few ships crossed in the middle of the Atlantic managed to make contact with Guirec Soudée, a tiny red dot in the vastness of the ocean. After three weeks without any news, part of his team was starting to worry. The few words of the captain of a chemical tanker who crossed the path of the mad rower were enough to reassure his relatives. In their ranks, some recognize that the wait is long. When others wait calmly, sure of their foal’s strength.
Without news of the frail boat since July 22, his team was relieved on August 12, learning that Guirec was doing well, thanks to a few words exchanged on the radio with the captain of an imposing cargo ship. “I was not worried more than that, because I know that Guirec is a great sailor. He is even a gifted person, someone who feels the wind and the sea. He is like the old-fashioned sailors, who left for three weeks without giving any news, ”explains his router Maurice Uguen.
“I still send him a message every day”
Deprived of his two satellite phones for a still unknown reason, Guirec is no longer able to communicate with the earth. “Every morning, I still send him a message with the wind forecast and the weather for the day. Maybe he receives them, I don’t know ”. Maurice Uguen has seen others. This seasoned navigator had already traced the route of Gérard d’Aboville, the first Frenchman to cross the North Atlantic by oar in 1980. “The paradox is that at the time, I had Gérard every day. on the phone “. If he is not worried about his foal, Maurice Uguen admits that he is “frustrated” at not knowing why the devices do not work. “But he can do everything at sea and his boat is unsinkable”.
The one who is responsible for communicating with the huge community of the 29-year-old sailor admits to having been more feverish during this period without news. “It was stressful and I got worried. But Guirec has an extraordinary mind. It’s as if he had something more or less in his head, ”says Alice Claeyssens, who is responsible for the communication of her long-time friend. La Bretonne had met Guirec in the West Indies, when the latter had just completed the crossing of the Atlantic with his hen Monique. “At first I took him for a weirdo. And then we hit it off. He told us about his plan to go and lock himself in the ice with his hen and his boat. We took him for a madman ”.
“He has already seen the devil in the eyes several times”
More than a madman, Guirec Soudée seems more of the caliber of old-fashioned adventurers, despite his young age. On several occasions, he came close to death when he was taken prisoner of the ice floes at the North Pole. “He has already seen the devil in the eye several times, nothing can happen to him,” said Maurice Uguen. In early August, an international research protocol was launched to find him in early August. His entourage even had appealed to astronaut Thomas Pesquet, with the hope of locating it. “Before he left, he made me promise not to worry about anything, not to deploy help for nothing. He has already been cut off from the world, he likes it, being alone in the middle of nature. But on land, it’s scary, ”admits Alice Claeyssens.
If the wind and the currents allow it, Guirec Soudée and his boat called Romane (a tribute to his cousin who left last year) could arrive in Brittany the first week of September, thus completing a journey that began at the end of 2020. The next adventure will be of size. In 2024, the sailor should take the start of the Vendée Globe. A new challenge for those who have never sailed a 60 footer. But who remains the youngest sailor to sail the Northwest Passage.