Sidney Gavignet is back on the Route du Rhum start line, and this time he says the goal isn't just winning. It's finishing without wrecking himself in the process.
At 57, Gavignet is one of the race's familiar faces, a sailor who has done three editions already and left his mark on each. He tried the giant trimaran route twice, retiring aboard Oman Air Majan in 2010 and finishing fifth on Musandam-Oman Sail in 2014. Then in 2018 he won the Rhum Mono category on Café Joyeux. This time he returns at the helm of a genuine legend, the Cigare Rouge, a Vintage Mono once skippered by Jean-Luc Van Den Heede and Catherine Chabaud.
He only took the boat back over eighteen months ago. "When I started sailing it, I realised I wasn't the same as before," he says. "My body sent me a message telling me, 'I don't want you to make me suffer anymore.'" He withdrew from the race over it. Then something shifted.
"When I started sailing again, I felt freed from all my inner tensions, and I took a lot of pleasure in it," he says. That change of feeling is what pulled him back in.
He has spent recent years training as a coach, and it shows in how he talks about the race now. "I no longer want to answer to my ego but to serve life," he says. "Life has given me an incredible chance to be a sailor and to be able to sail aboard the Cigare Rouge. Now I want to sail without losing myself, putting myself first. I want to take care of myself to better serve my boat."
It's a striking admission for an offshore racer. "Before, I confused performance with result," he says. "I even thought the result was the performance. But there's more to it than that. There's joy, the thrill of it, living a powerful experience, making the most of the chance I've been given and of the present moment."
The Cigare Rouge itself clearly means something to him beyond competition. "It's a bit like this boat fell from the sky for me," he says. Five circumnavigations under its belt, and still, in his words, elegant and reliable, almost the opposite of the raw power of modern raceboats. "I feel this boat has a soul," he adds. He regularly takes healthcare workers sailing aboard it through Guérir en Mer, an association for which he is patron.
On the opposition in Vintage Mono, he rates Patrick Isoard on Groupe Cogedis pour Enfants du Mékong as favourite, winner of The Transat CIC in 2024 and, in Gavignet's view, the best prepared. He also flags Tanguy Caradec's 50-footer Eurvad as quick, while reckoning Jean Le Cam's Swan 59 is a touch slower.
Of the Vintage classes generally, he's enthusiastic. "These are boats on a human scale," he says. For a sailor who has spent three decades chasing results, it's a fitting note to finish on, not the fastest boat in the fleet, but the one that finally feels like his own.
