Sasha Lanièce never set out to be an ocean racer. An engineer with a doctorate in physics and biology, she had a scientific career mapped out until the sea got in the way. Her first sailing camps at Les Glénans at age 14 set something off that never really switched back. At 33, she lines up for her first Route du Rhum at the helm of her Class40 Alderan.
"I can't wait and I feel ready," she says of the days before the start. "It's been three years since I did a solo transatlantic, I'm itching to get back out there." Right now, she says, it's all focus. The excitement will come once she crosses the start line.
She describes a mutual respect with her boat. "I have a deep conviction that if you're kind to your boat, it repays you," she says. Ashore, she checks it over regularly. At sea, she thinks through every manoeuvre, and reckons Alderan looks out for her in turn.
She used to talk to her old Mini 6.50 constantly, back when she was learning to sleep solo and hit some rough patches with fatigue. These days Alderan talks back less, which she takes as a sign she's managing exhaustion better. Mostly now she talks to herself. And sings. The boat, she says, has learned to stay quiet, especially when she launches into Céline Dion.
Preparation this time round was different from her debut campaign. Last year was about training and learning the ropes on a new boat. This time she focused on physical and mental conditioning, and performance analysis. A keel problem cost time and money but has been resolved, and the boat now carries a brand new mainsail and J1.
The Mini Transat, she says, is addictive. Crossing the Atlantic alone, handling your own boat, "you feel an immense freedom and a sense of mastery". Her engineering and physics background, she adds, gives her a real edge in understanding the boat's mechanics and in reading navigation data with rigour.
At sea she feels "free and powerful". Nights are her favourite time: just the boat, the stars, and nothing else.
She has one superstition that works well off north Brittany: greeting every guillemot she passes with "bonjour monsieur Guillemot." A raft of forty birds takes a while to get through properly.
Alongside racing, Lanièce runs an all-female outfit called Les Déferlantes, currently with two boats and three people, including boat captain Pierre-Édouard Regaud. The goal is simple: get as many women sailing as possible, solo, doubled-up, or crewed, and scout fresh talent along the way.
She names Samantha Davies, Clarisse Crémer and Amélie Grassi as her sailing inspirations, and Michelle Obama and Emma Thompson outside the sport. Closer to home, it was her own mother, who raised four children while building a career, who set the real example.
This year, for the first time outside the Vintage category, every class in the Route du Rhum features a woman. Lanièce sees real significance in that, pointing to Alexia Barrier on IDEC SPORT-CIC in ULTIM and Anne-Claire Le Berre on Upwind by MerConcept in Ocean Fifty as proof it can be done, however hard.
Beyond Guadeloupe, she plans two more years developing her Class40 programme and her stable, and is hunting a sponsor to fund a third boat, an IMOCA, for a new sailor she'd bring through.
"My dreams have no limits," she says.
