At just 31 years of age, Alan Roura is about to take part in his third Vendée Globe (12th in 2016, 17th in 2020). With an Imoca boat, Hublot, Alex Thomson’s former Hugo Boss, which he has taken a long time to get to grips with and optimise, and with his sporting ambitions on the up. The Swiss sailor spoke to Tip & Shaft.
▶︎ With a month to go before the start, are you still on schedule with your preparations?
Yes, except that I hadn’t planned to have problems with my foil which was going to take me so long! We had a small collision on The Transat CIC which caused a crack into which water rushed, which ended up imploding the foil. It was missing almost 2-3 centimetres of carbon along the whole length, so we had it completely repaired at Persico, but we didn’t reassemble it until last Monday. So that inevitably disrupted my preparation a little in the sense that I’ve sailed a lot this season, but with only one foil. You can only test on one tack with the weight of the boat not being the same. Now, I’ve tried not to get too formal about it, and on all the other issues, yes, we’re on schedule.
▶︎ At just 31 years old, you’re about to set off on your third Vendée Globe. Would you have imagined this ten years ago?
When I was 20, I couldn’t even imagine doing the Mini Transat! I’ve never had a career plan or a strategy. I’m just happy to be here, to be back with this great project, which comes after two others that were very different.
▶︎ How is this one very different?
My first two Vendée Globes, I only had one objective, and that was to go all the way. The first one was a love affair with a boat, a project that was rushed because the opportunity arose to get her back. I had no money, no experience of the open ocean, apart from the Mini and a bit of Class40 racing, and I was just going there to fulfil a childhood dream, without any idea of what was in store for me. I experienced the second one differently, because after the absolute joy of the first, I hadn’t prepared myself for such a complicated round the world, with a lot of damage, it was really a tough race. This time, I’m going into it in a very different frame of mind, with a lot more pressure on my shoulders, with a more competitive boat, on which we’ve done everything we could to bring her up to date with the weapons we had, so my ambitions have been revised upwards.
“The way people looked at me
bothered me a lot”
▶︎ Does this pressure you’re talking about come from outside, from the sponsor?
No, nobody puts any pressure on me by telling me that I have to finish in such and such a place. I’m the one who puts it on myself, I want to prove to myself that I’m capable of having a great race. Now I’ve decided to stop pushing myself too hard this year, because I’ve had a bit of a rough time of it. My preparation races weren’t always easy, I took one bad result after another, and with this story of having a great boat, people’s opinions bothered me a lot, I felt bad, I couldn’t sail any more. So I said to myself: “Take this pressure off yourself, sail for yourself, this is your race, your thing”. It’s really in that frame of mind that I’m going to set off. And what reassures me a lot is that it’s in the most difficult races that I’ve managed to perform better, like the CIC Transat, in which I was in the right pack before breaking away. Now, the Vendée Globe is a difficult race, which suits me well. I feel at ease in the Southern Ocean, so I want to be there, a good outsider.
▶︎ From the outside, we got the impression that it took you a while to get to grips with your boat (ex Hugo Boss, VPLP design launched in 2019), was that the case?
In fact, when we bought her, we thought we had a faster boat and that it would be easy. Except that there are plenty of faster boats out there today, and above all, Hugo Boss hadn’t evolved much since it was launched, unlike some others, so we started out behind schedule. And catching up on these projects is very complicated, unless you have a huge budget, which we didn’t have [€2 million a year, all inclusive, he points out]. I think Alex had a head start when we launched, but the boat also had its faults, namely a strange sail plan with very hollow and very heavy sails, foils that didn’t detent very much… What was difficult the first year was that I thought it was going to work, because it was Alex’s boat, but no, it was adapted to his way of sailing, which wasn’t mine. So we had to do a lot of work to make it our own.
▶︎ Can you describe all these modifications?
We started by putting some rake in the mast, because there wasn’t any. We bought a lot of second-hand sails that we reworked to adapt them to my way of sailing, it was a big work to understand the best sail plan for this boat. I also realised very quickly that she was too light, she lacked power, so we added 300 kilos to the bulb, we also installed trim tabs on the foils to notch up more, so we could sail more upwind and take off sooner. We’ve changed all the ballasts inside and added buoyancy foam to the aft skirt to lift the bottom out of the water, as it tended to stick in light airs. We’ve also cut four metres off the bow and redone all the interior ergonomics… All in all, we’ve got a good base which means that, in my opinion, we’ve gained 15% on all points of sail. The only thing we’re missing today is a new pair of foils, but otherwise, she’s a really good Imoca, typical of the Vendée. She’s not as versatile as some others, but downwind in the South, she’s a winner.
“An ambitious and innovative project”
▶︎ On your website, you called this new four-year cycle “Performance as an objective“. What performance objective have you set yourself for this third Vendée Globe?
I’d like to play with the boats of my generation or those that have been modified and are doing well, I’m thinking in particular of Teamwork, DMG Mori, Apicil, Prysmian… Now, I think there are twenty boats that could win the Vendée Globe.
▶︎ Is the example of Yannick Bestaven, who no one was predicting would win four years ago, a good source of inspiration?
Absolutely! What’s funny is that before this Vendée Globe, we made bets within the team and I put Yannick as the winner! For me, it wasn’t a surprise. Yannick is a diesel man, and above all, he had a boat that he knew by heart. For me, that’s the trick. It’s not about making changes over the last few months that are going to make you gain 0.2 or 0.3%, but it’s about knowing your boat and being at one with it, which is exactly what he did, and that’s really inspiring.
▶︎ Last week you announced the launch of the Swiss Offshore Team with Elodie Mettraux and Simon Koster. Can you tell us more about it?
Simon and I have been ocean racing for over ten years now, and we’ve been through a lot. We’ve also seen a lot of talented Swiss sailors from the Olympics, regattas and even ocean racing come and go, and not manage to get started. Elodie has also sailed quite a lot, especially with a crew, and she’s had her ups and downs, so when we were talking, we said to ourselves: “Why don’t we set up something together and get a lot of Swiss people to come and sail with a crew? We’ve matured the project, which is ambitious and innovative, with The Ocean Race Europe starting next year, then The Ocean Race in 2027, if possible with two boats, and the Vendée Globe on the heels of that.
▶︎ Do you have any partners or boats in mind?
We’re in the middle of discussions with all our partners. We should have some answers soon, but I couldn’t see myself waiting before launching the project, I wanted to be clear before setting off on the Vendée. The crew programme is something that speaks for itself in Switzerland, we have a history with Whitbread [with Pierre Fehlmann, five participations, editor’s note], but we haven’t been there for 30 years, so it’s time to come back! As for the boats, the idea is to modify ours next year with new foils and after that, to build or acquire a second boat with The Ocean Race in mind. I’ve been talking to the skippers in the class for a while now, and I know which ones are ready to go. Now we mustn’t drag our feet, because the market has already started and there aren’t many places in the yards for new constructions!
Photo: Vincent Curutchet
