It’s not because we go around the world alone that the bills do not arrive at home. In 2016, for his first Vendée Globe, the youngest in the race, the Swiss Alan Roura, had a funny surprise when he opened his mailbox on his return: 18,000 euros off the satellite communication package.
“I spent part of my year 2017 paying my debts like this. Fortunately, since 2018, I have been able to make a living from sailing”, breathes the sailor who will again be the youngest in the race at the start. des Sables d’Olonne, Sunday November 8, with his sponsor, the Swiss biscuit maker La Fabrique, owner of his boat.
“You risk your life on the water”
For this season two, the 27-year-old father has surrounded himself with a small team of six people whom he pays between 2000 and 3500 euros, very far from the standards of the best teams. “When I left for the previous Vendée Globe, we finalized the budget on the open sea, after two weeks of racing. That’s something else, we were able to prepare better. But it’s sure that we have one of the smallest budgets on the board”, confides Alan Roura, whose profile is very atypical compared to the generation of engineer skippers who have swept over the world of offshore racing in recent years.
The Swiss never went to school since his parents took the whole family on board when he was 8 years old for a bohemian life on a sailboat around the world. From then on, he really learned on the job, both for business and for sailing.
IMAGE BANK ON BOARD – VG 2020
Breschi – Sailing Team factory
Moreover, for those who have found refuge in Brittany, in Lorient, the solo race does not mean solo work. Boss of his small company, he pampers his boat, a 60-foot monohull bought for 500,000 euros by his sponsor and on which he did half a million euros of work. La Fabrique pays him one million euros a year for the adventure, a sum on which it is still necessary to provide 100,000 euros in insurance costs and a string of investments.
“My job is quite monstrous because I am both a skipper and a business manager. I have to have an overview of each expense. It’s quite thankless because you risk your life on the water and overnight you can not work for three years”, explains the sailor, sitting at the back of his boat moored to the pontoons, impatient to do battle.
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If he hopes to complete his world tour in 80 days, which could give him a good place, Alan Roura does not know what the future holds for him. “I think about what’s next every day. The business manager comes before the skipper. Even if once on the water I’ll think about it less, I’ve already anticipated the redundancy budget just in case”, confides the young man under the amused gaze of his companion and his technicians. This does not prevent the boss, before setting sail, from having prepared a small list of tasks entrusted to those who remained on land.
Sébastien Pommier, in Les Sables d’Olonne