Jean Le Cam, the unpredictable with a simple heart

Not good for that, but good for that! “ These words were found by his faithful wife, Anne. And no doubt that good, not only it is and rather three times than one, but that Jean Le Cam, in addition, made dream an entire country confined during the last edition of the Vendée Globe, during which, after saving Kevin Escoffier from sinking, he came in fourth place on his boat Yes We Cam!.

It is moreover with this expression as title that the royal conversations which he granted to our colleague Jean-Louis Le Touzet have just appeared at Le Seuil. Royales, because he gave himself up without make-up, but with banter and generosity, to the one who, with great humility, only wanted to be here “The one who raises”, even though they have known each other for twenty years.

A hollow portrait – that of a sailor-builder attached to his Finistère, crumpling French, uncomfortable with communication services and yet author of video pastilles making quite a buzz – this book of interviews is the opportunity to talk about friends and competitors: the Desjoyeaux (Michel and Hubert, his childhood friend, who died in 2011); Loïck Peyron, this fine talker with whom he later discovered more in common than suspected (including that of having failed the baccalaureate on three occasions); Alain Gautier, winner of the Vendée Globe 1992-1993 and coach of Isabelle Joschke that Jean Le Cam will come, with great elegance, to greet on the pontoon of Sables-d’Olonne, when the Franco-German had to stop to repair his boat in Brazil.

Damage will therefore also be a question because, as “King John” so aptly put it, the problem at sea is that there is the sea and its damn waves, and that nothing, ever, is. predictable. No more than he is, and this book is also an opportunity to sweep away some clichés. One in particular which would consist in making Jean Le Cam a navigator of the old world (he alone embodies the architectural upheavals of the last forty years), retrograde on the edges.

Because, if he ignored the foils for the Vendée Globe (he still sails on a daggerboard), Jean Le Cam knows better thanwe no longer wash our linge at the washhouse “ and don’t get upset.

Better, the king of why not (so dear to the explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot) likes nothing more than to deconstruct to better rebuild his boats as, sometimes also, his houses. ” I am fair a simple guy who sails on a boat ”, he confides at the end of the book. A simple guy, maybe, but which one!

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