Courage, resilience and solidarity

Courage, resilience, solidarity… The news is like a wave that each day brings to shore the echoes of joys and sufferings experienced in the world.

This morning, the coup in Burma re-opens a dark page in the country's history. One of Fondacio's Burmese friends writes: "no more internet, but it's fine for all of us, but the feelings of anger are there. It was already very hard in the Covid pandemic, and now, political instability is added ".

All over the world, we are in the test, confronted to varying degrees with the second wave of Covid-19 which puts us all in communion; it takes a good dose of courage, resilience and solidarity.

Courage, resilience, solidarity... all Vendée Globe skippers need it. The former arrived in Les Sables d'Olonne last Thursday, when the latter two had just rounded Cape Horn some 11,000 kilometers away, saying he had just come out of “the horror, waves of 5 to 10 meters trying to capsize the boat. It had nothing to do with sailing anymore. It was just survival. »

What great life lessons this solo sailing trip gives, ... and so united. This race joins something very deep in nature and in the human condition that we share in common. The fourth in the race, Jean Le Cam says King Jean, 61, who arrived Thursday evening, knows something about it. We remember. After enabling the miraculous rescue of the unfortunate shipwrecked Kevin Escoffier on December 1, who had lasted 11 hours on a life raft in the Roaring 40s of the Indian Ocean, Jean Le Cam discovered that the front of his own boat was damaged, at the breaking point. It testifies : "When you have the hull moving five centimeters and the foam cracking, you tell yourself that it's going to blow up any moment. And if it blows, you sink. And where I was (in the Indian Ocean), I had to find a solution. ". Twice, he went to repair his boat, with makeshift means. Almost two months later, on arrival, Jean Le Cam still can't believe it: “That I'm here today is a miracle. I've known a lot of pretty difficult things in my life but there I knew... the unbearable. (L'Équipe, January 29, 2021 ).

At each edition of the Vendée Globe, all these skippers translate Mark Twain's words into action. "They didn't know it was impossible so they did it."