Marc Guillemot: a broken man’s victory

“The Race Director contacted me: Yann Eliès has a major problem. Then, he gave me his position so that I could make my way to him,” recalls Marc Guillemot in Paris Match. The skipper, at the time third in the Round-the-World solo race onboard Safran, did not hesitate for even a second. He turned back to go and help his rival, his nearest competitor in the race… his friend. But the decision set Marc on a painful journey back in time.

A smashed femur and a crushed pelvis

Marc was 200 km from Yann Eliès. “They told me he’d been thrown onto his boat’s foredeck by a wave, that he had a broken leg, a fractured femur, but that he’d managed to crawl down below,” recalls Guillemot. The journey took him on an amazing rescue operation punctuated with painful flashbacks.

December 30, 1985: Marc Guillemot was 24. The young skipper was sailing onboard Jet Services IV, a 25-meter catamaran, with Jean Castenet and Patrick Morvan. In the middle of the night, the multihull pitched forward. “Through Yann, I relived this terrible shipwreck. Jean Castenet disappeared and I ended up with a crushed pelvis and smashed femur. For days, we remained in the middle of a storm waiting to be rescued,” he recounts in Paris Match. It took two years of physiotherapy for his body to get over the shock, but the psychological pain of this traumatic experience was still with him 24 years on.

“Yann told me it was my presence that got him through”

After fifteen hours’ sailing, Marc Guillemot finally saw Generali appear on his radar. The approach was not easy. Lying on his bunk, Yann Eliès had had to switch to autopilot. “I tried to send him some medicine and a bit of food, but I couldn’t get a good shot at his cabin. The swell, the wind and the fifteen or so meters between our boats were preventing me. Nonetheless, my efforts made him realize that someone was out there fighting for him,” explained Safran’s skipper.

The frigate arrived after 36 hours. “His rescue filled me with unbelievable joy. It was the best Christmas present I have ever had. And the fact that it all ended well for him finally freed me from my own traumatic experience.” For Marc Guillemot, this was the finest victory of his entire life.

Steven Lambert