Sam Goodchild: The Vendée Globe – it’s scary and exciting all at the same time

The British solo sailor Sam Goodchild is not one to get carried away in the heat of the moment, but even he can’t hide his excitement as he edges ever closer to his first participation in the Vendée Globe solo round-the-world race.

Now just a few days from the start from Les Sables D’Olonne on November 10th, Goodchild, who races alongside Frenchman Thomas Ruyant in the Lorient-based TR Racing team, has been spending a few days back at home after delivering his boat to the race village.

“I’m excited and aware of how lucky I am to be here and trying to savour the moment a bit,” said the 34-year-old Englishman who lives with his French wife and two children in Lorient. “The Vendée Globe is something I first wanted to do pretty much 20 years ago and now we are here at last  – so yeah, it’s scary and exciting all at the same time.”

The skipper of VULNERABLE, the battle-hardened 2019 Guillaume Verdier-designed foiler formerly named LinkedOut, said arriving into Les Sables d’Olonne and taking the boat up the famous canal to the race village was surprisingly routine. But then he got to the dockside in the Port Olona marina and it began to dawn on him that the Vendée Globe was starting to become a reality.

“It didn’t really hit me until we were on the dock and there were all the flags and the other boats and the activity amongst the shore crews and people asking you about how excited you are. Then you start thinking about it and I guess it’s quite a big deal, isn’t it ?” he reflected.

After spending a week at the home of the greatest solo race of them all “soaking up the atmosphere,” it was time to get back to the family for the last time before the final build-up to the race start. Goodchild has been “chilling out,” taking care of last minute personal items – like popping out to buy toothbrushes and two tubes of toothpaste – and checking in regularly with his boat captain Robin Salmon to make sure everything is just as he wants it.

He admits that along with the excitement there are some pre-start nerves as the start of his first solo round-the-world race draws ever closer. “It’s going into the unknown and spending time on my own I guess, so you never know how things are going to turn out and there is definitely a bit of apprehension there,” he said.

The sailor who produced a stunning first season in the IMOCA class last year to win the IMOCA Globe Championship, is regarded by many as a potential winner of this race at the first time of asking even though his boat is not of the latest generation. That is a reflection of Goodchild’s competitiveness and experience, his excellent temperament for solo offshore racing and his boat’s long record of success in single and double-handed racing.

Taken together it’s turned him into the “great outsider” in the 40-strong field, but Goodchild himself is not thinking along those lines, as he made quite clear. “Honestly, I don’t really spend much time thinking about it at all,” he said. “I am focused on trying to put myself in the best position to comlete finish the race. I’m not even thinking about a podium or a top-10. I am just thinking about the choices we have made on the boat and what we can put in place to increase my chances of finishing.”

Goodchild and Ruyant are in a unique position in the IMOCA fleet in the way they have benefited from being part of one team with two skippers and two boats in the build-up to this race. Both boats carry the same name in VULNERABLE, as part of a mission by Alexandre Fayeulle, chairman of the team’s founding partner, the cyber security leader Advens, to tackle the causes of environmental and social crisis in modern society. And, as Goodchild points out, this has been a hugely positive structure.

“It’s definitely unique to be preparing a Vendée Globe with two boats in the same team. And it’s been a very healthy and very constructive relationship which was the aim from the start, so that’s great,” he explained. “The goal was to have two boats in the best condition possible at the start. I think we’ve done a good job of helping each other, and probably the natural difference being that this is my first Vendée Globe and Thomas’s third. He’s going very clearly for the win and I’m going more for just finishing, which means it isn’t a direct competition of him versus me, if you like.”

Goodchild has talked in the past of the enormous benefit to him of being surrounded by a team of experienced people who have done it all before and he noticed this more clearly than ever after his boat dismasted near the Azores in June, during the New York Vendée-Les Sables D’Olonne race. That mishap could have seriously impacted a less well-organised team, but TR Racing responded smartly, secured a brand new spare mast and got the boat back in the water ahead of schedule.

“Having a team around me who have prepared this boat for a Vendée Globe before is a massive boost,” said Goodchild. “But the second element is the reactivity and professionalism when issues come up. If you look at that dismasting, for example, the problem was resolved quickly and efficiently and didn’t impact us at all because we are surrounded by people who have got the experience to find a solution to make it happen in the quickest and easiest way possible.”

That dismasting was the third in Goodchild’s career, having been on the Ultime Spindrift when she lost her rig at the start of a Jules Verne record attempt and then lost his rig in the Route du Rhum when sailing a Class 40. He says he tries to use those experiences in a positive way.

“You definitely learn stuff from all those experiences. This is a sport where it is an endurance challenge and finishing the race is part of the way to win them. But finishing is a big deal and you can think of some great sailors who struggled to finish the Vendée Globe. So you learn from all these things and the idea is to use them to make you stronger. So definitely, it is an experience, it’s a strength and it’s something you learn to deal with and build on, whether that’s sailing differently, preparing differently or how hard you push in different conditions,” he said.

Finally, there’s the good luck charm. In Goodchild’s case it is becoming quite a well known one thanks to social media. It’s a little blue unicorn that Goodchild’s daughter gave him in 2019 at the beginning of the Transat Jacque Vabre and it will be sailing every mile of his Vendée Globe with him at the chart table of VULNERABLE.

“She’s not feeling particularly nervous about the Vendée Globe,” he offered with a broad smile, “that’s because she’s already done The Ocean Race, so it’s no big deal!”