“I had memories of the light and shade. It’s what I referred to at the time as the land of shadows, as you see virtually no sunshine. Here, everything is grey. Following on from that you play in the grey nuances: it’s a little grey, very grey, or rather a grey white fog… Now, you are in this atmosphere, your experience of it is black and white”. The air temperature is 8°C, and the water temperature is virtually identical. This morning, I was in the cockpit and I saw a strange thing in the water… A big eddy…. I looked at it again and I saw a black back coming towards me. The creature was 30 metres from me, heading straight towards the aft of the boat. I said to myself, that’s it: it’s going to break my rudder! And then hup, it plunged beneath the water and I never saw it again. It didn’t just measure a few metres in length, it was a big 15/ 20 metre creature… Enormous… !”

Michel Desjoyeaux (Foncia) talking to his shore team today