Masters of the Seas - Tanguy De Lamotte portrait

by Leslie Greenhalgh on 30 Jul 2014 Tanguy De Lamotte is 36 years old. Although he has been settled in Lorient for quite some time now, he grew up in Versailles in Paris and his first sailing experiences took place in St Malo with his grandfather. Following that, he joined a sailing school at La Baule. In his early life he started out more in the field of ‘urban sports’ like Judo, and only turned his attention towards sailing when he hit his teens.

Tanguy took part on a number of occasions in the ‘Trophee des Lycees’ in First Class 8’s and then in the Tour de France a la Voile in JOD 35s and Mumm 30s. Between 1997 and 2000, he headed off to Southampton in the UK to carry out his naval architecture studies so that he could design his own boat for the Mini Transat circuit. Spending a few years in the UK enabled Tanguy to get into sailing on bigger boats like the Maxi-Cats Playstation and Orange and the Trimaran Sodebo.

'In 2000, I was lucky enough to support Ellen MacArthur in her preparations for the Vendée Globe event. That remains for me one of the most amazing experiences I have had.'

After that, Tanguy got stuck into this own design and build of boats, and returned back to his love of the smaller boats. He built his own Mini 6.5m in 2003 and competed in the Mini Transat event in 2005. He then went on to build a Class 40, which he campaigned for five years and carried out a few transatlantic crossings in her.

'My original plan was to become a naval architect, not to be a skipper, but I have ended up staying on the racing side. I had a great chance to campaign the Class 40 and because of that I ended up being more skipper than designer, but one day I do plan to get back into the design side, for myself or for others, we will see!'

In 2012, he moved into the IMOCA class and set his sights on his first Vendée Globe event with the Initiatives-Cœur project. The meeting with the Vendée based company K-Line has allowed him to continue this adventure announcing recently a three year partnership with Initiatives and the continuation of ‘Operation Click = 1 like’ to save children needing cardio-vascular surgery.

'Today we have already secured our sponsors, the company Initiatives, who started off the project and now K-Line who is supporting us and enabling us to build the programme whilst still keeping the same objective of helping to save sick children.'

'We now have a newer boat, a bit more modern than the last one, so its a brand new challenge for me. These are highly technical boats, which is something I really like about them. I like to really think about all the difficult areas, find solutions to get the best out of the boat, identify the priority areas, limit risks and optimise performance of the boat. These boats are big and go really fast and to manage these beasts, thats pretty exciting!
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This new ‘Initiatives-Cœur’, previously ‘PRB’ owned by Vincent Riou, is a Farr desgin, built in 2006 at the CDK yard in Port La Foret.

'The sistership to this boat won the race with Michel Desjoyeaux. Its therefore a great boat.'

The team worked with a great boatyard this winter to modify the hull along the front 8m section – nealy half the boat.

'We estimate we have gained between three and 5% on performance with this modification. Now we are making sure she is fully reliable so that I can bring her up to 100%.'

An accomplished sportsman, Tanguy takes part in many sports so he can prepare and remain fit – everything from triathlons, kite surfing, windsurfing, as well as other smaller boats like dinghies.

'I like exploring new things, its good for me and when I get back to my main sailing, it means I am fully motivated to deliver 100% in sailing and racing. The physical training is really important, they are not easy boats to sail single-handed. One sailbag can weigh 60 kgs and you have to be able to move it without doing yourself an injury. You really have to know how to look after yourself onboard, how to move around, what not to do and how to achieve things without having to force them.'

'My best memory still remains the Vendée Globe – the moment of crossing the finish line, where everything suddenly slows down, all of the stress and the mental focus which is full on really for the whole time of the race starts to decrease, the moment the support team, sponsors and family joined me onboard, its an emotion not like anything else.'

This year Tanguy is competing in the Route du Rhum before taking on the Transat Jacques Vabre in 2015 with his vision set on the Vendée Globe start in November 2016.

'The new Ocean Masters identity was really missing before for the IMOCA class, we needed to build a circuit, to link together the major race events in the programme so that we could sell a complete circuit and not just one separate race after another each year. I think it will be really beneficial. I also think it emulates the spirit of competition and this World Championship allows us to create projects where the objective is not soley to compete in the Vendée Globe but the wider Ocean Masters