France hails a young heroine: Violette, conqueror of the waves

The 23-year-old has become the youngest solo sailor to race around the world. Now it’s hoped her example will inspire a more intrepid generation. When she set sail around the world from the west coast of France three months ago, Violette Dorange was barely known outside her sport. By the time she returned last week, she was a household name in her country. At 23, Dorange has become the youngest solo sailor to complete the around-the-world race, having spent 90 days, 22 hours and 37 minutes at sea. Her diminutive figure came waving and smiling into the Atlantic port of Les Sables d’Olonne last Sunday, met by thousands of fans, fireworks and hundreds of journalists broadcasting live from speedboats.

Coming 25th out of 40 in the Vendée Globe race, Dorange had no idea they were waiting, she told the Observer in her first international interview. “I didn’t expect so many people! I had to do a manoeuvre just before the finish line. I knew all the boats around me were watching. I had to be really focused!”. Dorange has been holed up in an Airbnb in central Paris all week, giving interviews and unable to sleep because of the adrenaline. When we met, there she sat cross-legged on an armchair, speaking in a high-pitched tone, surrounded by Krispy Kreme doughnut boxes and bananas. “All this buzz is crazy,” she said, with her trademark lightbulb grin.

Before the race, Dorange, who began sailing at the age of seven, had broken a string of records for being the youngest to achieve various sailing feats – at 15 she crossed the Channel in an Optimist dinghy – and had 10,000 Instagram followers. Cut off from civilisation, apart from a minimum of internet data for calls and messages, Dorange sent videos of solo life at sea to a team who posted them on social media.

As the weeks – and icebergs, polar storms, rainbows and albatrosses – went by, she amassed more than a million followers on social media. Children in classrooms across France followed her progress. Viewers saw her highs, such as when she gazed out from 90ft up at the top of her mast as she re-attached a sail that had fallen into the water north of the Falkland Islands. “The sea is magnificent,” she said in an Instagram post. “It’s both frightening and beautiful. But I’m going to go back down soon.”.

But they also glimpsed her lows, such as two days later during a sleepless night of violent weather off Brazil when the lashing of her mainsail gave way and crashed into the sea. Climbing her mast for only the second time while sailing solo, but now in 25mph winds and 6ft swells, it took her the whole day to fix. This time there was no video from the top. “I will never do that again in my life,” she said in a post afterwards, her voice shaking. “I was so scared.”.

Through it all, she appeared to keep an extraordinary upbeat calm. Dorange is being hailed as an icon of gen Z, and there are hopes she will inspire young people to reduce scrolling on their phones and head out into the world. Paris Match used its magazine front cover to anoint her “the new heroine of the French”. One prominent broadcaster called her “the winner of our hearts”, while another told her “all our children know you”.

Dorange sailed under the colours of a youth charity, Apprentis d’Auteuil, for which she has volunteered since 2020. “I hope to make young people want to go on an adventure,” she said. “And to challenge themselves to be close to nature.”. Sign up to This is Europe. The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment. after newsletter promotion. The paradox of sharing her adventures on social media is not lost on her. Her attitude is similar to that of Inès Benazzouz, 23, a French YouTuber known as Inoxtag, who released a two-hour self-made documentary last year about his scaling of Everest. Dubbed into English and Spanish, the film, Kaizen, has been viewed 41 million times.

“We’re all annoyed at being addicted [to social media],” Dorange said. “For three months, I was disconnected. It was a joy. I know it’s very hard on land … You have to use social media. But you have to protect yourself.”. Trying to explain her popularity, she said she had been making YouTube videos for years. “I know how to talk to social media,” she said. “I know how to talk to my community. But nowadays, I don’t hide much. Sometimes I say the same things to my sister in a voice note afterwards.”.

At one point, Dorange was closer to the astronauts in the International Space Station than any human on land. “I was saying, this is crazy. I’m south of India. I’m south of Japan. I was looking at the map all the time,” she said. She saw “a lot of plastic” in the South Atlantic, and sargassum, a damaging brown algae that has proliferated in recent years. She discovered how vast Latin America and Africa truly are.