It will be the finest victory of the 44-year-old’s stellar single-handed career – but Thomson’s elation will be tinged by thoughts of what might have been.
It will be almost two years to the day that Hugo Boss, Thomson’s 60ft foiling monohull, suffered catastrophic damage as he powered down the Atlantic, leading the fleet in the blue-riband Vendee Globe round-the-world race.
Despite the blow, Thomson remained in contention but was finally overtaken and beaten to the line by just 16 hours, in a race that lasted 74 days.
Now, having given Hugo Boss a total refit while his new boat for the 2020 Vendee is being built, Thomson has underscored both his own skills as a skipper and the power of his craft by following in the wake of Dame Ellen McArthur, who won the Route du Rhum in 2002 – and most likely in a record time.
“It would be fantastic to win my first Route du Rhum,” said Thomson in an email exchange from on board Tuesday night.
“This is the last race I’ll do on the current Hugo Boss before we launch the new boat next year.
“It’s a fantastic boat and so it would be right to finish first.
“There is still a long way to go. Now I need to make sure I don’t push too hard (which is hard, because I’m me!) and make it to the finish line first.”
The Route du Rhum may be a sprint compared to the Vendee’s marathon, but it can be just as brutal.
Soon after setting of from St Malo on the French Atlantic coast, the fleet were met by a ferocious storm that wrecked several boats – and Thomson had plotted a path straight through the middle of it in a bid to get a jump on his rivals.
“I wanted to start on the attack from the outset and lead from the front,” he said.
“The storm was ugly but nowhere near the worst I have seen.
“The problem was, the optimal route had me sailing very fast across it, sailing into the waves.
“The waves were 8m and sailing at 20 knots into it would have reduced the boat into a pile of carbon rubble within minutes.
“I had to sail more west and keep Hugo Boss at a reasonable pace so as not to destroy her. The slamming was so hard at times I could not sit down for fear of a spinal injury.”
Thomson has also had to deal with sleep deprivation, made worse by the emergency repairs he had to carry out when part of the rigging that retains the mainsail broke, bringing 100 square metres of fabric crashing onto the deck, and an autopilot that has proved as capable as a chocolate teapot.
“Sleep? What’s that?! In the first four days I had less than one hour per day,” he said.
“It’s so tough and difficult to manage. Experience helps, recognising when you are on the edge and needing to be ultra careful doing things. For example, taking a rope off a winch is super easy normally but when your brain is tired it’s easy to make a simple mistake which could cost your arm.
“Keeping yourself in a condition to be able to make rational decisions is critical. The most sleep I’ve had in this race so far is four one-hour naps in a 24-hour period.
“Most days are less than two hours and the first four days of this race were less than one hour per day. I just suck it up and get on with it.”
This weekend, with Neptune’s blessing, Thomson will be able to sleep the sleep of the triumphant.