Sam Davies leaves her 14-month-old son at home to pursue dream of winning the Vendee Globe "Nearly all of the skippers are parents," she says. The difference is for the parent who is left behind and I am lucky because Romain is an amazing dad. He will talk about me and tell Ruben what I am doing so it will not perturb me. There will be days when I miss him. Three months is a long time and I will probably miss his first steps but that doesn't worry me so much. Ever since he was born I knew it was going to be like this ... me and Romain both brought into the idea because this is my life. He reckons that it is in everyone's best interests that I go because I will be impossible to live with if I don't. But I admit I am going into the unknown so feel free to phone me in a few weeks and ask again how I'm coping without my boys. The happy arrival of Ruben combined with the not so happy delays in her campaign have meant that preparations have not been textbook Vendee. She was only able to resume training after she'd stopped breastfeeding in February and her weight has dropped to 57kgs which is exactly 13kgs lighter than her genoa. None of this is good news except that when she did get back into training, she quickly made up for lost time courtesy of a brutal regime with a former physiotherapist of the French ice-hockey team so in her offshore exercises in the past nine months, she found she was neither tired nor weak nor seasick. Davies is the only female skipper in the fleet in this race which has kept her busy and in demand by the media in the run up to the start but she dismisses any ideas that they have a competitive edge. There is a macho thing here in that their competitive spirits may lead to more instant responses but over the period of the race, there is no difference between me and them. It is not the one who leads off the start line who necessarily wins the race. It is not even the race leader two months in, who necessarily wins the race. This race is not about keeping your foot on the pedal all the time. For me to sail well, I have to be happy, confident and comfortable while others might have to be suffering. But just because I appear like that doesn't mean I don't care about my performance. I hate it if I think I have given away three boat lengths if I've messed up a sail change. If I'm not up with the leaders, it's not because I'm not trying hard. It's because I do not have the same machine as them and that's really frustrating. To have the same machine as them, I have to share the adventure because that is where my sponsors Saveol get their return. But I want to show potential sponsors that I also want to win this race one day, to have the same machine as the favourites and the same chance as the leaders to win it. Sometimes you have to accept compromises and just go and do it and enjoy it.