The daggerboard IMOCAs may not fly like their foiling rivals, but they have kept up a relentless pace since leaving Saint-Malo. After two days of relatively light winds, every boat in the non-foiling pack now has its bow pointed firmly at Guadeloupe. The long-awaited trade winds have arrived, and the leading boats in this group have just hooked into them for the run home.
Nicolas d'Estais timed his move perfectly as the fleet came off the ridge, and Café Joyeux is now charging towards Guadeloupe at full speed. "With these last two days of trade winds, we'll at least feel like we've done the Route du Rhum!" the skipper, first among the daggerboard boats, said this morning. "It's a good thing everything is falling back into place, especially for those behind who'll get their turn to benefit too." Those behind him are hoping for exactly that.
It's shaping up as a match race among the non-foiling IMOCAs. Aboard Foussier, Sébastien Marsset watched the yellow-hulled boat pull away. "I thought with my slightly more south-easterly positioning I might be able to close back up. In the end Nicolas got himself nicely into the curve, he had a good angle and he had wind." That hasn't dampened the mood of a skipper who calls himself "the happiest and luckiest person in the world on this boat". First place among the daggerboard fleet may be out of reach, but second is shaping into a real scrap with Pierre-Louis Attwell, a newcomer to the class aboard Resilient, who is hot on Foussier's heels.
"We've been pretty much neck and neck for almost a week now," Attwell said. "There's about twenty miles between us in longitude, there's a good chance it'll come down to the wire around Guadeloupe. A great battle, a bit like the one with Maxime Sorel, Sébastien Simon and Davy Beaudart last night." A leeward-coast drag race is exactly what appeals to Marsset about this small non-foiling group. "There's competitiveness, but there's also training, exchange. The boats taking part in this Route du Rhum are proof of that. The championship races coming up are going to be incredible."
Within a few hours, most of the fleet should be back to normal trade-wind pace after their lull. "I had 40 very tough hours with no wind," admitted Jean-Baptiste Daramy (Anett - Kalhyge). "I got well and truly caught by the guys behind me. I lost more than 100 miles, I was pretty disgusted. Now I'm trying to keep Fabrice behind me, and that's not easy."
Duels are everywhere in this class. Just 10 miles apart laterally, the FDJ United skipper has also found his speed again. "I went through a high-pressure zone and I've gradually been coming out of it since yesterday morning," explained Fabrice Amédéo. "The wind has gradually built, nothing extreme, but I've got between 12 and 15 knots now." For a sailor well used to transatlantic crossings, this edition felt "pretty unusual", he said, with conditions that reminded him of "being in the Southern Ocean". He puts the strange weather down to climate change.
"The first editions of the Route du Rhum I did were like something out of a textbook, with the Azores High, you'd go north for a shorter route or south for the trade winds. Ten days later you'd see who was ahead of you. It just doesn't happen like that any more."
The weather has been a genuine obstacle on this Route du Rhum, Destination Guadeloupe. But it has also given newcomers invaluable experience. "We've had some really varied conditions, and sailed through some very strong downwind weather," said Robin Marais (Ma Chance Moi Aussi). "We're building experience, and it gives us a sense of what's ahead for the rest of the project. On that front, the boxes are well and truly ticked."
