The warm smell of Malouine pancakes has drifted back through the village of the Route du Rhum, Destination Guadeloupe. Along with it comes something else entirely: a kind of Proustian madeleine moment for everyone who has been here before.
Four years. That's how long the corsair city has waited to bring out its green and yellow colours again.
Four years the skippers have spent preparing for this great gathering, their own "Olympic Games" of sailing. And four years that offshore racing fans have spent missing it all.
So the Breton drizzle was never going to spoil this reunion, much as it failed to dampen spirits when the Route du Rhum village first threw open its gates to the Ocean Fifty, Vintage Multi and IMOCA fleets.
From midday, multihulls and monohulls filed one after another through the lock, heading out to the start, a scene echoing the earlier spectacle of the giant Ultim trimarans threading Saint-Malo's locks under clear skies just days before.
In the stands, people dug out their full kit for the occasion: the 2008-vintage jacket, a cap older still, and let the memories flood back. Mike Birch and his famous 98 seconds. Loïck Peyron's stolen start against Laurent Bourgnon. Alain Colas and his Manureva.
The diehards stood dreaming of which boat they'd have chosen if they'd been the skipper. Newcomers, meanwhile, simply stared, wide-eyed at hulls so smooth, masts so tall, and sailors who look almost too composed for what they're about to do.
But being impressed cuts both ways out there. On the water, the adrenaline is the same whether it's your first crossing or your seventh.
The thrill of arriving in the Bay of Saint-Malo never dulls, no matter how many times a sailor has felt it before. Among those chasing that feeling for themselves are ten skippers racing out of their own home port, including Louis Burton flying the local flag in the Ultim class.
Four years is a long wait. But perhaps that's exactly how long it takes for the anticipation to build, slowly and surely, so that each return to this race feels new all over again.
For New Zealand's offshore sailing followers, long accustomed to seeing Kiwi talent and design influence woven through the IMOCA and Ultim fleets, the Route du Rhum remains one of those races where that connection to French ocean racing feels close, even from the other side of the world. That connection runs deeper still in the Ultim class, where Tom Laperche arrives as one of the outright favourites after a run of results, including victory in last year's Transat Café L'Or, that has settled any question of whether he belongs at the top of the fleet.
