Tucked behind the heavy wooden door of the Chapelle de la Victoire in Saint-Malo's old town, fifteen model boats tell the story of the Route du Rhum going back to 1978. Built with painstaking care by naval modelling enthusiast Stéphane Le Roux, they sit in an exhibition called "La Route de la Victoire", free to visit until 31 October. On the chapel wall, a large map drawn by pupils from Collège Moka in Saint-Malo traces four major maritime routes, including the path Florence Arthaud sailed to victory in 1990.
The race is sailed solo, yet each skipper forms a bond with their boat that borders on obsession.
Charlie Capelle, the fleet's elder statesman at 71, put it bluntly when talking about his Vintage Multi, Acapella - Proludic - La Chaîne de l'Espoir. "I was born to sail on Acapella," he said. "I go and see him every day, even when he's out of the water, 3km from my house. When I drive over the bridge at La Trinité-sur-Mer, I see him down there, I know where he is. This boat is part of me and I need him."
This will be Capelle's seventh Route du Rhum, his trimaran's eighth. The yellow boat is a sister ship to Mike Birch's Olympus, winner of the very first edition in 1978, and has weathered its share of ups and downs over the decades but always come good. "The boat has evolved, but its wooden skeleton is the same one," Capelle said. "Acapella wasn't built to race once and rot in a shed afterwards. He can't stop sailing. He's also probably got the lowest carbon footprint in the fleet." The trimaran had a full refit before returning to Saint-Malo this year.
A very different story belongs to Kieran Le Borgne, a young sailor from Brest who watched a famous old Vendée Globe boat slowly rotting in the harbour. "It broke my heart, I couldn't leave it like that," he said. Stripped of two tonnes of mussels clinging to its hull, the former PRB, once sailed by two-time Vendée Globe winner Michel Desjoyeaux, has been completely rebuilt with input from Samantha Davies, Vincent Riou and Desjoyeaux himself. Now racing as Aïto - Armor Lux - Le Finistère Assurance, the Vintage Mono is back on the Atlantic. "He's really sound, run in, forgiving," Le Borgne said. "He's strong, he moves well, he just glides."
Then there's the "red boat", as Alexia Barrier calls the Ultim maxi-trimaran IDEC SPORT-CIC, winner of three Route du Rhum titles and two Jules Verne Trophies. "There isn't one boat in the Ultim class that comes close, even if they're newer and faster," she said. Barrier set the women's round-the-world sailing record aboard the boat earlier this year with her crew, The Famous Project, and she's not shy about what it means to her now. "This record is a booster, and this boat is my superpower. Having him is an enormous stroke of luck."
