Axel Tréhin has had a year few sailors would wish on their worst rival, and yet here he is in Saint-Malo, strapped into a brand-new Class40, ready to go. The 38-year-old Frenchman is tipped as an outsider in the class for this Route du Rhum, Destination Guadeloupe. Given what he has been through to get to the start line, "outsider" feels like an understatement.
Tréhin is one of a dying breed, a skipper who came up through the boatyards rather than the sponsor circuit. "In 2009, I found a wrecked Mini for 4,000 euros," he says. "I put all my savings into it and took three years to get it seaworthy." After a shipbuilding diploma in Saint-Nazaire and composites training in Brest, he worked at the AMCO yard in La Trinité-sur-Mer, well known among Mini sailors, before striking out on his own projects.
Two more boats followed, including a strong second place at the 2019 Mini race, then a Class40, a scow built partly by his own hands to a Raison design, carrying the Project Rescue Oceans message. His first Route du Rhum in 2022 was chaotic. He jumped the start and had to repair the boat, tore a meniscus in the Bay of Biscay, lost a spreader, and limped into the Azores. There he found another stranded competitor with the same rig, borrowed the part, and carried on. "If we'd tried to script the race, we wouldn't have dared pile on that much drama," he says, smiling. He left the Azores in 25th and still finished 10th into Pointe-à-Pitre.
He vowed to come back.
Short on funding in 2024, he teamed up with Corentin Douguet for the double-handed season, an arrangement he credits with teaching him "a lot about strategy and trajectory analysis." Douguet had just launched the first Lift V3 to a Lombard design. Around the same time, a second example of that new hull was begun at Gepeto Composites for a client who later pulled out.
Nobody committed. Top-tier Class40s cost close to a million euros, and buyers wait for results before betting on an unproven design.
Then the early sailing trials with Douguet produced something startling. "We were questioning whether the electronics were even calibrated properly, we were going that fast."
Tréhin kept quiet on the pontoons, borrowed heavily, and bought the hull and deck from the yard himself, taking on the hours needed to finish the boat. "I committed a bit of insider trading," he jokes, "getting my hands on a boat that was about to become the new speed benchmark of the Class40 circuit." The proof came through: he and Douguet won every race of the 2025 season and missed the Transat Café l'Or by just seven minutes.
Then, on 10 April 2025, fire tore through his workshop. The Class40 hadn't been moved in yet, but Tréhin lost everything else overnight: workshop, tools, house. "We were wiped out, but you still have to get up at seven to take your daughter to daycare. So rather than sit there and sulk, we decided to see it through." Neighbours lent a shed. Partners rallied. Clothes arrived in boxes for his young daughter, Luce.
Nine months of a 4,000-hour build followed, with the boat, Exalt, launched in April with no shortcuts on quality. No sponsor has yet signed on, though the Belgian Curium team is lined up to buy the boat after the race, stickers for the new backer already on the hull even as it races under its own name.
How does he feel heading into Sunday's start? "Offshore racing has a huge psychological side. To be at the front you have to push yourself hard, that's not a problem, I'm in great shape. It's the boat you have to push to the limit. I know I can't afford to break everything. I hope that doesn't hold me back."
