Anne-Claire Le Berre has become the first woman to start and finish a solo transatlantic race in the Ocean Fifty class, crossing the line in Pointe-à-Pitre to complete the Route du Rhum after more than ten days at sea.
The 44-year-old finished seventh in the Ocean Fifty fleet, well behind class winner Basile Bourgnon, who took victory just two minutes ahead of IMOCA winner Corentin Horeau. But it is the milestone, not the placing, that will be remembered.
Le Berre has an unusual background for an offshore sailor. A former Olympic and match racing competitor in the 470 and Yngling classes, she trained as an engineer at INSA and spent years working in the design office at Initiatives Coeur before switching sides to become a race skipper herself. MerConcept picked her to take on the role of pioneer aboard the trimaran, and she has delivered on it.
She already had transatlantic experience, having sailed the Transat Café l'Or alongside Elodie Jane Mettraux. This time, though, she was on her own.
Le Berre had hoped to stay with the leading pack. That plan fell apart on day three, when what sailors call the thalweg, essentially a weather gateway, closed in front of her. She was forced into the second group and had to dig deep to finish a demanding Ocean Fifty leg regardless. Like Alexia Barrier before her, she will always be remembered as a first in this category to link Saint-Malo and Pointe-à-Pitre.
She crossed the line at 11.36pm local time on Thursday, 4.36am in Paris, completing the course in 10 days, 15 hours and 34 minutes. Her distance covered was 4036 nautical miles, with an average speed of 13.81 knots on the direct route and 15.79 knots in real terms. She finished 22 hours, 23 minutes and 44 seconds behind the class winner.
"I'm very happy to have arrived in Guadeloupe, thank you for such a warm welcome, it makes me want to come back," she said on the dock. "I want to come back and enjoy the race with the trade winds. The Rhum is everything, the start, the celebration, the locks, the race itself which is intense, I didn't see the days go by. We went through a lot of emotions in this race, which wasn't a classic Rhum. I'm happy to have made it to the end, it wasn't easy. The gate closed right in front of us, and it was hard to digest watching the group leave while I was stuck at the door. I'm glad I managed to gain back a place and almost catch Luke, we had a nice battle.
"I'm happy to have taken on this challenge on these incredible boats, to show that this whole programme of bringing more women into sailing and into multihulls works. We had a few scares, in a big tail of wind after the Azores depression with very unsteady conditions, and then that tropical depression. We sailed around it where the storm cells looked weaker, but the charts showed we barely made any progress for 24 hours. I had a brilliant routing team with Yann Eliès and Justine Mettraux, who supported me so much. They worked flat out, people forget about them, but if I'm here, it's partly thanks to them too."
Her finish came amid a fiercely contested Ocean Fifty fleet further up the order, where Thibaut Vauchel-Camus survived a late penalty scare to secure second place and Pierre Quiroga fought through gear troubles to claim third. But for Le Berre, the result was never the point. Simply getting to Pointe-à-Pitre, alone, at the helm of a trimaran, was the achievement that mattered.
