Paul Loiseau and Victor Le Pape won the first stage of L'Aventura, a new double-handed race for the Figaro Beneteau 3 class, crossing the line off Lagos, Portugal on Monday in 8 days, 16 minutes and 10 seconds aboard Région Bretagne CMB Espoir, out of Port Bourgenay.
Oakley Marsh finished further back, 14th in the 20-boat fleet aboard Digilab with British co-skipper Joss Creswell, in 9 days, 20 hours and 55 minutes, roughly 44 hours off the winning pace. He crossed the line on 1 September, a fortnight after stepping off Palanad 4 in the Round Britain and Ireland Race, where Creswell was also part of the crew.
Behind Loiseau and Le Pape, Arno Biston and Thomas André took second on Article 1. in 8 days, 1 hour, 30 minutes and 44 seconds, an hour and a quarter off the lead. Hugo Dhallenne and Chloé Le Bars were third on Skipper Macif in 8 days, 1 hour, 50 minutes and 38 seconds, with Tom Dolan and Gildas Mahé on Kingspan two minutes further back in fourth.
Same pair, very different boat
Palanad 4 is nothing like a Figaro. She's Antoine Magre's Sam Manuard-designed 50-footer, a scow-bowed, canting-keel monohull racing IRC rather than one-design, and only 13 months old at the time of the RBI start. Marsh and Creswell were both aboard when she finished second overall on IRC corrected time, third across the line behind Pace and Varuna 6 but fast enough on handicap to hold off both. Within a fortnight the pair were back in a one-design Figaro Beneteau 3, a foiling 32-footer that shares almost nothing with the boat they'd just stepped off beyond a rudder and a mainsail, for L'Aventura's first edition, a course that runs out past Madeira to Portugal rather than anywhere near the Figaro fleet's usual Atlantic or Channel grounds.
This is the third time this season Marsh and Creswell have sailed together. They first paired up at the Spi Ouest-France, finishing 12th on Digilab, then again for the Tour de France à la Voile in June, where Marsh was the only Kiwi on the start line. Creswell runs the Royal Ocean Racing Club's Gryphon Project, set up to get international sailors into the Figaro scene, so there's more to the pairing than just liking each other's company on watch.
Before any of that, Marsh had finished second by 18 seconds at Le Défi Paprec in May, sailing Chipmunk with German co-skipper Jens Meier. That result came off his first real season in the class, and the calendar hasn't given him much of a break since.
Up front, it came down to a long beat
Région Bretagne CMB Espoir took the lead in the hours before Porto Santo, the tactical mark for the whole leg, and never let go. From there it was a 410-mile beat to windward into Lagos in 15 to 20 knots and a lumpy sea, not the angle a foiling Figaro wants: the class's foils are built to lift the hull on a reach, not to grind out miles hard on the wind, so the closing stretch came down to boat handling and sail trim rather than anything the design gives you for free.
"It was a crazy race," Loiseau said. "It's the first time I've sailed that much offshore, and I really enjoyed this course, which was superb, between the Bay of Biscay, Porto Santo and this upwind finish into Lagos."
Article 1. tore a jib leech off Porto Santo and had to stop in the island's lee for a running repair before rejoining for the beat to the finish, which makes their second place tighter than it looks on paper. Skipper Macif called their run in close to 48 hours of match racing.
Two boats retired with technical problems and diverted into Lagos: Action Enfance-No Limit (Titouan Marilley/Tom Goron) and Team Saint Barth (Marvin Febrissy/Romen Richard).
The fleet has a week in Lagos before the second leg starts on 6 September, heading back to Île d'Yeu, 783 miles and a different set of angles again. For Marsh and Creswell, it's one more race in a year that's barely had them off the water, and there's still a leg to go before this one's done.
