Sunshine, spinnakers, and a flying start
The Solent was at its sparkling best when seven IMOCAs surged away from the Royal Yacht Squadron line off Cowes on 17 August. Blue skies, a stiff breeze, and packed shorelines combined for a spectacular send-off, spinnakers filling almost immediately as the fleet charged seaward. It was the same historic start line used when the very first Whitbread Round the World Race got underway back in 1973.
The opening prize on offer was the Needles Scoring Gate, and Paul Meilhat's Biotherm took it without fuss, banking two more points onto an already healthy tally. Paprec Arkéa claimed the single point behind them. Across both the Kiel and Portsmouth scoring gates Biotherm had now been flawless, and the sense of early control around Meilhat's campaign was unmistakable.
What followed that clean start was anything but straightforward. The first night across the Channel was ferocious. Twenty-plus knots from the east had the IMOCAs flying, boat speeds well beyond what routing software had predicted, spray everywhere. By midnight Biotherm held a 40-mile gap back to Team Amaala at the rear of the fleet. It looked like a procession.
Then the wind simply disappeared.
A dead zone off Ushant brought the entire fleet to a standstill. The leaders, first into the calm, suffered most. A 40-mile gap shrank to five miles as the pack bunched behind them. When the boats finally untangled, it was Pip Hare's Canada Ocean Racing – Be Water Positive that found herself out front. For a crew still building their IMOCA experience, it was a genuine breakthrough.
Paprec Arkéa paid an especially heavy price. Yoann Richomme's team had attempted the southern route through a tidal channel, a bold gamble that might have opened a 20-mile lead. Instead the wind abandoned them, they missed the gate entirely, and a forced tack back dropped them from the front of the fleet to the back of it. "We went from first to last," Richomme admitted. The reset drained the crew, but it compressed the race into something far more compelling.
When the breeze rebuilt south of Ushant the leg transformed into a flat-out drag race across the Bay of Biscay. Holcim-PRB, freshly repaired after sustaining damage in Leg 1, found an impressive new gear. Rosalin Kuiper's crew swapped the lead with Biotherm through successive nights on the water, while Malizia, Canada Ocean Racing – Be Water Positive and Paprec Arkéa all kept within five miles of the front. For anyone following the race tracker, it was offshore sailing at its most compelling, every gybe and sail trim decision immediately visible in the standings.
“Every minute counts here – there’s no room for mistakes,” said Kuiper.
The contest between Biotherm and Holcim-PRB carried a personal edge. Amélie Grassi, sailing aboard Biotherm, found herself overhauled by Holcim-PRB's Alan Roberts, who happens to be her husband. She fought back and reclaimed the position. "A great day," she laughed. Further down the fleet, Allagrande Mapei split away early, tacking off to set up an angle on Cape Finisterre. The move needed the leaders to get stuck. They didn't, and Allagrande Mapei was left chasing.
Cape Finisterre proved to be the race's first decisive moment. As the fleet converged on the cape, Biotherm reached the freshening westerly first, lining up on the favoured side while others were still working towards it. Meilhat's crew stretched their advantage through that transition and never surrendered it, carrying a slim but vital margin into the mid-leg scoring gate.
Paprec Arkéa, having rebuilt from their Ushant disaster, produced a strong final push. They overhauled both Malizia and Holcim-PRB in the closing hours and crossed into Porto-Matosinhos in second. "We had a wonderful night catching up," Richomme said. "Everything went right for us." Holcim-PRB completed the podium in third, a particularly satisfying result for a team who had spent much of Leg 1 on the dock carrying out repairs. "We're very happy to be back in the race," said Kuiper.
For Biotherm the numbers told the full story: 18 points from 18 available. Few would have dared predict that kind of perfection at the start.
Porto-Matosinhos offered the strangest finish-line experience The Ocean Race has ever staged. Boats crossed the line, collected their full leg points, tied up alongside, and had three hours before the race restarted. Crews ate, gave interviews, and tried to absorb what had just happened, all with one eye on the clock. "It was really strange," said Meilhat. "Normally you cross the line and celebrate. Here you had to stay focused, because in three hours it starts again."
Malizia's Will Harris captured the odd emotional texture of it. "Seeing Biotherm set off as we were arriving was hard. But everyone's raring to go again." For Amaala, who arrived overnight and well adrift of the leaders, the stopover was bittersweet. Skipper Alan Roura kept his sense of humour intact. "We've been stuck in no wind while others enjoyed Porto," he joked. "Please, drink a coffee for me!"
The restart changed everything. Downwind running conditions out of Porto-Matosinhos suited some boats far better than others, and Biotherm suddenly looked mortal. Meilhat had flagged the concern beforehand. "Our boat isn't made for these angles," he had warned, and so it proved. Paprec Arkéa came charging through during the night, taking the lead for the first time on the leg. Holcim-PRB closed to within five miles. Richomme described the conditions as "super-fast" and made no effort to hide his satisfaction: "It had been a long time since we got back to them."
Malizia continued to reset and remained within range, while Canada Ocean Racing – Be Water Positive and Allagrande Mapei pushed hard from further behind. Amaala, carrying a significant deficit, had little choice but to wait and hope that the Strait of Gibraltar might yet shuffle the order.
The fleet was funnelling towards exactly that. From the Gulf of Cadiz the course narrows into the Strait of Gibraltar, one of offshore racing's most unpredictable bottlenecks, where current, confused seas, and shifting pressure have upended many a well-laid plan. Biotherm still led the overall standings, but Leg 2 had made clear that the gap between them and the chasing pack was far thinner than the points table suggested. The resurgence of Paprec Arkéa, the return to form of Holcim-PRB, and Canada Ocean Racing – Be Water Positive's breakthrough performance all underlined that no result was settled.
Kuiper summed up the mood from the chasing pack plainly. "Every minute counts. There's no room for mistakes." With Gibraltar still to come, the smallest error could yet change everything.
