Saint-Malo has spent thirteen days living and breathing the Route du Rhum, and by Sunday evening the party was, reluctantly, packing up.
Early that morning the Class40, VintageMono and VintageMulti fleets slipped their lines and left the pontoons, leaving a strange emptiness across the basins. By nightfall it was the spectators' turn. Tens of thousands boarded trains and cars, heading home after a fortnight locals are already struggling to compare to anything before it.
Four years ago the race drew 1.3 million spectators over its course, and this edition looks set to beat that mark, even if a final tally isn't in yet. Back in 1978, for the very first Route du Rhum, witnesses described more than 50 kilometres of traffic jams on the day of the start. Every edition since has topped a million visitors, sometimes closer to two million. But this one, people kept saying, felt different.
Storm Austen tried to spoil things late last week, forcing organisers to shut the village and mount an extraordinary effort to protect the site from the weather. It didn't dampen the mood for long. From Saturday's reopening onwards, as the skies cleared, the crowds kept building rather than thinning.
Trying to describe the atmosphere became something of a sport in itself. One skipper likened it to "a Breton summer festival, somehow happening in October." Another compared it to a feria in the south-west of France, "but with coats on." A local, only half joking, asked whether there was a better atmosphere anywhere for an ocean race start. Gilles Lamiré, skipper of Groupe GCA, said the lock gates had become "our Stade de France." A journalist on site put it more simply: this was Tour de France crowds, Tour de France energy.
The village itself was often too packed to move through quickly, with everyone wanting a closer look at the Ultims and IMOCAs lined up on the pontoons. Jean Le Cam could barely walk the docks without being stopped. The queue for Violette Dorange's autograph session had built up two hours early. Crowds packed the grandstands by the lock on Friday and stayed for the whole afternoon, happy to wait.
"Our boats and our sport are being shown off brilliantly, it's pure happiness," said Saint-Malo sailor Louis Burton, skipper of the Ultim Armand Thiery.
Burton and the rest of the fleet have already left all that behind, out into a race that tests nerve and body alike, all the way to Guadeloupe.
What will stay with them, and with everyone who came through Saint-Malo these past two weeks, are the small things: pink and orange skies at sunrise and sunset, music on every corner, bagpipes and bombardes mixing with the warmth of Caribbean rhythms.
There were evenings spent at Hector's, the Trinquette, the Univers, the Belle Époque, wherever the next crowd gathered, full of smiles and excitement. For a while it felt like a world apart, protected behind the old corsair walls from whatever was happening outside them.
Guadeloupe is already preparing its own celebration, ready to welcome home the sailors who now link two shores, heroes on both sides of the ocean.
