Damien Seguin has won the Route du Rhum - Destination Guadeloupe, crossing the finish line on Thursday 12 November at 4.24pm and 34 seconds local time aboard his Orma trimaran Arkéa - Handicap International. For the Frenchman, the victory carries a personal weight that traces back to the very pontoons where he has now taken the title.
He completed the course in 11 days, 8 hours, 22 minutes and 34 seconds, a time that beats the records set by Mike Birch (14 days, 1990) and Loïck Peyron (13 days, 1998) on that same boat, pending ratification by the race jury.
Arrival time at Pointe-à-Pitre: 4.24pm and 34 seconds. Arrival time in Paris: 9.24pm and 34 seconds. Race time: 11 days, 8 hours, 22 minutes, 34 seconds. Distance covered: 3,991.57 nautical miles. Average speed on the great circle route: 12.96 knots. Average speed in real terms: 14.65 knots.
It all started on the docks of Pointe-à-Pitre, where a young Seguin used to watch the winners of the Route du Rhum arrive aboard their trimarans. He was just ten years old when Florence Arthaud took victory in 1990, the same era in which he collected a prized autograph from Mike Birch. That "eternal dream machine," as he calls the race, shaped his future on the water.
"It's the race that made me want to sail and race offshore," he said. "It was hugely important in building my sporting career."
For his fifth tilt at the Route du Rhum, Seguin chose memory over modernity. He tracked down a sleeping legend in the south of France: the old Fujicolor II, the very boat Mike Birch sailed to that childhood-defining win in Pointe-à-Pitre. After a mammoth rebuild, the boat returned to the water true to its roots, no foils, old-school sailing, hull hard against the water, nothing between skipper and sea.
Years on, it is aboard that same legendary hull, now renamed Arkéa - Handicap International, that Seguin has written his name into the record books. A childhood dream, realised at home, in front of his own.
