Deep into their Atlantic crossing, Route du Rhum skippers have found a moment to share something other than routing charts and squall warnings: sunsets.
Boris Herrmann, Guillaume Pirouelle, Pierre Quiroga, Arnaud Boissières, Aina Bauza Roig, Christophe Bachmann and Lomano Takasi have all posted images from on board as the fleet pushes toward Guadeloupe, spectacular colours lighting up the horizon each evening.
Behind the physical toll of a solo transatlantic race, there is still beauty in the job. Skippers sailing through the night rely on those fleeting moments of calm. A clean sunset, before the dark hours set in, offers a brief pause between sail changes and sleep deprivation.
The scenes shared by this group range from burnt orange skies over flat water to moodier, cloud-streaked horizons as fronts pass through. Each image tells its own story about conditions at that particular point of the course.
For a fleet spread across the Atlantic, no two skippers are seeing quite the same sky at the same time. That's part of what makes the solo discipline so compelling to follow from shore.
Calm seas aren't guaranteed for everyone, though. Corentin Horeau is stuck in a windless limbo barely 100 miles from the finish, his progress stalled by the same stubborn light air that has turned the closing stages into a nail-biter further up the fleet.
Herrmann, among the best-known offshore racers in the fleet, continues his push south and west. Boissières, a veteran of the Route du Rhum, remains a familiar face among those documenting the crossing. Quiroga, Pirouelle, Bauza Roig, Bachmann and Takasi round out the group sharing these glimpses of the journey.
The destination remains the same for all of them: Guadeloupe. Every mile sailed, every watch kept through the darkness, is building toward that same finish line in the Caribbean, where the final approach has already proven anything but straightforward.
The island's notorious closing stretch, which forces competitors to sail around it rather than straight into Pointe-à-Pitre, has decided fortunes since 1978, and this edition is no exception, with the last 53 miles already reshaping placings up the fleet.
Further back in the IMOCA class, Sam Goodchild has felt that unpredictability firsthand, becalmed and battered by a string of breakages that cost him his podium spot, while refusing to give up the fight.
The sunsets are simply the backdrop to a far tougher story unfolding beneath them: fatigue, strategy, and the relentless pursuit of speed across open ocean.
For New Zealand followers of the race, these are conditions familiar from our own distance sailing and offshore racing culture, albeit on a vastly different ocean. Watching sailors navigate solo across thousands of nautical miles, chasing weather windows and making split-second calls alone, holds obvious appeal for a boating audience well versed in the demands of open water.
The fleet continues its advance. The Atlantic, for now, is putting on a show.
