Temperatures are climbing across the Atlantic, and the Route du Rhum fleet is finally finding some summer warmth.
Quarter-watch jackets are giving way to t-shirts out on the water. The warmer seas are closing in on the fleet, and sailors are getting the kind of days offshore that make the long hours at the nav station worthwhile.
It's a welcome shift. Conditions earlier in the race were anything but balmy, and the change in climate is giving skippers a brief window to enjoy the sailing itself, even as the real focus stays fixed on Guadeloupe.
That objective hasn't moved an inch despite the improving weather. Every skipper out there, from the IMOCA frontrunners to the smaller classes further back, is still racing flat out for the finish line. Corentin Horeau is among them, still holding a healthy lead in the IMOCA class aboard MACSF as he closes in on Guadeloupe.
Among the names currently making their way across the warming Atlantic are Francesca Clapcich, Corentin Horeau, Elodie Bonafous, Sébastien Simon, Baptiste Hulin, Pep Costa, Damien Seguin, Mikael Mergui, Anne-Claire Le Berre, Ulysse Pozzoli, Florian Gueguen, Pierre-Louis Attwell, Manuel Cousin, Guillaume L'Hostis and William Mathelin Moreaux.
The fleet remains spread across a huge stretch of ocean, each boat chasing its own private weather window.
For Kiwi followers of the race, the warming conditions mark a familiar turning point. It's the same shift offshore sailors see when the Southern Ocean gives way to calmer, warmer latitudes on long ocean legs closer to home, the point in a transatlantic crossing where the discomfort of the départ starts to fade and the sailing becomes, briefly, enjoyable.
Boat speeds and routing will still decide who gets there first. At the very front of the fleet that balance has already proven fragile, with Thibaut Vauchel-Camus seeing his lead shrink dramatically after punching through a brutal tropical depression, a reminder that the warmer weather now settling over the fleet offers no guarantee of an easy run home.
Guadeloupe is still a long way off, and the t-shirts are a small mercy, nothing more. But after a tough stretch of racing, the skippers will take it.
