Basile Bourgnon and Corentin Horeau claimed victory in the Ocean Fifty and IMOCA classes respectively on Wednesday 11 November, crossing the line at Pointe-à-Pitre just two minutes apart, ten days after the fleet left Saint-Malo in the Route du Rhum, Destination Guadeloupe 2026.
It capped a tight finish to a long race. Behind Bourgnon in the Ocean Fifty class, the battle for the podium was just as close, with Thibaut Vauchel-Camus overcoming a late penalty scare to seal second place, Pierre Quiroga fighting through broken gear to claim third, and Léonard Legrand narrowly missing the podium on his Ocean Fifty debut rounding out the top four.
Out on the water, though, the story is far from over for the rest of the fleet. Light winds are slowing a number of competitors as they approach the Caribbean, making the final approach to Guadeloupe anything but straightforward, a pattern already familiar to Elodie Bonafous, who spent hours becalmed before finding breeze again and closing back in on third in her class.
Further east, the picture is different again. A fresh weather front is bearing down on part of the Class40 fleet, still heavily spread out across the Atlantic.
That front will need to be negotiated before sailors hit patches of calm, all while trying to hold position to take advantage of a more settled wind pattern expected to return as the Azores high gradually re-establishes itself.
How will the next arrivals handle the patchy, irregular winds around Guadeloupe? In the IMOCA fleet, Sébastien Simon has shown how much can change over the course of the crossing, clawing his way back into contention after a difficult start aboard Groupe Dubreuil - Air Caraïbes.
For the Class40s, scattered widely across the ocean, the challenge is different: get through the front, survive the calms that follow, and position for the return of steadier breeze.
Cyril Wuest, meteorologist at METEO CONSULT, the official weather partner of the Route du Rhum, Destination Guadeloupe 2026, has been breaking down the sailing conditions and the strategic stakes facing skippers between Wednesday and Friday.
For New Zealand followers of the Ocean Fifty and IMOCA classes, the finish-line drama in Pointe-à-Pitre shows just how tight racing has become at the top of these fleets, even after a transatlantic crossing of this scale. The Route du Rhum remains one of the sport's great tests of solo offshore sailing, and conditions over the coming days will decide plenty more places across the fleet before the Class40s and the rest of the field make it home.
