The Vintage Mono class brings something genuinely different to this year's Route du Rhum. While the other categories chase optimised ratings and the fastest skipper on paper, these 13 boats, ranging from 12 to 26 metres and racing in real time, are about something older: adventure, heritage, and a proper mix of generations and amateur-pro sailors.
It wasn't always this way. Monohulls had a rough relationship with the Route du Rhum for years. The famous 98 seconds separating Olympus from Kriter V in the very first edition is part of race folklore. Michel Malinovsky finished second in 1978, wrote a book about it, then came back in 1982 with the radical 23-metre aluminium Kriter VIII and finished tenth. That result effectively ended monohulls' chances against the multihulls, and it wasn't until the first Vendée Globe in 1990 that they found their way back.
Kriter VIII is still racing. The Mauric design lines up for its sixth Route du Rhum this year, skippered by Wilfried Clerton on Echo-Mer, competing for the fourth time running after finishing third in 2022.
"In 1982 I was a kid hanging around the pontoons at La Rochelle. I was fascinated by the boat, the colour, the proportions," Clerton says. "Michel Malinovsky often invited me aboard but I didn't dare, because of his dog, a German shepherd that scared me stiff."
Sidney Gavignet knows both worlds. Winner of this class in 2018, he returns this year on Le Cigare Rouge, Jean-Luc Van Den Heede's famous red "cigar", a rare yawl-rigged Harlé-Mortain design that finished second in the 1993 Vendée Globe. It's his fifth Route du Rhum.
"The Vintage class is about coming back down to earth," Gavignet says. He wants to "play at racing", as he puts it, competitive but with the risk carefully managed.
Tanguy Caradec sails Eurvad, a 50-foot Open with a canting keel, in tribute to his father Loïc, who died during the tragic 1986 edition of the race. He'll be racing two very similar boats: Patrick Isoard, 67, on Groupe Cogedis pour enfants du Mékong, the most experienced of the trio with four transats and several wins including the Transat CIC, and 20-year-old Titouan Pillard on Use it again for youth, the fleet's youngest sailor, following his father, who is racing in Vintage Multi.
Watch too for Christophe Bachmann on Grain de Sable, the ex-Adrien, another Van Den Heede boat, a 26-metre Vaton design once holder of the reverse round-the-world record. And Kieran Le Borgne, 28, from Brest, sails Armor Lux - Le Finistère assurance, the former PRB, the only boat to win the Vendée Globe twice, rescued from 13 years as an abandoned wreck.
Then there's Jean Le Cam. At 67, racing his third Route du Rhum, he's chosen Alegria, a Swan 59 to a Frers design.
"It's a Frers design and it's a Swan," he says simply. "A boat that deserves it."
Le Cam, who has sailed everything from Formula 40s to IMOCAs to ORMA trimarans and the Hydroptère, has refitted the Swan from keel to masthead. Heating, air conditioning, polished woodwork, two reliable autopilots.
"It's a heavy boat, not necessarily easy downwind, and I'm still getting to know it," he says. "I'm heading off into something of an adventure. It's a challenge, and plenty of people will relate to that."
These veteran boats and their crews had little time to settle before the elements made their own statement. Storm Austen tore through Saint-Malo in the lead-up to the start, with gusts peaking at 75 knots as technical teams worked overnight to protect the fleet and village infrastructure. It was a reminder that even the most carefully restored classics will face the Atlantic on its own terms.
