This is the first time since 1978 that the competition has not started at Sunday lunch time: due to bad weather, the start scheduled for Sunday has been postponed to Wednesday. At 2:15 p.m., 138 solo sailors on 12 to 32 meter boats left Saint-Malo for Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe.
When last Saturday, in the auditorium of the Palais du Grand Large in Saint-Malo (Ille-et-Vilaine) and a dead silence, Cyrille Duchesne and Francis Le Goff, respectively meteorologist and race director, commented on the “slides” illustrating stormy winds and frightening seas, before announcing that the start was logically postponed for three days, the 138 sailors applauded. Never seen.
“Intelligent and wise decision”
The thousands of onlookers who have invaded the corsair city are in heaven, enjoying extra days to admire the sailboats and stock up on posters and other goodies between two grains of rain. If the departures of the Vendée Globe, the Transat Jacques Vabre, or the Mini Transat, have already been postponed due to very bad weather, it is the first time since 1978 that the Route du Rhum has not started at Sunday lunch time and live on the 1 p.m. newscast.
Rare are the sailors to question the decision not to send the competitors to the “pipe breaker”. There is certainly the stainless navigator Yvan Bourgnon – he is not a competitor this year – whose late older brother Laurent remains the only double winner of the Rum, to grumble about the fact of delaying the departure, in addition to some “sofa sailors “, which on social networks fire red bullets on the organizers.
On the dripping granite of the birthplace of Chateaubriand, we come across a helicopter pilot from the French Navy at the Lann-Bihoué naval aeronautical base, specializing in the rescue of shipwrecked people: “Fortunately the organizers made this smart and wise decision, because there wouldn’t have been enough of us to pick them up!”
“The crossing is not that of a bathtub”
Michel Desjoyeaux, the most successful solo sailor, winner of the Route du Rhum in 2002 after a memorable storm, likes to recall “that it is up to each competitor to take the start or not, and that the crossing of the Atlantic is not that of a bathtub”. A few Bretons decide to go home, while others prefer to stay put, locking themselves in their cabins or staying at the hotel running weather routings (the optimal routes to choose between Saint-Malo and Pointe-à- Pitre) on a computer. All are stamping with impatience, but know that the start of the race is not going to be easy. “It will not be easy between the fairly strong headwind, the currents, the drifting fishing nets and the wind farm in front of Saint-Brieuc”, emphasizes Arnaud Boissières (La Mie câline), a sailor who has already competed in four Vendée Globes in a row.
Nevertheless, before being able to slide at high speed towards Guadeloupe, we will have to turn our backs and “bump” against a first front resulting from a disturbance coming from Iceland. Christian Dumard, recognized navigator and router, and who like four years ago, advises Francis Joyon (Idec Sport), defending champion, is clear: «The ultimates (large 32-meter trimarans) will already be at the tip of Brittany in the night, but will have to make choices: go in the hard north or prefer the south, quieter but slower before joining the trade winds. There are still uncertainties and many compromises. It won’t be easy.”
Nevertheless, the record held by Joyon (seven days and fourteen hours) should be smashed. “The boats have made a lot of progress in four years”, adds Dumard. He sees the winner of this Route du Rhum in six days or less, when the Imoca (Vendée Globe boats) and Ocean Fifty (15-meter multihulls) in barely ten days. To say that in 1978, Mike Birch, the first winner, took more than twenty-three days. In forty-five years, not a train, an automobile, an airplane or a rocket has progressed as much as a racing yacht.