As planned, at 12:08 on Thursday, the start of the great race of the fourth edition of the 40' Malouine LAMOTTE was given off the town of Aleth. The 23 duos in the running set off for a 187-mile stretch between Saint-Malo and Les Sept Iles via Videcoq, Grand Lejon and Jument des Héaux, propelled by a SW'ly air flow of around ten knots. In these conditions, Ambrogio Beccaria and Nicolas Andrieu (Alla Grande - Pirelli) got off to the best start before setting course for the Pointe du Grouin with Cédric Château and Guillaume Pirouelle (Seafrigo - Sogestran), Matthieu Perrault and Kévin Bloch (Inter Invest), Andrea Fornaro and Igor Goikhberg (Influence 2), William Mathelin - Moreaux and Pietro Luciani (Dekuple) in their wake. The fact remains that the match, which is expected to last around twenty hours, has only just begun and promises to be a match of rare intensity. The highly unstable conditions promise to spice up the game!
"When you look at the sky today, you think you're going to have a great day out on the water, but you also think it's going to be a lot more action than you'd imagine", summed up the local competitor, Jules Bonnier (Nestenn - Entrepreneurs pour la planète). In fact, what awaits him and his rivals in this great 40' Malouine LAMOTTE offshore race promises to be all-encompassing, complex and sporting. On the one hand, because the 187-mile course proposed for this 4th edition is made up of rather short sections, close to the shore in order to avoid too bad sea conditions offshore. Secondly, because the wind is set to strengthen and be unstable to say the least, with possible stormy spells. "Overall, it's going to be pretty rough and very irregular. So the key will be to be able to find the best possible sail combinations to get through the squalls," says the sailor from Saint Malo, who is expecting the SW'ly air flow to oscillate between 15 and 35 knots. "It's clearly not going to be easy to be fast all the time. It's all going to be a question of compromise, but we're also going to have to put in some good tacks, make the most of the site effects and then the currents, even in this period of low tidal coefficients", said the skipper, who believes that the first very different options will become apparent as soon as they enter the Bay of Mont Saint-Michel.
"Active from start to finish"
An opinion shared by Ian Lipinski (Crédit Mutuel). "There's going to be a lot of action from start to finish, with a lot of manoeuvres. It promises to be very active, particularly during the cloudy patches. We're clearly going to have to be on our toes to make sure we don't get caught out, but also to make sure we don't bump into another boat in the reduced visibility phases, when we'll be tacking in fairly restricted areas", warned the sailor, who has already won the Défi Atlantique and finished second in the CIC Normandy Channel Race this season, and who is determined to go after the victory which eluded him by a hair's breadth last year. "While we're here to prepare as best we can for the Transat Jacques Vabre, we're also here to win," noted the co-skipper of Antoine Carpentier, winner of the 2021 edition alongside Spaniard Pablo Santurde del Arco. He knows, however, that there are plenty of people lining up, starting with the Legallais men, Fabien Delahaye and Corentin Douguet, who for their part are looking forward to the upcoming match with such stiff competition and on such a technical course to put their brand new boat through its paces. "The aim is first and foremost to discover and learn the machine, but it's obvious that if we get the chance to go for victory, we won't miss it! And with good reason, the Transat Jacques Vabre Normandie - Le Havre is already on everyone's minds. In this context, as well as validating the latest technical choices, it's also a question of scoring points and gaining a psychological advantage over the competition before heading to Le Havre next month. The verdict? It's expected tomorrow between 8 and 9 a.m. according to the latest routing.
Source : SNBSM
Tracking : SoluSport (oceantracking.fr)
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