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    Vogue avec un Crohn (195)
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Amarris wins the 10th edition of Québec Saint-Malo

© Transat Québec Saint-Malo
© Transat Québec Saint-Malo

The 10th edition of the Transat Québec Saint-Malo will undoubtedly be a milestone in the long and glorious history of this race, created in 1984 to mark the 450th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City by Jacques Cartier of Saint-Malo. There were 23 Class40s on the starting line, and no fewer than fifteen of them were in contention for victory, all driven by top-flight crews. And the race lived up to all its promises: performance, with the 24-hour record beaten by Guillaume Pirouelle and his boys from Sogestran-Seafrigo (440.2 miles! ), a close-quarters race from start to finish, with 12 boats finishing in just over 2 hours, and a majestic 15-day adventure over an average of more than 3,400 miles, with all the crews facing every conceivable sailing condition, river and coastal, low-pressure and high-cyclone, and a cut-throat battle at every turn. Achille Nebout, Gildas Mahé and Alan Roberts won out over Amarris, adding panache to their victory by finishing the last 850 miles of the course on a single rudder!

A troubled Atlantic

With the arrival this morning of Jean Yves Aglaé's Team Martinique Horizon, just 16 hours after the winner Achille Nebout, only the Femina Ocean Challenge girls Equinoxe and Julia Virat are still racing. The unexpected length of the race can be explained by a particularly unsettled Atlantic Ocean, on which none of the major weather systems usually in circulation in summer were present. The sailors had to constantly rewrite their race plans, at great intellectual cost, from the moment they left the Gulf of St. Lawrence, to find the best route to Brittany between ridges of wind and small active low-pressure and storm centers. While the direct route between Quebec City and Saint-Malo was theoretically 2,845 miles, all the protagonists ended up covering an average of more than 3,500 miles.

Dramatic turn of events on the way out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence

And this exercise proved fatal to a number of leaders and potential winners in the early hours of the Atlantic. Ambrogio Beccaria (AllaGrande Pirelli), Ian Lipinski (Crédit Mutuel), Erwan Le Draoulec (Everial), and Alberto Bona (IBSA group), to name but a few of the top names, threw themselves wholeheartedly and with conviction onto a northerly course, which was quickly obliterated by the lack of wind, forcing them to make a painful and penalizing change of tactic. As a result, the race settled down in the first few days in the Atlantic, trapping the northerners and freeing those favouring a route south of the great circle. However, with vast zones of high pressure blocking the Atlantic, the leaders were soon forced to lengthen their course to the south, in the wake of a particularly inspired Fabien Delahaye (Legallais) and Pierre-Louis Attwell (Vogue avec un Crohn). By the 9th day of racing, they were only 300 miles north of the Azores. Yesterday's losers were able to start believing in their chances again, and the 240-mile gap between the southern protagonists and the unfortunate northerners began to melt away, and would continue to narrow until they landed on Ushant.

Compression in Ushant

Indeed, the race was coming back from behind, under the effect of a low-pressure system circulating to the east, which brought all the contenders for victory back to the leader, Legallais. Amarris, despite being deprived of one of her rudders, played the last big trick of this transatlantic race to perfection, slipping south of her adversary who had come up against the light airs of the Bay of Biscay. Playing for all he was worth, with his only appendage definitively on his port side, he managed to keep his direct rivals at a short distance, to win and sign a magnificent victory. Three crews from Normandy, Fabien Delahaye (Legallais), Pierre Louis Attwell (Vogue avec un Crohn) and Guillaume Pirouelle (Sogestran - Seafrigo), made up the top five, along with the 100% all-female crew of Amélie Grassi, who was always at the front of the pack and played a key role in the finale of this breathtaking transatlantic race.

Achille Nebout - Amarris

« I dedicate this great victory to my daughter, Galla, who was born before the race. It is indeed a great victory, and an immense satisfaction for the whole crew. We fought hard, in adversity, against fierce competition, often on sight, edge to edge. It's a bit of a miracle because we lost our starboard rudder 850 miles from the finish. For a moment, we thought about stopping and perhaps giving up. Before Ushant, we were able to take advantage of a long tack on the right side, and by staying to the south of the fleet, we benefited from an excellent wind angle which enabled us to come back on Legallais and pass him just as he hit the flats. But after Ushant, upwind, with the wind increasing, we sailed with the rudder on the wrong tack, and to our amazement, it worked. So that's how we ended up, without changing the rudder. It's a bit of a miracle. It's also down to the quality of my crew, Gildas (Mahé) and Alan (Roberts). We got on perfectly, and our cohesion and complementarity played to the full. It's the first time I've won a race as legendary as the Québec Saint Malo. It's a crazy, intense race, with constant twists and turns. It was a very long race, with lots of transitions and weather variations. The human experience is fantastic. »

General ranking: Transat Québec Saint-Malo - Class40

2024 Championship ranking : championnat2024postqsm.pdf (class40.com)

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