Marc Guillemot: For me, this is the race which helped sailors everywhere understand that it was possible to cross the Atlantic single-handed, thanks to yachtsmen by the likes of Chichester and Tabarly…
Fred Le Peutrec: This was the first race which was an intense experience. My first souvenir goes back to 1976, when I was 11…
What does The Transat represent for you ? |
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| Marc Guillemot: For me, this is the race which helped sailors everywhere understand that it was possible to cross the Atlantic single-handed, thanks to yachtsmen by the likes of Chichester and Tabarly. That was far from being obvious at the start of the 1970’s. Yachtsmen everywhere, even kids, wanted to do it at least once. In 1976, I sailed across the Channel with my father who knew Eric Tabarly. I was sixteen at the time and can still remember seeing Pen Duick VI and Club Med moored side by side. We were there at the start of the race. It was superb, even if the boats differed greatly. No two boats were alike, no two had the same speed potential. We were more interested in the adventure side of things at the time than the pure racing element. | Fred Le Peutrec: This was the first race which was an intense experience. My first souvenir goes back to 1976, when I was 11. It was the 5th edition, and the most extravagant with the historic battle between Alain Colas’s (236-foot) Club Med and Eric Tabarly’s (75-foot) Pen Duick VI. Everyone was expecting Colas to break the tape at the finish but instead Tabarly was first to break through the fog. His race remained engraved in my mind – alone on his monohull designed for a crew of 14, with no automatic pilot, Tabarly had battled through five low pressure systems. After Mike Birch’s multihull win in the first Route du Rhum in 1978, then the American Phild Weld in the Ostar in 1980, yachting enthusiasts has to chose their side of the fence. I had just started sailing beach cats and had clearly opted for multihulls. I got the distinct impression that one day my turn would come to sail ocean races on this sort of boat. After that, I followed the other editions with the means available at the time – in other words, when a national radio station decided to give an update on the race around midnight. I used to mark the competitors positions down onto a chart. The Transat is one of those races to have taken little of my time until now but one which I’ve always looked upon with passion. | |
Souvenirs linked to this race ? |
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| MG: The strong souvenirs which I have of this race are mainly linked to the edition in which I took part on La Trinitaine in 2000. An intense period from start to finish. Routing was prohibited which gave an altogether different tone to the race, more concentrated. A month before the start, I had prepared my overall strategy with a well-known meteorologist Pierre Lasnier. Through my own experience, I trusted him with regard to what I was likely to come across on the race and that I was going to have to face alone. Thanks to the advice he gave me, I set out in a peaceful state of mind. I recall my determination which was to run my race the way I wanted to and not be diverted by what the other competitors might decide to do, however different my tactical options might be. It worked pretty well as I finished 2nd, coming raklly close to victory. | FL: I can particularly recall the 1984 race when Philippe Poupon took line honours but was finally relegated to second place. Philippe Jeantot had capsized on his catamaran Crédit Agricole and Yvon Fauconnier, also in the race, de-routed to provide rescue assistance. Rescue operations lasted sixteen hours. Meanwhile, Poupon progressed well and was first across the line, Fauconnier arriving in his wake 10h30 later. Right in the middle of the press conference, the race committee announced that it had decided to award the skipper of Umupro Jardin the sixteen hours spent rescuing Jeantot and that consequently, Fauconnier was the winner, making Poupon second. A unique event in ocean racing, and one which remains firmly in my mind, as do with the strong emotions it generates. | |
The north Atlantic course ? |
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| MG: The course itself conjures up images of eventful sailing and a fair amount of stress. Visibility is not often that good when you reach the Canadian coast, with the strong possibility of the odd iceberg here and there, growlers, fishing boats and cargo vessels. We have to cross major fishing zones with loads of ships navigating in the fog in what are extremely tough waters to sail. A stressful race, although not so difficult as the Route du Rhum as our trimarans are easier to handle close-hauled than downwind with the gennaker up. However, the major difficulty is the lack of visibility over a distance of 400 to 500 miles, two or so days before reaching Newfoundland. The cold, the damp. Not at all easy to manage when you want to sail fast. A field worth racing in though as there is enough space to do interesting things from a tactical point of view. | FL: A difficult and bitter course, head to wind with freezing seaspray, although not every edition has been raced in terrible conditions. But statistics show that there is often really rotten weather on this race. Arriving on the banks of Newfoundland, passing through the ice, fog and the banks of Nantucket – places which cannot be disassociated from this race. I did sail through these places in other contexts, on the Transatlantic record attempt on Explorer with Bruno Peyron in 1995 and the Québec Saint Malo on La Trinitaine in 2000. | |