Sébastien Marsset, skipper of Mon Courtie Energie-Cap Agir Ensemble took 11th place in the IMOCA Class when he crossed the finish line of the Route du Rhum-Destination Guadeloupe at 5:51pm local time.

A very experienced and successful member of French round the world race crews including winning the Volvo Ocean Race in 2011-12 with Franck Cammas’ Groupama team, at 37 years old Marsset is now pursuing his dream of competing in the Vendée Globe. He races the 2008 Farr design which started life as Delta Dore and was most recently Clément Giraud’s Compagnie du Lit/Jilti. Marsset passed Briton Pip Hare in the closing miles of the race to take 11th, finishing just behind his friend and former co-skipper Romain Attanasio.

QUOTES FROM Sébastien Marsset

"I don't know if this result is so unexpected because we really worked hard all year on preparation, reliability and performance. Everything went perfectly on this race. The boat is perfect, I did the race I wanted to do, I had a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. And that is great because you spend so mcuh time with the project at arm's length dioing stuff for it, then you get to spend 13 days enjoying it so much is great! We got on well with the boat, I had a great time. I think it's my best race, solo so far. Four years ago I was unhappy, I had broken equipment and I couldn't be at the finish. I'm very happy to be here. There were a lot of matches with other competitors and until the very end with Pip Hare, there was nothing in it at all! The race was completely full on and especially this final day particularly. In terms of maneuvers we never seemed to stop.

I finished just behind Romain (Attanasio). It's funny to find myself here just behind him after having done two Transat Jacques Vabre together (in 2019 and 2021, NDR) and having worked alongside him for a long time. It's great to finish behind a boat like that and ahead of other very successful ones. This transat and the project in general are hugely satisfying. There is a beautiful human story behind this result. Now this Route du Rhum is a starting point, we have to see how we are going to make this boat go faster still in a straight line. I got this good ranking thanks to routing choices and strategic choices. I want it to become one of the best IMOCA daggerboards, and we have a lot of potential. »