Thomas Ruyant, who won the Route du Rhum-Destination Guadeloupe in the IMOCA Class four years ago, has been following the dramatic twists and turns of the current race and admits he has been hooked to his Tracker ever since the start on Sunday.

The hugely experienced skipper, who is currently searching for a new title sponsor for his 2028 Vendée Globe campaign, has been mightily impressed by the performance of his fellow Frenchman Corentin Horeau on board MACSF who has taken this race by the scruff of its neck.

Having made a good start and having been always in contention in the early stages, Horeau followed a straight course to the west, to north of the Azores. He then managed to cross the stationary weather front that has ensnared all his pursuers, among them early leaders and pre-race favourites Sam Goodchild (MACIF Santé Prévoyance) and the Italian skipper Ambrogio Beccaria (Allagrande MAPEI).

Once on the other side of the front, a delighted Horeau has been rocketing south in a strong vein of northerly breeze and having taken the lead, his margin over the current second-placed boat - Boris Herrmann’s Malizia 4 - has grown to nearly 175 nautical miles, with the now third-placed Francesca Clapcich on 11th Hour Racing just a couple of miles further back.

© Alexis Courcoux / #RDR2022

“Of course, we know Corentin’s qualities as a sailor,”said Ruyant of the 37-year-old skipper of MACSF who won the Solitaire du Figaro in 2023 and who has described his progress over the last 24 hours as the stuff of dreams. “But what’s particularly impressive is the quality of his routing which is allowing him to get through one of the major strategic challenges of this Route du Rhum.”

Whereas Horeau picked a direct course downwind to the front, both Goodchild and Beccaria, at that stage ahead of him, took a short gybe to the north to try to position themselves for the narrowest crossing of the front. It proved a costly error, with them both ending up trapped in windless conditions while Horeau and the boats to the south continued making progress.

“Perhaps there was a small mistake in making that little tactical detour north, or northwest, to position themselves for crossing the front,” explained Ruyant. “Corentin, on the other hand, sailed straight on. He’s made up the small deficit he had, moved into the lead and now has every opportunity to stretch his legs and build a gap in the current conditions.

“So it’s really the routing choice that has made the difference and paid off for Corentin,” Ruyant added. “He’s sailed extremely well, following a very direct route without any major detours and that’s what has put him in front.”

The early stages of this Route du Rhum - the 13th edition of this four-yearly classic - have seen plenty of incident, as the 22-strong IMOCA fleet set sail from St Malo in moderate downwind conditions that steadily built over the first 24 hours. By then Violette Dorange, on board Initiatives-Coeur, had collided with Use It Again, Romain Pilliard’s vintage multihull (formerly Ellen MacArthur’s B&Q), forcing both skippers to divert to Roscoff. Dorange is now back in Lorient and still hoping to re-start.

Rdr2026 2611021052 imo macif s 261102 095240 img haute definition© Sam Goodchild

Following that, Armel Tripon retired on Les P’Tits Doudous with rudder damage and Jérémie Beyou, in his last race with Charal, decided to turn around and retire from the race for medical reasons. It was a sad end to Beyou’s decade-long Charal campaign and his hopes of winning the Route du Rhum at the fifth time of asking.

Ahead of the leaders, the weather looks complex and daunting with a large and deep low pressure system forming north of the Azores which could produce challenging sea conditions later this week, especially for the lower reaches of the IMOCA fleet.

“What’s coming next is going to be really interesting,”said Ruyant. “They’ll have to sail through a narrow corridor ahead of them, probably following it with a few gybes. After that the skippers will have to cross a ridge of high pressure to reconnect with a weather system and a low pressure area, with all the associated windshifts, before reaching a fairly strong downwind breeze. From tomorrow onward, they’ll really be able to pick up speed again on a fairly direct route. I think we’ll be looking at record-breaking conditions…things could get incredibly fast."

Ruyant says this is an entirely atypical weather pattern for this 3,540-mile sprint to Pointe-à-Pitre. “There’s a lot of strategy involved,”he said. “This is definitely not a typical Route du Rhum trade wind race, which is sometimes what you get. We’re actually seeing low pressure systems developing quite far south - it’s going to be fascinating to follow.”

In addition to the leaders, he has been keeping on eye on the daggerboard front-runners, with Frenchman Nico D’Estais on Café Joyeux in ninth place overall, just over 20 miles ahead of Pierre-Louis Attwell on Resilient, and with Sébastien Marsset on Foussier in third place, another 17 miles back.

“It’s a race within a race as always. That’s one of the fascinating things about the IMOCA fleet: there’s a battle going on at every level,”said Ruyant. “However, these boats are going to face somewhat tougher conditions than the leading boats. The second front they’re going to encounter is associated with the low pressure system that’s developing and wrapping around itself, and it’s going to take up a large part of the Atlantic. They won’t really have much choice but to cross it and there will be fairly strong winds across much of the fleet, particularly for the back of the IMOCA fleet and the Class 40s.”

Ruyant said he was bitterly disappointed not to be able to defend his title in this race and initially planned to keep only a casual eye on what was going on. But as the race has developed, he says he has been glued to the Tracker and his routing software, working out what the leaders will do next. “I’ve really got caught up in following the race, across all the different classes and particularly the IMOCA fleet, because those are the boats I know best,”he said. “It wasn’t necessarily what I’d planned to do, but I’m still completely hooked!”

In the meantime, the former skipper of LinkedOut and Vulnerable is continuing his hunt for a new commercial partner to ensure he gets to the startline of the next Vendée Globe in contention for the podium.

Ed Gorman (traduit de l'anglais)