Transat Quebec Saint Malo - Fleet enter the Atlantic

by Soazig Guého on 28 Jul 2012 In the eighth Transat Quebec Saint-Malo, all 25 boats taking part have now gone past the final compulsory mark at St. Pierre and are now out in the Atlantic. While the multihulls will have another waypoint to go round, the famous Fastnet Rock on the southern tip of Ireland, the rest of the Open monohull and Class 40 fleets can now head directly to Saint Malo.

No boat has been forced to abandon despite some 700 miles in varying and sometimes harsh conditions over five very hard days down the St Lawrence river. Some damages and technical pit stops were to be recorded: both Benoit Parnaudeau on Transport cohérence and Louis Duc on Avis Immobilier have restarted after a brief pit-stop to solve their issues.

The fleet is still close despite the slingshot effect caused by the passage at St Pierre, and is sailing on a downwind tack propelled by a strong westerly breeze. The vast ocean is now the new playing field and as the breeze is slowly shifting to the south/south-east, the Class40 fleet is split over more than 70 miles. It is the time when everyone needs to choose the shrewdest strategy to make the best of the remaining 2,000 miles to the finish line.

It only took a dozen or so hours to the Class40 fleet to leave behind the very last mark at St Pierre, before heading out to the Atlantic Ocean. Following the Italian 50' Vento di Sardegna, that passed yesterday at 16:45 UTC, it was the turn of the Class40 leader Fabrice Amédéo on Geodis and his crew mates Armel Tripon, Loïc Le Garrec and Cyril de La Motte Rouge to sail past the waypoint positioned at Passe à Henry, a short stretch between Saint-Pierre and the islet of Grand Colombier, followed Stéphane Le Diraison on IXBlue just six minutes later, under an overcast sky, in drizzling rain and fog but welcomed by several local spectators' boats.

At midnight German flagged Mare, skippered by Joerg Riechers went past too, soon to start an impressively fast comeback to the leaders in a strong westerly, catching up on Le Diraison by staying north of the fleet. An option that made the red boat, widely considered as the race's favourite, to jump up to second. As American Ryan Breymaier pointed out in his daily blog:

'One of the things I enjoy most about racing is the ease with which fortunes are reversed. After a very hard day losing miles yesterday, and the terminal death of our big kite just after rounding the scenic if not incredibly touristic St. Pierre, we were thinking we were done for...

Fortunately the breeze filled in to a strength more to our liking and we spent the night kicking in winds up to 30 knots. We were down to two reefs and the small kite with a reef as well, but every reduction of sail only made us faster. We have managed to get back, having made up 30 miles overnight.'

The east to west classic transatlantic has thus entered a new chapter, tactics and performance wise, in the strong south/south-westerlies that are fast pushing the boats towards Europe and the positions keep changing at each successive report.

Only four boats, among which those that sustained damages like Transport Cohérence (rudder issues) and Avis Immobilier (broken spinnaker and jib), are trailing more than 100 miles behind, but the other 16 teams cannot be signed out for a possible comeback, considering that the leader Geodis is separated from 16th placed Partouche only by 70 miles.

The race frontrunner Erwan Leroux's FenêtréA Cardinal maintains a solid lead and has already started pointing towards the Fastnet Rock, on a northerly course. More north still is Vers un Monde sans Sida the trimaran skippered by Erik Nigon that has been steadily reducing the gap and at the latest position report was reported to be less than 100 miles behind Erwan Leroux, while Défi Saint-Malo Agglo looks to be opting for a more direct route and trails the leader by 266 miles.

Andrea Mura and his all-Italian crew's ambitions are well known: Vento di Sardegna aims at being the first monohull in Saint Malo, getting the line honours and possibly establishing a new reference time. Still duelling with the leading Class40 the 50 footer has not managed to set free and slip away. On the other hand, for Mura's direct competitor Georges Leblanc on Océan Phénix, the road seems to be still long and the team from Québec is 90 miles from the Italian boat.





Top position report on July 27th at 13:40 GMT

Class40

1 - Fabrice Amedeo – Geodis – Distance to finish 1984,5 nm
2 - Jorg Riechers – Mare – 13 nm to leader
3 - Stéphane Le Diraison – IXBlue – 16,2 nm to leader

Open Class

1 - Erwan Le Roux - FenêtréA Cardinal 3 – Distance to finish 1672,9 nm
2 - Erik Nigon - Vers un Monde sans SIDA – 100,9 nm to leader
3 - Gilles Lamiré - Défi Saint-Malo Agglo – 266,7 nm to leader
4 - Andrea Mura – Vento di Sardegna – 179,7 nm to leader ( First Monohull)
Transat Quebec Saint Malo website