After five days at sea, can anyone catch Corentin Horeau in the tough 13th Route du Rhum?
by Ed Gorman / IMOCA Globe Series 6 Nov 04:49 PST
4 November 2026
Corentin Horeau (MACSF) - Route du Rhum - Destination Guadeloupe © Gauthier Lebec / MACSF
Thousands of race fans around the world have been watching the Route du Rhum-Destination Guadeloupe and wondering why so many skippers and boats are getting into difficulties in the middle section of the race. It's supposed to be a winter downwind sleigh ride in the Trade Winds to the Caribbean, isn't it?
Well, not this time. Unusually, the depression that normally dominates the start of this classic from St Malo to Pointe-a-Pitre in Guadeloupe, and turns the Bay of Biscay and the eastern fringes of the north Atlantic into a cauldron, has been encountered over the Azores.
This is normally the front door to the warmer, downwind part of the race. But this time it has been the setting for capsizes in the multihulls - including the Ultim Banque Populaire XI - and a series of mishaps in the IMOCA fleet. Among them are injuries to both Jérémie Beyou (Charal) and Ambrogio Beccaria (Allagrande MAPEI), which have forced their retirements, and damage to both Armel Tripon's and Francesca Clapcich's IMOCAs - Les P'tits Doudous and 11th Hour Racing respectively.
In five days of hectic racing, we have seen a fast getaway downwind from the start, then an extraordinary tableau as the leaders encountered a stationary weather front running north-south over the Azores, and now a big depression that is causing problems all over the fleet.
In the early stages the accepted favourites - Sam Goodchild (MACIF Santé Prévoyance) and Ambrogio Beccaria (Allagrande MAPEI) - were dominant, until the weather front caused a massive upheaval. While Corentin Horeau (MACSF), who had been running in third place, managed to get through it to the powerful northerlies on the west side of if, both Goodchild and Beccaria got entangled.
And they were not the only ones because Sébastien Simon (Groupe Dubreuil-Air Caraïbes), who was hoping to put a marker down in this race on his new boat, and who was the furthest north, paid an exorbitant price for being in the wrong place. While at one stage he was only 40 miles north of MACIF, it made all the difference and while Goodchild was able to work his way south into the breeze, Simon was trapped and dropped to as low as 18th position. The nightmare for him has only got worse as he has subsequently had to tackle the worst of the storm, as he battles his way back into contention at a position this morning a full 500 miles north of MACIF.
In the south, meanwhile Clapcich and Maxime Sorel (Vaincre Mucoviscidose) were able to cut the corner and take advantage as they climbed the leaderboard, chased by Davy Beaudart (Bureau Vallée) and the first daggerboard skippers - Nicolas d'Etais (Café Joyeux), Sébastien Marsset (Foussier) and Pierre-Louis Attwell (Resilient), who has been having an excellent first transat in the IMOCA Class.
But, to date, this race has been all about Horeau who escaped at the front and has never looked back. He could hardly believe his luck as his decision to attack the weather front head-on produced dramatic dividends - he won the lottery north of the Azores and has been cashing in ever since. And right now, this Route du Rhum in the IMOCA Class has turned into a race for second place with Horeau streaking away on the rhumb line towards Guadeloupe a full 275 miles ahead of second-placed Boris Herrmann (Malizia 4).
The other feature of the last two days has been the way Goodchild has recovered. At one stage the Anglo-French skipper had fallen to as low as eighth, but he has not allowed the routing setback he suffered to get the better of him and has managed to work his way back into the race.
This morning, after overtaking Clapcich - hobbled by the loss of her bowsprit - Goodchild is back up to third place and looking to hunt down Herrmann. It's going to be fascinating to see how this turns out and whether either of them can get even close to Horeau, who is currently on course for dreamland in his first Route du Rhum.
We were lucky enough this morning to receive answers to our questions from Nicolas d'Estais, who seems to be taking this challenging race in his stride at the head of the daggerboard fleet.
He has not encountered any problems so far. "The boat is at 100% of its potential and has suffered no damage at all," he reported. "I'm currently in difficult weather, with winds of 30 knots or more, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed."
The Café Joyeux skipper was able to avoid the traps in the north as he planned his approach to the depression now dominating the racecourse. "The main strategic decision we had to make was how to sail through this low pressure system over the Azores," he explained. "It's what has guided our trajectories since we left the Channel. My priority was to sail safe, so I chose as direct a route as possible, to be as far south as possible, under the low pressure system when it builds. I'm happy to have found a path through the centre - I've been lucky!"
D'Estais is currently 50 miles ahead of second-placed Sébastien Marsset in the daggerboard fleet. He says the racing in that group has been fierce since the start, and he's also been keeping pace with Arnaud Boissières on the foil-powered April Marine.
The plan now for Café Joyeux is to keep heading south and to keep the focus on staying safe. "Another low pressure system will be on the way after this one, so I'm starting to look into how I'll tackle this one," said d'Estais. "The weather systems we've had look more like a Transat CIC set-up (Lorient-New York), rather than the Route du Rhum, if you ask me!"
See www.routedurhum.com or www.imoca.org for more information and to track the fleet.