“For me, it’s the race that goes to infinity, that goes to the end of the world”: 52 novices prepare to start the Route du Rhum

There will be 115 boats, divided into four categories, setting off on Sunday November 1st from Saint-Malo towards Pointe-à-Pitre, in Guadeloupe. Among the skippers, 52 are preparing to set off on their first transatlantic race.

It's always a special moment before the start of a race: the moment when you put your bag on board. Léonard Legrand now realizes what awaits him aboard his Ocean Fifty. "There are my clothes, so everything that is textile. I have hats and warm things. I also have small personal toiletries: toothbrush, toothpaste, a bit of all my personal things. And then I have my oilskins. It's a bit of armor but I'm going to need it. I'm trying to re-film a bit of what's going to happen and project myself into the race to be sure not to forget anything," he explains.

“Behind this cape, there is infinity”

Léonard Legrand is a local of the stage, just like Sasha Lanièce, an adopted Falkland Islander. "When I'm at my parents' house and I look out to sea, I see Cap Fréhel. I see all the boats heading west and disappearing behind this cape. And in fact, there's a bit of something in my head: behind this cape, there's infinity. And so for me, the Route du Rhum is the race that sets off to infinity, that sets off to the end of the world."

“The day I pass this milestone, for sure, there will be great emotion”

Sasha Laniece

at franceinfo

He has the same childish look, Mateo Le Calvic, 25 years old. The youngest of the Class40s, the smallest boats in the fleet, is preparing to sail alongside his idols. “I'm not going to throw out all the names, but I think that Vincent Riou, who is in the same class as me, I had a poster of him not so long ago, ten years ago, he says. So it's quite nice to find myself on the starting line with them.

A legendary race, but also perilous. Anne-Claire Le Berre, 44 years old and mother of two children, is preparing for it. "What we fear the most is always crazy weather phenomena, which deteriorate at the last minute, which can put us in complicated situations, depressions, which deepen very quickly and become tropical depressions or large squalls which we cannot really anticipate, and a collision which forces us to abandon. That would still be sad, for example", she explains.

“Rookies” who, for the most part, warmed up just a year ago during the Transat Café L'Or. But there were two of them on board then. This changes everything.