The Riotous Route du Rhum Starts Sunday
The French have a way of doing sailing that leaves the rest of the sailing world behind. The most extreme, high-speed, long-distance offshore races in the world remain almost exclusively French. This coming Sunday is the start of the once-every-four-year, singlehanded Route du Rhum — a 3,542-mile race from Saint-Malo, France, to Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe. Crossing the starting line will be the most advanced offshore boats ever developed (almost exclusively by the French), and helmed by the mostly French superstars of the offshore sailing world.
You’ll have to check into the tracker quickly on this race since it will happen at a blistering pace for the leading boats.
There will be six classes racing, with the most extreme being the ~100-ft Ultime foiling trimarans. There are eight of these monsters, all French. Charles Caudrelier, skippering the recently launched Gitana 18, is a strong favorite. Charles holds the course record, which he set in an earlier Maxi Edmond de Rothschild trimaran, in an astounding six days, 19 hours, 47 minutes and 25 seconds. The new Edmond de Rothschild Gitana 18 is faster and was launched in February 2026.
The relatively new Ocean 50 trimarans will have 10 skippers, again all French, racing across in these very high-tech, fast offshore trimarans. Then there are 28 skippers racing in the Class 40 fleet, with all but five of the skippers being French. The star-studded fleet of 22 IMOCA 60s will blitz across the Atlantic in what is a short race for these boats, primarily built for the solo Vendée Globe race around the world. Then we get to some classics with 13 skippers. All but one are French, sailing in the Vintage Monohull fleet. Finally, there are 13 all-French competitors in the Vintage Multihull class, which includes French superstar Francis Joyon.
We don’t know how the French continue to pull off these events, which capture the attention of almost the entire population of France. The shoreside event village attracts enormous crowds. The 2022 event attracted 1.5 million visitors over 13 days with 141,000 visitors on the busiest day.
The forecast looks quite reasonable for Sunday’s 1:02 p.m. CET start (5:02 a.m. PST — remember we’re changing our clocks on Saturday night!).