The Route du Rhum will begin this weekend, 6 November 2022 and can see 138 skippers take to the startline in quite a lot of lessons hoping for victory
NOTE: Since this text was printed the beginning date for the Route Du Rhum 2022 has been pushed again to Wednesday ninth November at 1415hrs native time. A serious storm within the north Atlantic, which might have seen the fleet going through 50-knot winds and 6-7m swells was deemed too harmful to begin the race.
The Route du Rhum is without doubt one of the greatest solo offshore races on the earth, and can see 138 singlehanded rivals take to the startline in Saint-Malo, France this 12 months as they put together to race alone and non cease to Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe.
The Route du Rhum is a straightforward sufficient race, basically, it’s a straight blast across the Atlantic as quick as attainable.
The transatlantic course covers a complete of 3542 miles, although sometimes the gap sailed is way larger than this as sailors attempt to discover probably the most beneficial climate situations.
The Route du Rhum all the time takes place in early November, which signifies that sailors tackle the autumnal Atlantic, usually offering very windy climate as they boats depart France within the north Atlantic, cross the Bay of Biscay and dive south to attempt to decide up the beneficial commerce wind situations.
What boats race within the Route du Rhum?
The Route du Rhum is cut up into six lessons in whole: the foiling Ultime trimarans; Multi 50 trimarans; IMOCA 60s; Class 40; and two lessons for a broad vary of boats that don’t match into any over the above classes, one for multihulls and one for monohulls.
As such the tales that come from the race fluctuate, from the tremendous excessive tech Ultimes who will combat it out to set new course information, to the IMOCA fleet, a lot of whom will probably be crusing a primary solo transoceanic race in model new tremendous excessive tech boats, all the way down to people on a shoestring funds who wish to tackle one of many worlds biggest solo challenges.
All boats in all lessons begin the 2022 Route du Rhum on the identical time on the identical (normally round 3 nautical mile lengthy) startline. This makes for a spectacular sight and is comparatively distinctive for such an enormous race.
The beginning of the race will probably be streamed on the Route du Rhum Youtube channel in addition to the Route du Rhum Facebook web page.
Yannick Bestaven’s IMOCA 60 Maitre CoQ V was launched in 2022 and can compete within the Route du Rhum Photograph: Breschi /Maitre Coq
How lengthy does the Route du Rhum take?
With such all kinds of boats competing, ending occasions will fluctuate dramatically. The Ultime fleet would be the first boats to finish the course and they’ll all be trying to set a brand new race document ought to situations enable.
With technical developments working at such a quick tempo on this fleet, nonetheless, it is not going to take notably particular situations for the document to fall, so expectations are excessive.
The present race document belongs to Francis Joyon who set the time of 7d 14h 21m 47s aboard IDEC Sport within the 2018 version of the race.
A type of who will probably be combating Joyon for victory within the Ultime class – crusing his radical foiler SVR-Lazartigue is François Gabart. Gabart at present holds the IMOCA 60 document time of 12d 04h 38m 55s which he set again in 2014.
The slowest boats within the fleet are prone to be within the Rhum Mono class and the document here’s a little over 16 days, however such is the broader scope of efficiency, the slowest boats are prone to take over 20 days to finish the course.
François Gabart’s foiling UItime, SVR-Lazartigue
The place to comply with the Route du Rhum
As talked about the beginning will probably be streamed on the Route du Rhum Youtube channel and common content material will probably be uploaded there all through the race.
We right here at Yachting World will probably be protecting a detailed eye on proceedings and can preserve you up to date through our devoted 2022 Route du Rhum homepage.
For those who need up the the minute info on which skipper is the place you may comply with the race reside through the Route du Rhum race tracker, which will be discovered on the Route du Rhum website.
The Route du Rhum begins at 12:00 (GMT) on Sunday 6 November.
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