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Made in noon
“I’m not among the favourites, but I know that some people are still suspicious of me!”
He is like that Kito de Pavant. Modest, realistic, but also aware that his long offshore racing experience can allow him to create surprise.
This Wednesday, alongside the 137 competitors in the Route du Rhum, he will set off from St Malo, and at the helm of his monohull christened HBF Reforest’Action, storming the Atlantic. A new time.
This will be his 4th participation in the Route du Rhum. It’s THE race that, as a child, gave him want to go to sea.
“It was she who led me to my career as an offshore racer. When I was 17, there was the 1st edition of the Route du Rhum, in 1978. And then I said to myself in my p ‘little teenage face that I will do that one day in my life.
But Kito will have to wait until the age of 50 to compete in its first edition.
A test which has always rather succeededunlike the Vendée Globe where he never ceased to experience multiple misadventures (broken mast, collision with a trawler or a sperm whale, etc.)
During the previous Route du Rhum, in 2018, he finished 5th.
This year, Kito de Pavant expects a quite difficult first week of navigation.
“It will be seasonal weather. Rain, wind and sea. Difficult conditions, like four years ago. And we will have to wait until we have passed the Azores before hoping for an improvement.”
But it takes more to discourage this seasoned sailor, true Mediterranean sailing ambassador, who in an autobiography published in 2012, had taken the title of “Greatest navigator of all the pond” in reference to his first experiences as a sailor, child, on a small body of water in Périgord.
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