The village starts from the rum road opened this Tuesday, October 25 in St Malo. And this edition which will leave on November 6 already displays a record with 138 skippers at the start! Vendée from the Ile d’Yeu Benjamin Dutreux on his Imoca Guyot Environment – Water Family will be there, super motivated.
The skipper only took possession of his monohull, the former Hugo Boss of Alex Thomson, only last spring. It therefore took a rapid phase of acclimatization. With this Imoca, the Vendée has taken a higher, sporting and technological step: “Today, we have autopilots that are super efficient, electronics that are truly state-of-the-art. We have sensors that are everywhere on the boat. And to say to myself that in fact, I don’t wet my fingertip and I don’t go outside to measure the wind. So the numbers have to be good!”
© Radio France
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Yves-Rene Tapon
Rum is extraordinary. Benjamin Dutreux
But sailing alone on this 18-meter monohull still requires good physical condition, in particular to hoist the sails and change them. On the road to Rhum, the slightest mistake will not forgive: “It’s like the Vendée Globe every 4 years, but it’s a 10 or 12 day Atlantic crossing, a bit of a sprint, in which we’ve often had stories of crazy sailors. So in the end, we can take this race a bit lightly because it’s just a transatlantic race. But in the end, it is full of pitfalls. And we’re going to have to be focused because if we make a mistake, it’s going to be hard to get back to the front positions.”.
It’s an incredible feeling. Benjamin Dutreux
9th of Vendee Globe 2020-2021 and also committed to the next Ocean Race (round the world in crews) Benjamin Dutreux says he has a “crazy pleasure to be alone at sea (…) We push ourselves to the limit. We find ourselves in the middle of nature. We look at the horizon, there is nothing, on machines that go full throttle. It’s still an incredible feeling.” We wish Benjamin Dutreux not to experience the same misadventure as Alex Thomson. On this same boat during the 2018 Route du Rhum, the Briton had fallen asleep when he was leading the Imoca. He was stranded
in Guadeloupe just a stone’s throw from the finish.
© Radio France
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Yves-Rene Tapon