The boat races that cross the Atlantic convey a very ecological image. But are they really? Some sailors ask the question because, at the end of the race, some boats return by cargo.
In the past, sailor Adrien Hardy has already won the Transat Jacques Vabre. But this year, he does not plan to leave, for ecological reasons. They explain :“Four years ago, I took part in this Jacques Vabre transatlantic race. It’s a fantastic race, it lasted three weeks, and then I returned at full speed, in seven hours by plane. The boat, we left on the other side and returned by cargo ship.”
During the return trip, Adrien Hardy asks questions about this organization, and decides to no longer participate in this type of race: “I have been wondering for some time about the impacts of my sport, which in itself is clean, but in its logistics it becomes a fairly polluting sport.”
What this browser denounces are “cargo returns”. After the race, certain sailboats are loaded onto huge container ships to return to mainland France.
A very polluting return
The organizers of the Route du Rhum have done the math. For a 12m long sailboat, a cargo return from Guadeloupe emits 48 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. This is five times more than the average emissions of a French person over an entire year.
On the internet, certain transport companies promote their services to browsers with supporting images. On these cargo ships, the price of places is very expensive… as we can see in this email that we obtained, written by an association which brings together skippers. It is written : “The most interesting offer received was €408,000 per deck. Amount to be divided between interested boats. That’s €25,500 if 16 [bateaux transportés]”.
For navigator Mikael Mergui, making the return trip by sail would have cost even more, notably because of an additional insurance premium. He therefore opted for a return by cargo ship, even if he is not necessarily comfortable with this choice:
It’s something I’m not at all proud of doing, clearly, but I don’t have a “no limit” budget. A sailing boat would normally be brought back by sea, and I bring it back by cargo ship.
Mikael Mergui, navigatorat the Eye of 8 p.m.
When contacted, the organizers of the Transat Jacques Vabre assured that cargo returns are becoming fewer and fewer. For this edition, only 8 boats out of 95 will return in this way. The organizers specify: “We are considering banning it in the long term and aim to do so from the next edition.”
Small boat races very concerned
This ecological problem risks continuing in other transatlantic races, particularly for smaller boats: like the MiniTransat sailboats, which will soon arrive in Guadeloupe. It is on this type of boat that Amaury Guérin sails, who explains to us that “They are very light boats.” For safety reasons, these small sailboats cannot return by sea at the end of the MiniTransat race.
Everything is based, from the beginning, on the cargo return, because the first edition of the Minitransat took place in 1977, at a time when we did not have the ecological question in mind at all.
Amaury Guérinat the Eye of 8 p.m.
He explains to us why returning to sailing is not possible for this race. “The whole calendar and the whole program of the race is based on the cargo return, because it leaves in autumn. But autumn is the time when there are the worst depressions in the North Atlantic, and therefore This makes a return completely impossible for such light boats.”
Amaury Guérin is preparing the next edition with the ambition of returning to his sailboat, but to do so he will have to take a different, and particularly long, return route. To make the races even greener, some former skippers are now wondering whether circular races should not be generalized, in which sailboats leave and arrive at the same place.
Among our sources:
This Reporterre article on cargo return
The website of the Transat Jacques Vabre
The Minitransat website