IRC : les dernières infos Tip & Shaft

On Sunday, 32 sailors, including 10 newcomers, 6 sailors from outside of France and 5 women, will be lining up at the start of the 54th edition of the Solitaire du Figaro Paprec in Caen. As before each major race, to judge the quality of those taking part, Tip & Shaft questioned a group of experts, including the two most recent winners, Tom Laperche (2022) and Pierre Quiroga (2021), the Spaniard, Pep Costa, who competed in the last two races and remains very close to the circuit, Jeanne Grégoire, head of the Finistère ocean racing training centre in Port-la-Forêt, Julien Pulvé, former coach at the La Rochelle training centre and Yann Chateau, the Race Director of the Solitaire.

On Saturday more than 120 boats will set off from Valletta in Malta for the 2022 edition of the Middle Sea Race, a 606-mile classic that circumnavigates Sicily. Within this fleet will be no fewer than five former MOD70s, surely signalling a renewed interest in these 70-foot trimarans launched back in 2011. Tip & Shaft looks closer.

In mid-August more than 80 solo sailors and duos – most of them at least in their forties – will set off from Lorient and Marseille embarking on the tenth edition of the Transquadra. The race is contested every three years in two stages to Madeira and onwards. This hugely popular transatlantic race sees a majority of boats racing that were specially designed for open waters, racing with small crew. Tip & Shaft investigates to what extent the event influences the model and marketing choices of builders and designers of cruiser-racers.

Isle of Wight based Brit Jules Salter is a Volvo Ocean Race winning navigator who clocked up his fourth participation on the last edition sailing with AkzoNobel. This week he had his first experience of racing two handed offshore on the SunFast 3300 Leyton on the 428 nautical miles Drheam Cup, racing with Henry Bomby. There was even time to reminisce about his favourite ever team win, the Barlo Plastics’ Tour de France a la Voile triumph twenty years ago.

The president of UNCL, Jean-Philippe Cau exclusively tells Tip & Shaft that there will be a new solo and two handed Transatlantic. The Transat IRC (provisional name) will start in April 2021 from South Brittany and head, probably, to Martinique.