Sailing: the legendary English Transat returns after eight years of absence

It is considered the mother of all sailing races, but since 2016, it has disappeared from the landscape. Here is its rebirth under another name: The Transat, with a departure scheduled for Sunday April 28 from Lorient, direction New York for 33 IMOCA monohulls (those which make up the Vendée Globe) and 13 smaller Class40 monohulls, with a particularity compared to other transatlantic ships: you have to approach the ocean from the north.

At the end of the 1950s, a handful of intrepid sailors were looking for a challenge worthy of their wildest desires and gave birth to the first solo race, considered insane by many. The first edition in 1960 only brought together five boats. But in a few years, it attracted the greatest and saw legends establish themselves: Alain Colas, Loïck Peyron three times and Éric Tabarly, who won it twice, in 1964 and 1976, which gave him worth going down the Champs-Elysées after facing Dantean sea conditions.

Where the other transatlantic races created later, such as the Route du Rhum, race towards the sun in the West Indies, the competitors of the English Transat race race into the North Atlantic. A tiring journey, as François Gabart, the last winner, told us in 2016. “It’s unique, because crossing the Atlantic is not nothing, it’s an exercise in itself which is not trivial and which I won’t do 50,000 times in my life either.”

Where in 1960, the pioneers took 40 days to reach America, the sailors of 2024 will undoubtedly take less than 12 days in a monohull.