Introducing the Route du Rhum

James Boyd gives the insiders guide to this top ocean racing event

There was also at this time a hero culture in France for sailing big boats singlehanded. French legend Alain Colas had memorably raced the 236ft four master Club Mediterranee in the 1976 OSTAR while Jean-Yves Terlain and Yvon Fauconnier had also raced the 128ft Vendredi 13 in the OSTAR. The even greater Tabarly won the 1976 OSTAR in his Whitbread maxi, Pen Duick VI, normally sailed with a crew the size of a rugby team, singlehanded. Previously he had done the race in a 76ft trimaran.

The 1986 Route du Rhum was a turning point event in the history of not just the Route du Rhum, but also the multihull class. The race saw the loss of one of the most successful 60ft trimarans of its day - Tony Bullimore's Apricot - that ran up on the rocks off Brest ('bulldog' Bullimore somehow clambered off and then scaled a cliff face before he was rescued). Worse, it saw the loss of one of its most high profile competitors.

Loic Caradec was the skipper of the 85ft catamaran sponsored by the French cigarette brand, Royale. This boat had the biggest wingmast in the fleet and had proved herself by winning the 1984 Quebec-St Malo race. If the burning questions here in St Malo this time round are who will win the 60ft trimaran fleet, how many trimarans will make it to Guadeloupe and will Mike Golding finally win an Open 60 race, then the burning question prior to the 1986 race was how on earth were the skippers, and in particular Caradec, going to handle their massive, powerful boats singlehanded.

The answer came brutally some hours after the start when Royale's ARGOS tracking system began to show her behaving iratically. A rescue mission was staged and the boat was discovered capsized with no size of Caradec on board. The boat was salvaged and its sorry hulk abandoned on the hard close to where the Mountbatten Sailing Centre is today in Plymouth.

If competitors have concerns about the security in this race then they should bear in mind that the Race Director of this year's Route du Rhum, now that Michel Etevenon has passed away (he conceived this race and ran it every year until his death), is none other than Philippe Facque, who was Caradec's co-skipper on Royale.

At the time this incident rattled the French sailing fraternity suitable but this incident along with the escalating costs of the big multihull fleet resulted in the class imposing a 60ft maximum size limit on themselves and this exists to this day.

The 1990 Route du Rhum was another classic. If in the UK you are led to believe that Ellen MacArthur or Tracy Edwards were the first ever women sailors, this race was won by Florence Arthaud sailing the 60ft trimaran Primagaz. A women may not have won the Vendee Globe or Around Alone, but one has won the Route du Rhum.

A feature of the last two races were that they were both won by Laurent Bourgnon on board the 60ft trimaran Primagaz. This time this same boat is being sailed by his younger brother and Mini Transat winner Yvan, named Rexona Men.

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