One mile of breathing room
Eleven days at sea, and the Imoca podium came down to a single nautical mile overnight. Elodie Bonafous crossed the line in Pointe-à-Pitre a few hours ago to claim third place in the class on this 13th Route du Rhum, with Sam Goodchild closing to within a mile of her during the compulsory lap of Guadeloupe.
The pair had been locked together for most of the final approach. At the 10am position report (Paris time), Bonafous on Association Petits Princes was 32 miles from the finish and Goodchild on Macif was 33. She never gave the place back. Her elapsed time: 11 days, 0 hours, 55 minutes and 34 seconds. Goodchild is set to finish fourth.
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Herrmann second, 27 hours behind the winner
Boris Herrmann had arrived earlier on Thursday, crossing at 9.10am Paris time on Malizia to take second in 10 days, 20 hours, 8 minutes and 36 seconds. That put the German roughly 27 hours behind Corentin Horeau, which says more about Horeau’s race than about Herrmann’s.
Horeau, the 2023 Solitaire du Figaro winner, broke clear north of the Azores when he became the first boat to escape a wind hole that trapped the favourites, Goodchild and Ambrogio Beccaria among them. He crossed early on Wednesday morning in 9 days, 17 hours, 12 minutes and 9 seconds, shattering the class record of 11 days, 17 hours and 36 minutes set by Thomas Ruyant in 2022. That is a margin of more than two days on the old mark.
The rest of the fleet
With the Imoca podium settled, the three biggest professional classes now have their winners. Tom Laperche won overall in the Ultim class on SVR Lazartigue in a race record, and Basile Bourgnon took the Ocean Fifty title on his first attempt, 28 years after his father Laurent’s second Rhum win.
For Bonafous, a podium in this class on a solo transatlantic is a statement result, and it came against one of the most experienced Imoca sailors in the fleet.
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