Skipper Boris Herrmann and co-skipper Will Harris eagerly start the Transat Jacques Vabre race after a 9 day delay due to huge storms rolling across the Atlantic. With 40 IMOCA yachts on the start line the race is guaranteed to be exciting. Malizia – Seaexplorer is facing off against some of her newly built competitors for the first time! The race is expected to take between 12 to 14 days. The start saw the duo set off in 20 to 25 knots of wind with a complicated sea state, the first hours will be relatively upwind which means uncomfortable conditions and not as fast. Boris Herrmann will compete in the solo return race starting on 30th November 2023, which is just over a week after the arrival in Martinique.
Team Malizia’s Boris Herrmann and Will Harris crossed the start line of the Transat Jacques Vabre this Tuesday at 9:30 CET. The crew onboard Malizia – Seaexplorer is racing a 3750 nautical mile race from Le Havre, France to Martinique, against 40 other IMOCA boats. The race arrival is still a wide window with the course expected to take between 12 to 14 days. The start saw the boats taking off in 20 – 25 knots of wind with a very confused and challenging sea state at the starting line with messy waves making the first minutes tense. The course has some upwind stretches and tacks through the English Channel over the next hours before heading into the Atlantic. The first week looks to be very difficult and rough for the pair with big strategic decisions to be made. The shorter course means that the pair will no longer have to do a double crossing of the Doldrums.
Boris Herrmann commented a few hours before the start: “The new start and route kind of opens much more strategically in the race now, especially after the Azores, you have a lot more options now. On the other route, everyone was bound to the same track, but the weather forecast now is a bit more normal than in the last ten days where we had this very strong low pressure. We still have a few big fronts coming at us. We will see probably 45 knot gusts in the front about two days into the race. Hopefully we can go through that front and then tack and take the wind that’s behind which should allow us to sail fast.”
This is the second time the duo have competed in the double handed race, with Will Harris debuting for Team Malizia in the 2019 edition. However the pair have now circumnavigated the world together in The Ocean Race earlier this year with many thousands of miles together under their belts they are well matched. The pair still have high hopes for the race, although the stronger wind conditions may have suited them better, the boat is tried and tested and they can push hard in this transatlantic sprint.
Will Harris stated prior to the race beginning “Before we were looking at a much more southerly route where we were heading straight to the tradewinds. Now there’s a lot more options to go more towards the Azores and towards the North Atlantic. It’s definitely going to be windy still with storms coming in the first few days. We’ve got two or three fronts to get through. The real challenge for the race is deciding if you want to go for a West route, which is kind of along the rum line, going past the Azores waypoint and then straight to Martinique. The other option is you try to dive south and go towards the typical Tradewinds route which should be faster but sailing a lot more miles! So there will be a lot of strategy to work that out.”
Will added “I think we have a bit of an advantage in that we know our boat very well and we’ve pushed it in some pretty big conditions. There’s a lot of boats in the fleet which haven’t done anywhere near as much testing as us. They might be potentially nervous about the stronger winds and the stronger conditions. So it’s nice to feel confident about the boat in that sense.”
Team Malizia will also deploy a drifter buoy on their route, the third such deployment this year and the second time during a Transat Jacques Vabre race. The drifter will be able to measure sea-surface temperature and air pressure, as well as surface current. The aim is to help scientists better understand the Ocean and the impacts humans are having on it. The team will also run the Ocean Pack, as we have done in every race and delivery for many years now, in order to collect further Ocean CO2 data for marine scientists. We have added a new element to our scientific work and will try to collect some environmental DNA samples through a filter system added to the Ocean Pack. This race will be a great opportunity to test the setup and perfect it for the coming races.”
