Transat Jacques Vabre: Richomme and Eliès finish second IMOCA

Just as the sun was rising over the Bay of Fort de France, Martinique this morning French duo Yoann Richomme and Yann Eliès (Paprec Arkéa) crossed the finish line of the 16th Transat Jacques Vabre Normandie Le Havre race at 06:11:16hrs local time (10:11:16 hrs UTC) to take a narrow second place.

After the wind died in the lee of the island Richomme and Eliès had a nervous hour as they could do next to nothing whilst nearest rivals Britain's Sam Goodchild and his French co-skipper Antoine Koch on For the Planet caught up nearly five miles.

The two IMOCAs were all but side by side before Paprec Arkéa caught a whiff of a breeze offshore. They rolled out their masthead code zero sail and ghosted off to hold on to second.

The elapsed time for Paprec Arkéa is 12 days, 01 hours, 41 minutes and 16 seconds, completing the 3,750 miles course at 12.98 knots. They actually sailed 5448.80 miles at an average speed of 18.81 knots on the water and their delta behind the winners Thomas Ruyant and Morgan Lagravière is 4h 8m 45sec. The first two boats are new sisterships launched in 2023 to the design of Goodchild's co-skipper Koch in collaboration with Finot Conq.

Finishing just 9 mins 16 secs later in third Goodchild, on his 34th birthday, earns his third consecutive podium finish on this biennial two-handed race from Le Havre to Martinique and scores the best IMOCA class result by an international skipper on this Coffee Route passage since Britain's Alex Thomson and Spain's Guillermo Altadill finished second in 2011. He and Koch sailed the IMOCA which won the IMOCA class in 2021 as Linked Out.

Their elapsed time is 12 days 1 hour 50 minutes and 32 seconds for the 3750 nautical miles course averaging 12.97kts, actually sailing 5333.58 miles at an average of 18.40kts.

"We are really happy with third. We did not expect that at the start. We did not have a very good start and had a lot of catching up to do and so getting up to third is amazing. We were in a good position coming already in third and had not a lot to lose and so when we saw an opportunity to attack second we gave it a go. " said Goodchild on the dock in Fort de France, "We struggle a bit against the new boats when we are downwind in a sea state which there was the last couple of days. It becomes harder to live on as the motion is more violent and it is harder work."