This Thursday morning at 11:25:45hrs UTC, French skipper Antoine Carpentier on Redman crossed the finish line in Pointe-à-Pitre in fifth position in Class40 on the 12th Route du Rhum – Destination Guadeloupe. His race time is 14 days 22 hours 10 minutes 45 seconds. Carpentier covered the 3,542 miles of the course between Saint-Malo and Pointe-à-Pitre at a speed of 9.89 knots on the great circle (direct course). He actually raced 3976.35 miles at an average speed of 11.10 knots. He arrived in Pointe-à-Pitre 19 hours 02 minutes 05 seconds after the Class40 winner, Yoann Richomme and he was especially pleased to have gained a couple of places in the closing stages of the race.
Antoine Carpentier (Redman): "I have some good solo specialists behind me"
“It’s great to be finished especially after the end of the race. To pick up two places last night was really cool. A good passage around Guadeloupe, where we slid along nicely in flat water was good, it was very pleasant. Otherwise it was a difficult race. It was hard not to break things and to find the right rhythm so as not to be lose too much; and it was hard to see the fleet leaders stretch away when they were first to come out of the high pressure to race under gennaker for five days compared to a day and a half for us. They gained big at the time; and for me then the hopes of victory were gone. But fifth, I'm happy. I kept some good solo specialists behind me. I'm more of a crewed or doubles person and I'm pretty proud of that. In the conditions we had everything is complicated in the boat. We accelerated up 20 knots in long surfs and hit the the wave in front and we find ourselves slowed to 10 knots in one second. If you don't hang on, you fly across the boat. It is very hard on body and mind. It's exhausting! I'm pretty happy to have passed without too many sores. The boat is spot on, apart from issues with the headsails, a J2 halyard that split open and a spinnaker that I tore. When you lose 2/3 miles per hour on the leaders then these time seem long to you, but we enter into a daily mindset, and we format ourselves to accept that. In the end, 15 days went by pretty quickly! And last night around Guadeloupe, it was really magical. I had the impression of sailing again in a close race and not in survival mode.”