On his sixth participation in the Route du Rhum - Destination Guadeloupe French solo skipper Marc Guillemot completes the podium in the Rhum Multi category after crossing the line at 07:06:06hrs UTC. He takes third in the Rhum Multi category with a race time of 16 days 17 hours 51 minutes and 6 seconds. He completed the 3,542 mile course between Saint-Malo and Pointe-à-Pitre at a speed of 8.81 knots on the great circle (the direct route). The METAROM MG5 skipper actually covered 4301.25 miles at an average speed of 10.70 knots.
He finished 11 hours 13 minutes and 43 seconds after the winner of the Rhum Multi Category, Loïc Escoffier (Lodigroup). It is Guillemot’s third consecutive third place finishing after Jourdain and Armel Le Cléac’h in the IMOCA Class in 2010 and François Gabart and Jérémie Beyou in 2014 also in the IMOCA fleet.
For his sixth participation in La Route du Rhum - Destination Guadeloupe, Marc Guillemot took third behind Loïc Escoffier (Lodigroup) and long time adversary Roland Jourdain (We Explore). After a career which spans the glory days of the ORMA multihulls and IMOCAs he said before the race that he was looking forwards to returning to the Route du Rhum in the Rhum Multi class‘with excitement and pleasure’. With his new catamaran, a Barreau/Newman design, Marco was aiming for nothing less than victory. “I understood that I was not the only one aiming for victory, which is nice! But above all to finish first first you have to finish. I think we can have a good scrap with Bilou, Loïc, and all the others.”
Always well placed, it is the Azores high which really decides that Guillemot will not be able to pace Escoffier and Bilou, nor indeed Gilles Buekenhout (Jess). He chooses a more southerly option and gets stuck longer in the ridge whilst his rivals stay north and get more favourable conditions.
Guillemot said, ““I feel tired because, contrary to what you could imagine with these boats especially, as soon as we got out of the low pressure system, there was the ridge to cross and then the trade winds are very hard work on these boats, well on all boats. Yesterday we had squalls to 32 knots and it was a constant stress. It’s exhausting, tiring. For me the objective was to finish because we have a boat we want to do a lot to this winter.
“I have no regrets because I made a decision after the Azores to get the second depression. At one point it slamming so hard that I thought I was going to blow up the boat and I told myself that Bilou who was a little to my north and Loïc not very far away and I thought they would do the same. I don't regret having done it because the priority was the boat even if the race is important. There was a good fight in the first part of the race with Bilou and Loïc and then with Halvard. And at the exit of the ridge, I must have been 165 miles behind Bilou and at the Tête à l'Anglais,
In fact it is a race which needs a lot of commitment even if it is easier than on an IMOCA. I'm happy to have done it and to have been at the max of what I could do, but now I'm burnt out. It was my 6th Route du Rhum. They are all different and hard, as long as you go all out. I would say the most special is that of 2002 where only three of us finished.”