Kiff & Rock'n Roll on the fourth leg of the Martinique Cata Raid

It was supposed to be a ‘Champagne Sailing’ day, with fine weather and beautiful seas! Some racers were hoping for a ‘calm’ day this morning, to recover from 3 physically demanding days! The sun was out in force, but so was the wind! As soon as the Anse des Trois Rivières was overtopped, the trade winds were quite strong, gusting to between 20 and 30 knots, which was enough to dampen the recovery hopes of the most tired. But that's what the Raid formula is all about, as demanding as it is committed!

In the end, the fourth leg of the Martinique Cata Raid was just like the previous ones: windy and stormy, rock'n roll as we like it. But the racers enjoyed themselves, unanimously congratulating the race committee's choice of course: ‘It was a tough leg, but that's what we like in Martinique: turquoise water, sun and strong winds!’ confirms Gurvan Bontemps, second overall.

The course was simple: after the clearing buoy, a long downwind leg towards the Rocher du Diamant and a return upwind, where it all came down to it! As we know, in these conditions, the Martiniquais Nicolas Gillet and Nicolas Poix (Socoveam Anmizi) generally make their mark. This was once again the case today, where they were a cut above the rest, particularly on the upwind leg, which was quite simply impressive at this speed. They are ahead of Gurvan Bontemps/Benjamin Amiot (Stickerman - French Caribbean) and Victorien Erussard/Fred Amiot (Energ Observer).

Victorien Erussard and Fred Moreau (Energy Observer) remain in the lead overall, 4 minutes ahead of Gurvan Bontemps/Fred Amiot (Stickerman - French Caribbean) and 8 minutes ahead of Matthieu Marfaing/Bastiaan Tentij (Cirrus - MM Sailing

They too are splashing the race with their talent: 5th overall again today, Thomas Proust and Lou Berthomieu are flying high. With them, everything seems easy: ‘We'd like it to be easier,’ smiles Lou. The F16 is a really fast boat downwind, clearly a point of sail on which we're competing with the F18s; we've got good VMG, we're going fast, we're having a great time!  It's not the case upwind, but we know that, that's the game, we're trying to keep up with them as much as possible but it was cool, we had a lot of fun today’. The duo confirmed their position as overall leaders in the F16 class. Runners-up for the day were Yohan Debauque and Léo Maurin. Third place went to Théa Lubac and Lorcan Johnson. The same three teams are back in the same order in the provisional standings.

The lucky ones in the Martinique Cata Raid are the Wingfoil riders. The 9 competitors had an Off Day today! A light morning, chill out, and still some short sailing sessions in the afternoon. We'll catch up with the competitors again tomorrow on the Le Marin - Le Robert leg.

Tomorrow the fleet sets off again for another big leg between Le Marin and Le Robert, which promises to be another intense one.

See the Rankings

What they said :

Lou Berthomieu and Thomas Proust - Girafa and Criqueto - Winner of the F16 heat
As soon as it's upwind, it's too complicated to compete with the F18s; we lost 2 places on this point of sail: they go faster and higher. Downwind we had the ball! We had a great race, we're really happy with the speed, the atmosphere on board, we had a lot of jokes... on the other hand, it was quite a challenge with a lot of wind, quite a lot of swell and waves that were a bit of a mess at times. And this time, I'd set the waypoints on the watch, which wasn't bad.

Nicolas Gillet - Nicolas Poix - Socoveam Anmizi - winner of the F18 heat
It feels good to win after what happened yesterday (course error). We said to ourselves: let's enjoy ourselves and not take too many risks. We got off to a cautious start. We didn't take any risks downwind and upwind we were the fastest. We passed two of them at Le Diamant and then we did a big upwind leg, overtaking Gurvan (Bontemps).  It's great to pass champions like that and see that we're capable of getting out in front!

The conditions were tough out there, with gusts of over 25 knots. We had to stay upwind, not break, and attack when we had to.

We were really the fastest upwind, I can say that without blushing. I'm really happy, Nico did a great job. I'm also very pleased for our partners, who we're very close to. We had their support after yesterday, but I wanted to do well for them!

Gurvan Bontemps - Benjamin Amiot - Stickerman - French Caribbean - second in the F18 heat
Clearly the Nico's were very fast upwind with a good VMG, a bit higher, a bit faster. We just tried to put up a fight and then they pulled us back! It's not bad, it made a hare, we got into his wheel and lowered our heads to keep moving forward. We're happy, we sailed a lot better than yesterday. We were very disappointed after our navigation error, which took a bit of the play away from our mates. Today, we were keen to do well, to get back up there, to try and hold on to second place and claw back a few seconds from the leading duo (Victorien Erussard/Fred Amiot). Today's objective was achieved!

Fred Moreau - Victorien Erussard - Energy Observer - 3rd in the race - F18
We started the day a bit stressed with a little damage to the balsam.  We're a bit annoyed with ourselves for not having checked the boat over properly yesterday. The wind was really strong and we were quite surprised, we weren't expecting it to be so strong. We'd said that it was going to be a day of danger: we were going to have to desalinate and break our equipment; we were a bit cold with our damaged balsam. We wanted to make sure, which we did. We lost a little time to Gurvan, but Les Nico's won, on home turf, which was just perfect. They were really very, very strong. The day won't change much in the general standings, but it does bring us closer to Robert!