Fifth leg of the Martinique Cata Raid Le Marin - Le Robert: Fully cooked!

It was time this morning to leave the translucent waters of Le Marin, where the Martinique Cata Raid fleet had been for the past two days. This penultimate leg, which we knew would be tough and potentially decisive, lived up to all its promises. Victorien Erussard and Fred Moreau (Energy Observer) took their third victory in Le Robert at the end of a physically demanding battle.

Usually, the sailors come back from the legs tired. Today, when they arrived in Le Robert, after more than 30 miles of racing, they were either ‘cooked’, ‘rinsed’, ‘stoned’ or ‘blown up’! Their weary bodies, trembling hands and reddened eyes bear witness to the intensity of the match they have just played.
The sailors tell us about the steady north-westerly wind of around 25 knots. Above all, they explain the Atlantic swell, huge at between 2.5 and 3 metres, as they pass the islet Cabrits, and the cross seas at the aptly named Table du Diable.
They look back on their intense race, perhaps even more so than usual! ‘Over the whole race, I had to take 20 seconds to get my water bottle and drink: not enough! ‘says Fred Moreau.

In the lead since the start of the round, we find the same protagonists, those who have been driving the race since the beginning of the week and who are fighting for the overall classification. The duos Erussard/Moreau, Gillet/Poix, Marfaing/Tentij, Bontemps/Amiot, Parent/Weisskichel. Suffice it to say that none of them want to give up. On this penultimate stage of the Martinique Cata Raid, there are places to defend, minutes to claw back, and a podium finish potentially up for grabs.
Although the Nico's, accompanied by Matthieu Marfaing and Bastiaan Tentij, pulled away from the pack for a while, they were slow to spot a course mark and were inevitably caught out! By the end of the race, they were down to 5 boats, sticking together and marking each other with their pants down. This part of the race was incredible,’ says Bastiaan Tentij. We were so close to each other, neck and neck, we couldn't let go for a quarter of a second, it was unbelievable and very hard.

On the climb back up to Le Robert, shortly after Le Vauclin, Victorien Erussard and Fred Moreau (Energy Observer) found the energy to push on and hold on to the wet finish line in front of the Club Wind Force in Le Robert! ‘Vic and Fred’ take their third victory in 5 legs. Above all, they consolidate their position as provisional overall leaders ahead of tomorrow's final leg.
Second place in today's leg was decided by a narrow margin; at the photo finish, just 1 second separated Nicolas Gillet - Nicolas Poix (Socoveam - Anmizi) in second place from Matthieu Marfaing - Bastiaan Tentij ( Cirrus - MMSailing): what a fight!

If you're looking for the F16s, look ahead, towards the head of the fleet! They're not giving up either, and they're sailing hard. Thomas Proust and Lou Berthomieu (Girafa & Criqueto) are competing with the best F18s. They finished the heat with another fourth place overall. Yohan Debauque and Léo Maurin didn't disappoint either; they haven't missed out on a top 10 overall since the start of the competition! There's a lot of talk about the sporting level of the F18 category, but the F16 class has nothing to envy it!

In the wingfoil, Oscar Leclair and Alan Fedit had a dream run. They both took the lead and never looked back, building up an impressive 18-minute lead over Orane Céris, the only woman in the competition, who came third. The boys had a great time, almost getting ‘lost’, and Alan even had the luxury, to his great delight, of riding waves over 2 metres high.

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They said:

Oscar Leclair and Alan Fedit - Wingfoil:
It was a great leg on which we had a lot of fun. There was a nice swell offshore and it was probably the leg where we had the most wind, a good 25 knots offshore, which was really nice! I did 61.8 km/h, which isn't bad! (33 knots). We got a few traps wrapped up in our foils, so we didn't really know where we were going any more. Alan passed a place where there were supposed to be 2 metre waves: the guy's crazy! Today's leg? a treat, magnificent!

Yohan Debauque and Léo Maurin - second in the heat
First of all, we didn't lose any water this time! So instead of coming in 7 minutes behind Thomas and Lou, I think we'll come in 3 or 4 minutes behind them at the most, I hope even less, we'll see...
It was my favourite stage, the one on which we made the best boat speed, I don't know how much yet, but certainly in excess of 20 knots!

Victorien Erussard - Fred Moreau Energy Observer - Leg winners
- Victorien : Physically, it was by far the hardest stage. We all suffered a lot. For me (Victorien) it's the hardest, my eyes have been blown out: you're constantly in heavy seas, I couldn't see anything, Fred was guiding me. On the other hand, we're really pleased to have won it! The aim was not to lose too much time to Gurvan and Ben (Bontemps/Amiot) and in the end we gave them a run for their money. Honestly, we really won this one!
- Fred: It was the heat where we could have lost everything. We were always in the leading group, but with a bit of reserve, we tried to control things; but when we were controlling things, we lost the thread a bit. There was a new start after Le Vauclin, with 4 or 5 boats. We found our rhythm again and were able to lengthen our stride on the reach to the Lou Garou buoy. Entering the Bay of Robert, downwind with the sea smoothing out, was the reward: dessert!

Nicolas Gillet Nicolas Poix - Socoveam Anmizi - Second in the heat
With Nico, we don't have any problems with this kind of tough leg. We got off to a great start, struggling to get the spinnaker up, but like yesterday, we're back upwind. On the reaching leg, we accelerated but couldn't find the mark, even though we had a good lead.
The really positive point is that normally we don't sail as well under spinnaker, but here in the bay we held on to Gurvan and Matthieu.
The magic thing was that we got a crash in the bay of Robert, the only one of the leg! Nico (Poix the crew member) was in the strap, he passed in front of the spinnaker without touching the sails and he came back on board. He didn't touch anything, he didn't even get wet: Clean! 10 in technical - 10 in artistic.

Matthieu Marfaing - Bastiaan Tentij Cirrus MMSailing - Third in the heat
I'm happy with our place. We'd decided to go all out but we lost the water a minute before the start! We didn't panic, we started last but we made a great comeback upwind. We took the lead, Nico's took it back and we stuck with them: they're fast, they know the area, it's a good way to calibrate ourselves in terms of speed, we looked a little less at the navigation and then, in fact, we realised that the buoy was below us. The group behind came back and we lost all the work we'd done. Vic and Fred passed us, we were in a tough spot and I think everyone was! We were close to the finish, so we preferred to consolidate our podium position for tomorrow.