Looking for the seesaw!

Alexis Loison (Groupe REEL) leads the way in this final stage of the 2025 Solitaire du Figaro Paprec. At the back, the gaps are still small, but the hierarchy is taking shape. The fatigue accumulated since the start in Rouen on September 7 is taking its toll, especially since this stage in Vigo was very short and just enough to get two nights' rest.

Still focused on their route as close as possible to the northern Spanish coast, the 32 skippers are moving more freely toward their objective, the tipping point that will allow them to tack and head north to reach Brittany and Normandy. The frontrunners are currently sailing toward Cape Ortegal, about twenty miles away. Once past this point, the field will be a little clearer, and the sailors will be able to truly concentrate on the wind shift forecast for the next few hours. It will then be time to make a final tack, heading north toward the Sein causeway, about 260 miles away. As the hours and days go by, conditions in the Bay of Biscay should improve and the seas should smooth out.

Closely grouped, the fleet is sailing in a fifteen to twenty knot wind and on a fairly short, choppy sea, two to three meters high. Alexis Loison (Groupe REEL), thanks to a good upwind run, will easily round Cape Ortegal. Further south, the sailors must sail close to the wind to avoid having to tack to re-trim. Alexis Loison is leading the race ahead of Tom Dubreuil (Groupe Dureuil) and Arno Biston (Article 1). The three skippers are 1.4 miles apart. Always on the attack, Tom Goron is not departing from his style of sailing and once again proves that he is one of the key players in these stages of La Solitaire du Figaro Paprec 2025. Charlotte Yven (Skipper Macif 2023), second in the provisional general classification, is in fifth place, 1.7 miles behind the leader. The three contenders for the final podium in Saint Vaast la Hougue are neck and neck, and the tension is expected to intensify as the miles go by. Everyone wants that first victory, but they'll have to fight for it with guts on a final course that hasn't yet revealed the extent of its complexity.

They said:

Jules Ducelier (Normandy Region)

"We had a sporty night that really got us back into it. We didn't have much time to rest in Vigo, and right from the start of the fast, we found ourselves in pretty invigorating conditions. Above all, a few friends and I went to play in the rocks along the coast, which was really interesting too, with a lot of tacking. Today we still have a lot of wind on a chaotic sea. I'm trying to find the right course and the right distance to avoid the different headlands we encounter. We're going to look for a tacking point in the afternoon that will allow us to cross the Bay of Biscay and then go up to Le Four. It should potentially become quite calm when we arrive in the Iroise Sea. But I imagine that was the case for everyone because we all left with a bit of a sleep deficit."

Davy Beaudart (Hellowork)

It's a good start to the race for me. We had a pretty sporty night with quite a few tacks, I think we made about thirty close to the coast. Some even tailed. In the daytime we wouldn't have gone there. We got caught out a bit leaving the Vigo estuary. With the fatigue accumulated over the first two stages, it's starting to get difficult. I had another sleepless night, but hey, you have to gain meters and meters, that's what the Solitaire is all about."