IMOCA 60 Guyot Environnement Team Europe
A new IMOCA team with French and German co-skippers, sailing under the flag of the European Union, Guyot was the wild card in this edition’s line-up. Serious hull damage while heading into the Southern Ocean may have halted their progress but they have resolved to rejoin the race.
Team Background
Guyot is a new IMOCA 60 team making their Ocean Race début, formed by the crew who won The Ocean Race Europe in 2021. In that race they surprised everyone by beating a whole fleet of more experienced teams with far larger budgets, despite sailing an old boat without any foils. Now they’re back with a foiling IMOCA, the former Hugo Boss, and they made some bold moves in the first two stages of the race. Unfortunately, just after the start of Leg Three as the fleet headed into the Southern Ocean, their hull began to delaminate – these boats are subjected to brutally violent shock loads as they fall off their foils repeatedly for thousands of miles on end, at speeds of up to 30 knots – and the team had to sail back, 600 miles upwind, to Cape Town for major structural repairs. Retired from that leg but determined to rejoin the race, Team Guyot is due to rejoin the fleet in Itajai, Brazil at the start of Leg Four.
The Ocean Race
The round-the-world Ocean Race is the toughest challenge in fully crewed sailing. This edition – the first to be raced in furiously fast and brutal foiling IMOCA 60s – started with a boat-breaking storm in the Gibraltar Strait en route from Alicante, Spain to Mindelo, Cape Verde. Then came a test of tenacity and mental endurance through the Doldrums to Cape Town. After that, an epic 12,750-mile marathon through the wild, remote Southern Ocean – three quarters of the way around Antarctica – to Itajai, Brazil via Cape Horn. Leg 4 continues north to Newport, Rhode Island, USA, then the fleet will ride the low pressure systems across the north Atlantic, around the top of Scotland and into the Baltic to Aarhus, Denmark. After that comes a non-stop coastal race to Kiel, Germany, back out of the Baltic and down the choppy North Sea to the Dutch capital, The Hague. The final leg takes them down the English Channel, across Biscay and back into the Mediterranean to finish at Genoa.
