Gitana 18 and the record holder who says he isn’t the favourite (Pt. 1/6)

Here's a curious thing. The man who holds the Route du Rhum record (6 days, 19 hours, 47 minutes and 25 seconds, set on his first go in 2022) arrives in Saint-Malo this year and claims he isn't the favourite.

Usually that's the sort of false modesty you get from a golfer who's just gone round in 63 in the practice round. With Charles Caudrelier, I'm inclined to believe him. Mostly.

Four years ago he was the hot pick, despite being a Rhum rookie and new to solo trimaran sailing. Gitana 17 was the most developed flying Ultim on the ocean racing scene, and he had sailed the transom off that well-worn trimaran. "I'd won everything, I'd done a huge amount of sailing and I was completely comfortable handling Gitana 17," he says. "I knew her settings down to the last 10 centimetres."

This time he's taking a different animal across the Atlantic. The new Maxi Edmond de Rothschild (Gitana 18 to her friends) was launched on 14 February, about eight and a half months before the start. The Rhum won't just be its first ocean race. It will be its first competitive outing of any kind.

When I sat down with Caudrelier in Lorient in late September he was straight about where the boat was. "Usually we spend two or three years to get the full performance out of this kind of boat, and to be reliable too," he told me. "Because sometimes you have the performance but you're not reliable."

Gitana 18 had six months of sailing behind it, and only three of those on foils. And these aren't off-the-shelf foils, if such a thing exists in the Ultim world. "Foils, yes, have existed for a long time," he said, "but this kind of foil on this size of boat doesn't exist. So everything is complicated."

The team has a head start of sorts. Gitana 17 was launched in 2017, and the engineers, the architect and the sailors have spent the best part of a decade making mistakes and learning from them. "So we are better," says Caudrelier. "But the boat is much more complicated, the systems are much more complicated, and the foils are very complicated." His honest estimate is that it'll be another year, "or probably two", before Gitana 18 is fully up to speed.

The most telling decision came the week before we spoke. The rest of the Ultim fleet went racing. Gitana 18 stayed in the shed to have its foils and rudder upgraded.

"I won't say we had an issue, but it's young, it's a new system," Caudrelier explained. "We had the choice: race to get more experience and know the boat better, or improve the performance of the appendages. We didn't have enough time to do both."

In Formula 1 terms, that's skipping the final test session to bolt on a new floor. It's a bet that hardware beats familiarity, and it rests on one thing: the skipper's confidence in his own hands. "I have enough background and experience to be able to handle this boat now," he says. Fair enough. Not many people could say that and get away with it.

I asked him to put himself in the shoes of a French journalist who knows this scene better than I do. He didn't hesitate: Tom Laperche on SVR Lazartigue and Armel Le Cléac'h on Banque Populaire.

Both boats have had new foils (Banque Populaire last year, SVR this year), and they were already the quickest boats on the circuit. "I know Tom is an amazing sailor. I fought with him on the Arkéa Ultim Challenge," says Caudrelier. "Armel is a legend." The pair proved the point in that race Gitana skipped, scrapping for first while the rest trailed behind.

But he isn't writing anyone off, least of all himself. "All four or five teams are at a high level today and can win. So it will be a nice match."

Here's where the upside lies. In 2022, Caudrelier reckons he flew for about four and a half days out of six. The first 24 hours were upwind, and back then Gitana 17 wasn't truly flying on the wind. Add 12 hours or so of light stuff, and that's your shortfall.

Now the Ultims fly upwind. "If the wind is above 15 or 16 knots over the whole course, we'll fly 100 percent of the time," he says, perhaps with the exception of the obligatory lap of Guadeloupe at the end.

That's the tantalising bit. A boat at maybe 80% of its potential, sailed by the record holder, in a race where it might never touch down. "Even if I'm not the favourite," he says, "we're going to do everything we can to fight for the win, whatever happens."