Route du Rhum runners and riders: Vintage Mono

Thirteen monohulls, from a 1980 classic to a twice Vendée-winning IMOCA, and a skipper line-up that hasn’t raced each other all year. Here’s how the new Vintage Mono class shapes up for the Route du Rhum start off Saint-Malo on 1 November.

If the other classes are about form guides, Vintage Mono is about the unknown. Unlike the professional fleets, these 13 skippers haven’t lined up against each other in the build-up, so nobody quite knows who’s quick.

Kieran Le Borgne sums it up neatly. “There are some great boats with skippers I don’t know, and some great skippers with boats I’m unfamiliar with,” he laughs.

What we do know is that almost every boat comes with a tale to tell. The new category, which replaces the old Rhum Mono class, runs from the 1980 ex-Kriter VIII to the former PRB, via a fleet of 50ft offshore racers and a 1986 Swan 59 sailed by one of French sailing’s best-loved characters.

Jean Le Cam needs no introduction to Rhum fans. The 67-year-old won the Solitaire du Figaro three times, won the Barcelona World Race with Bernard Stamm and has spent decades as one of the Vendée Globe’s great characters.

His Rhum record is a mixed bag. He retired on the first day in 2002 after a collision, then finished second in the IMOCA class in 2006 on VM Matériaux. Twenty years on, he’s back – but this time on Alegria, a German Frers-designed Swan 59 from 1986, almost entirely refitted for the job.

A cruising classic won’t keep pace with the 50ft racers in a straight line, so Le Cam will need every ounce of his experience to stay in the hunt. If anyone can make a Swan go faster than it has any right to, it’s him. He’ll also have at least one rival with a point to prove: 20-year-old Titouan Pilliard has made no secret of wanting to beat the great man.

Patrick Isoard is the closest thing this class has to a favourite. Even his rivals say so. “There is one clear favourite,” says Sidney Gavignet. “He’s highly experienced, knows his boat inside out, and has the best preparation.”

Isoard is a 67-year-old marine business owner and amateur sailor who started this project in early 2023 to raise awareness for Enfants du Mékong, an education charity in South-East Asia. His boat comes with pedigree: a Finot-Conq Open 50 built in Cherbourg in the late 1990s which, as Tommy Hilfiger, won the 2003 Around Alone with Brad Van Liew.

He’s been busy since buying it. In 2024 he won the first-ever Vintage class of The Transat CIC from Lorient to New York, along with double-handed wins in last year’s RORC Transatlantic and Fastnet, plus Spi Ouest France this spring. He has a rather fitting motto “It’s because he didn’t know it was impossible that he succeeded.” This Rhum is his first.

Kieran Le Borgne, 28, is sailing one of the most famous monohulls in offshore racing. Armor Lux – Le Finistère Assurance is the former PRB, a Finot-Conq design launched in 2000 and still the only boat to have won the Vendée Globe twice, with Michel Desjoyeaux in 2000–01 and Vincent Riou in 2004–05. Riou, as it happens, is racing this Rhum too, in Class40.

It took a year-long, top-to-bottom repair in Brest to get it back on the water. Expect a few photos on the dock in Saint-Malo.

Sidney Gavignet knows what it takes to win this class. He took line honours in Rhum Mono in 2018 on Café Joyeux, and he’s no stranger to big, fast boats, having spent much of his career in multihulls and crewed racing. His Rhum memories aren’t all happy ones, though: in 2010 he had to be rescued from his maxi trimaran early in the race.

There’s a neat twist too. The boat that carried him to line honours in 2018 is back in this class – now sailed by Titouan Pilliard.

Pilliard, 20, is the youngest skipper in the race, and his father Romain is racing Ellen MacArthur’s old trimaran in Vintage Multi. Wilfrid Clerton, third in Rhum Mono four years ago, sails Echo-Mer, the former Kriter VIII from 1980 and the oldest boat in the race. Tanguy Caradec (Eurvad) is another to watch, and Rémy Gérin (Faiaoahe) renews his 2024 Transat CIC rivalry with Isoard, when the two were the only boats in the Vintage class.

On form and preparation, Isoard is the man to beat. On star power, it’s Le Cam. On history, nothing beats the sight of the old PRB heading out of Saint-Malo again.

Vintage Mono won’t produce the fastest crossing of this Route du Rhum. But it may well produce some of the best stories.