Route du Rhum runners and riders: Vintage Multi

Four ORMA 60s, a former winner and a Paralympic champion. Here’s how the new Vintage Multi class shapes up for the Route du Rhum start off Saint-Malo on 1 November.

For anyone who grew up on the Route du Rhum in the 1990s, this is the class to watch. The ORMA 60 trimarans – the boats that won this race for Laurent Bourgnon in 1994 and 1998, and for Michel Desjoyeaux in 2002 – are back on the start line, four of them, with some serious names at the helm.

The new Vintage Multi category, which replaces the old Rhum Multi class, has been designed to bring the boats and sailors who built the race’s legend back into the spotlight. Thirteen multihulls are entered, from a 38ft trimaran to a 75ft maxi. The ORMAs could make it to Guadeloupe in under ten days. Some of the smaller boats expect to need at least 21.

Francis Joyon could have bowed out of the Rhum on a high. He won the race in 2018, pipping François Gabart in the final miles on IDEC Sport to set a new record. Even at 66 he finished fourth in the Ultim class in 2022.

Instead, at 70, he’s back for more, swapping a giant Ultim for an ORMA 60 – the type of boat he raced here in 1998, when he finished sixth on Banque Populaire, and in 2002. This will be his eighth Rhum. “I’m very happy to see that the Route du Rhum is allowing the ORMA class to come back to life,” he says.

Joyon has never needed the fanciest boat to win. Give him one that goes fast in a straight line and he’ll find a way to make it go faster than anyone expects.

Damien Seguin’s connection to this race started on a quayside in Guadeloupe. “I was 10 when I saw the Route du Rhum arrive in Guadeloupe in 1990, and this boat finished fourth with Mike Birch,” he says.

The boat he’s racing is the former Fujicolor II, a Nigel Irens design later sailed by Loïck Peyron to fifth in 1998, now reborn as Arkéa – Handicap International.

Seguin hardly needs an introduction. He’s a triple Paralympic medallist, with gold in Athens 2004 and Rio 2016, and the first sailor with a disability to finish the Vendée Globe, which he has now done twice. This is his fifth Rhum – two in Class40, two in IMOCA – but his first in a multihull. He spent last year learning the ropes in Ocean Fifty alongside Thibaut Vauchel-Camus, and the lessons have stuck: in July he was first across the line in the Drheam Cup, winning the Multi 2000 class with Gérald Véniard.

On current form, his old ORMA looks like the one to beat.

Éric Péron has the newest of the four ORMAs, at around 24 years old, which in this company makes it a relative spring chicken. Péron is no stranger to multihulls at any scale, having raced in Ocean Fifty and taken a giant Ultim solo around the world in the 2024 Arkéa Ultim Challenge.

He’s also clear-eyed about where the threats lie. If the conditions don’t favour the ORMAs, he reckons the biggest boat in the class could steal a march.

That boat is Use It Again!, Romain Pilliard’s 75ft Nigel Irens trimaran, better known to British readers as B&Q Castorama – the boat Ellen MacArthur sailed to the solo round-the-world record in 2005.

Pilliard bought it in 2017, when it was languishing in Brest, and gave it a second life using recycled and second-hand materials wherever he could. This is his third Rhum, and the boat has had its share of adventures. A 2022 attempt with Alex Pella to sail around the world the ‘wrong way’, east to west, ended with the trimaran aground in Cook’s Bay after rounding Cape Horn.

There’s a family subplot too. Pilliard’s son Titouan, 20, is the youngest skipper in the race, sailing in Vintage Mono.

The biggest absence from this class is Roland Jourdain. The two-time Rhum winner was due to race We Explore, the 24m flax-fibre catamaran he helped develop, but withdrew in September. François Guiffant takes over, and he’s no stranger to Jourdain’s boats: he currently races the IMOCA that won the Rhum for Jourdain in 2006.

Marc Guillemot races MG5, a catamaran built largely from reused parts. Gilles Lamiré completes the ORMA quartet on Groupe GCA. And at the other end of the scale, Charlie Capelle, who won the Atlantique Télégramme this year, renews a season-long rivalry with Christophe Bogrand and Laurent Etheimer. “It’s going to be a real battle from start to finish,” says Capelle.

For sheer racing, the ORMA battle between Seguin, Joyon, Péron and Lamiré should be one of the best contests anywhere in the fleet. But Vintage Multi is about more than who gets to Pointe-à-Pitre first. It’s a reminder of where this race came from, and of the boats and sailors who made it what it is.