Fourth to ninth, the best of.....

Fourth, Guillaume Pirouelle and Sophie Faguet (Région Normandie) finished Friday 09:24:10hrs UTC, elapsed time 18 days, 22 hours, 22 minutes and 10 seconds +03 hours, 20 minutes and 37 seconds after the winners.

Pirouelle said “This last week has felt long. It wasn't actually very windy. But there was more and weed as we got nearer the finish. We started to lose patience but finally we are happy to have finished. Fourth is not really what we set out for but it's part of the game. We gave it everything and don’t have much to regret. We were a little behind but that's how it is. We tried everything to get back into it but in the end we weren't that far behind so we have to settle for 4th place.”

Fifth Camille Bertel and Pierre Leboucher (Cap Ingélec) finished Friday at 10:08:45hrs UTC, elapsed time 18 days, 23 hours, 06 minutes and 45 seconds, 04 hours, 05 minutes and 12 seconds after the winners.
Camille Bertel said “It went pretty well. We learned a lot. Sailing double-handed is a new discovery to share, a great adventure, especially with Cap Ingélec, who continue to support me. This Figaro BENETEAU 3 is boat on which rigor is really required and it is great to learn alongside a great sailor like Pierre. I took advantage of his experience to put all this in place. The race pace was good on the water. We did not have any really big conditions. We rested well, especially once we were on the Atlantic after La Palma”.

Sixth Chloé Le Bars and Hugo Dhallenne (Région Bretagne - CMB Océane) finished Friday at 11:01:54hrs UTC in an elapsed time 18 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 54 seconds, 04 hours, 58 minutes and 21 seconds after the winners.
Chloé Le Bars said: “It went pretty well overall. We are happy with what we were able to do, especially in the second part of the race, where we recovered well. It was a great experience from start to finish. We are very happy to have done the race  It was nice to see that we were gaining miles little by little, we caught Arthur Hubert (MonAtoutEnergie.fr) and Maël Garnier (Ageas – Ballay – Cerfrance – Baie de Saint-Brieuc). Until the end, we had them covered behind us. We saw his fire behind us last night. It was really nice to be able to really fight back with the group especially with our little strategic mistakes at the start and the stop we made by La Palma to repair our mainsail”.

Seventh: Maël Garnier and Julia Courtois (AGEAS - Ballay - Cerfrance - Baie de Saint-Brieuc) finished Friday at 12:00:58hrs UTC in an elapsed time 19 days and 58 seconds, 05 hours, 57 minutes and 25 seconds after the winners.
Maël Garnier said “It was a good start back in Concarneau with a good course and a gull wing to negotiate in the Bay of Biscay, we were a little behind but always in the group.  with good hares on the side. Off Portugal that we started to drop back and by La Palma, we had had small technical problems with the spinnaker and gennaker tacks. It was very unsettling and time consuming and we expended a lot of energy there. We almost believed in a comeback. We were a little behind Chloé and Hugo but it was great. It was my first transatlantic and the first time I spent more than five nights at sea. Honestly that is a long time, and with the weed at the end, getting to Saint-Barth has to be earned.

Eighth: Basile Bourgnon and Violette Dorange (EDENRED) crossed the finish line Friday at 14:06hrs UTC, there elapsed time is 19 days 05 hours 04 minutes and 34 seconds.
Basile Bourgnon said “The start was quite interesting. It's true that it was like on La Solitaire du Figaro, side by side most of the time in sight of each other. We even crossed Maël at 10 meters off in the middle of the Bay of Biscay. After the Canary Islands and that's where the gaps opened and we had small glitches, particularly related to pollution: bits of plastic, buckets, things that are not much  fun in the middle of the Canary Islands. These things forced us to lower the spinnaker two or three times, to back up repeatedly. We lost the leading group we never managed to catch up with them as they were always super fast.”

Ninth Arthur Hubert and Colombe Julia (MonAtoutÉnergie.fr) finished on Friday at 21:35:45hrs UTC in an elapsed time of 19 days, 10 hours, 33 minutes and 45 seconds. They finished 15 hours, 32 minutes and 12 seconds after the winners.
Arthur Hubert said:  “Two years ago I came in in the dark so it was really cool to see the island by day. We didn't start very well in the Bay of Biscay but after that we had a great race to La Palma. It was really nice and afterwards, in the trade winds, we weren't really in the same weather system as the others, but we fought hard.”