The Solitaire du Figaro has been a significant feature of the European sailing scene for 54 years now, and today it is well established as La Solitaire du Figaro Paprec, supported by the 1985-founded French re-cycling and green energy conglomerate.
But although the Beneteau-built foiling Figaro 3s which currently contest this great French offshore classic are more powerful and potentially faster than any of their predecessors, the organisers – several of them former contenders and thus entitled to privileges in setting special Figaro challenges – seem to delight in offsetting contemporary speed and power improvement by continually increasing the number of the course’s hot-spots and locally tricky problems.
This year’s event is a classic, as it gets racing from Caen in the Calvados department of Normandy tomorrow (Sunday, 27th August) with a fleet of 32 boats, including our own Tom Dolan’s Smurfit-Kappa Kingspan. But before the starting signal at 13:02 hrs, the action will have been under way since shortly after 08:00 hrs with a parade afloat towards the start zone.
The fleet’s in port: The lineup for the 54th Figaro Solo on show in Caen this week
SHORESIDE PRESSURES
The sailors – rugged people who tend to happiest far at sea and sailing fast, rather than being in the midst of admiring but demanding fans in the pre-start Tented Village which has been open since Wednesday – will additionally have had to withstand the problem that their hosts in Caen and Calvados will expect them to conspicuously approve and ideally consume (responsibly, of course) the most famous local product, the eponymous apple brandy which has long been elevated to Appellation d’Origine Controlle (AOC) status.
It means that Calvados is up there with Waterford Blaa, Connemara Mountain Lamb, and Timoleague Brown Pudding, to name but three Irish food and beverage exclusivity qualifiers. But while the blaa, the lamb and the pudding are reasonably innocuous, the mighty Calvados really should come with a health warning. Yet its ferocious power in potential abundance is just another hazard that Les Figaristes have to negotiate before they take on the deceptively simple course.
The basic 2023 Figaro Solitaire Paprec course is spiced with many extra local twists
BASIC ROUTING ONLY HINTS AT COMPLEXITY OF COURSE
For the basic routing of the complete three-stage race is Caen to Kinsale, Kinsale to Morlaix on the north coast of Brittany, and Morlaix to Piriac-sur-Mer on France’s Biscay coast. Which, in its bare outline, would be quite enough for many a fully-crewed boat, let alone a solo sailor. But the course-setting sadists additionally have their battle-hardened fleet going round various buoys and other major markers on both sides of the English Channel before finally heading for Ireland - leaving the Isle of Scilly to port - to provide a total distance of 610 miles.
In the groove – Tom Dolan gets a good clear-air start at the outer end of the line
Back in July, we suggested that the up-coming 50th Fastnet Race – in which our own Fastnet Rock is now the only remaining feature of the original 1925 race – should go the whole hog on the already heavy Cherbourg involvement, and have the start from the French port as well as the finish, with the Isle of Wight reduced to a mere early mark of the course, to be left to port.
ISLE OF WIGHT IS MARK OF COURSE – BUT WITH OPTION
Well, the Wicked Wizards of the Figaro Course-Setting Department are running with that idea in an even weirder way, as their fleet are to head west from Caen along Normandy’s north coast to a turn off Cotentin before going across channel to leave the Nab Tower to the east of the Isle of Wight to port. Then the next mark is the Needles Fairway buoy to the west of the island, likewise to be left to port. But in between there’s a major choice. For it’s up to the competitors whether they chance their arm with good tidal luck going through the Solent with the island to port, or else head south on the clearer track round the island via St Catherine’s Point.
The Young Hopeful. Tom Dolan as seen at a pre-race briefing during the early days of his career in France
Seasoned campaigner – Tom Dolan in 2023, a recognised performer on the solo offshore racing scene
It will be an excruciating choice for skippers, but hugely entertaining for those following the race by tracker and other means. Then from the Needles Fairway, they’ve to head cross-channel for the next turn at Brehat off Northern Brittany. But even then, they can’t shape their heading directly for Kinsale, as the track indicates they leave the Isles of Scilly to Port and then, once across on the Irish coast, the Fastnet Rock is to be left to starboard before heading eastward – by now decidedly salt-stained, boggle-eyed and almost numb with exhaustion – to round the Old Head, with the leaders hoped to be in the welcoming embrace of Kinsale possibly by Wednesday, but more likely Thursday.
KINSALE IS HOSTING 21st FIGARO
You’ll be getting the flavour of the organisers’ thinking by now, so it will be no surprise to learn that after a couple of relaxing days of R&R in Kinsale – where “Ireland’s Gourmet Capital” will be hosting its 21st Figaro visit – there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of being allowed to race straight to Morlaix.
On the contrary, after re-starting on Sunday, September 3rd, they’ve a lot of sailing to do in the Celtic Sea, St George’s Channel, and the Irish Sea before they even think of heading directly for Morlaix, as the course-setting megalomaniacs have planned a marathon 630 nautical miles route along the south coast of Ireland, and then north up the Irish Sea to round the Isle of Man (leaving it to starboard) before heading south to Brittany.
The Figaro Fleet of 2019 starting Stage 2 off Kinsale
For your average Irish local skipper, for whom sailing in home waters with a couple of ships and some fishing boats at a distance suggests that the sea is getting crowded, it looks like the Sailing Course from Hell. Not only do you have to avoid the 31 other nearby boats in the Figaro fleet, but a course likes this inevitably funnels the racers through areas of special concentration in shipping and tides, with all the hassle of avoiding the soul-destroying TSS setups at every major shipping focal point, negotiating everything and keeping to schedule relying solely on wind power and your own solitary skills.
That said, past experience shows that with extensive shoreside entertainment and turbo-charged publicity setups in place at the ambitious key ports, the Figaro Solitaire powers-that-be are well-experienced in ruthlessly shortening the stages if the winds go light, in order to keep things reasonably on track for the razzmatazz-laden shoreside element. It’s yet yet another factor which the already stressed competitors and their support teams have to anticipate as the race progresses and develops.
Being the starting port for the 54th Solitaire du Figaro Paprec is a mini-industry in itself – the team that set up Caen to put the show on the road is Malo Le Peru (OC Sport Pen Duick project manager), Augustin Boeuf (Regional Councilor of Normandy, Nautical Delegate), Amandine François-Goguillon (Deputy Mayor of the City of Caen, in charge of Education and Equality Opportunities, Family and Early Childhood), Mélanie Lepoultier (Vice-President of the Department of Calvados in charge of boating), Dominique Rose (Advisor of the Calvados Department), and Stéphane Nevé, (Head of Sailing Projects at Paprec) Photo Alexis Courcoux
ADDICTIVE SERIES
After 54 years, the shared and personal Figaro experience is vast and complex, for it’s an addictive series to which some hardened offshore veterans have devoted most of their active careers. And even widely experienced sailors such as Michel Desjoyeaux, winner of two Vendee Globes and three Figaros and other majors, have been recorded as saying that the endlessly stressful, hugely concentrated and continuously focused Figaro is the toughest of them all.
Over the years, Irish sailors have been involved with differing levels of success, with those making their mark including George Kenefick, Joan Mulloy, Marcus Hutchinson and Damian Foxall, with the latter achieving the highlight of a stage win.
TOM DOLAN HAS RAISED IRISH INVOLVEMENT
That particular distinction has also been achieved in other races by Tom Dolan. Originally of Meath but for many years Brittany-based in Concarneau with a core commitment to the special French solo scene that goes back to 2011, he has raised Irish involvement to a new personal level. And his experiences with his Figaro 3 Smurfit-Kappa Kingspan have soared the heights and plunged the depths in that roller-coaster ride which is the story of everyone in the Figaro circus.
Tom Dolan receiving the Vivi Trophy for the best-placed non-French entrant at the 52nd Figaro finish in St Nazaire
In Tom’s case, the current heights were reached with a seventh in 2022 and a personal best of fifth in 2020. But with tomorrow’s first international post-Pandemic staging of the race, there’s an extra edge further sharpened by the fact that the renewed international element is a stopover in Ireland, thereby adding emotional loading to an already pressure-cooked scenario.
So much and all as Tom is now a battle-hardened veteran and accustomed to the Figaro demands coming at him every which way, people respected his wish to have a few days of chilling at home with the family in Corncarneau before launching himself into the maelstrom of Caen where his race-ready boat has been waiting.
Equally, we can only hope he has minders in place in Kinsale, though a compact oceanic island like Ireland has shown that it can take events like this more comfortably in its stride, whereas France has a huge yet interested population at some distance from the sea, thereby making top-level solo offshore racing something very special indeed, with every competitors a star.
Either way, as the old saying would have it, the dogs bark but the caravan moves on. And in this case, the caravanserai up and down the Irish Sea looks simple only on paper, as you’ve tides and rocks on both sides of channel and sea which make a fair stab at matching the challenges of Brittany itself.
The Figaro fleet capture the joy of sailing as they make the best use of ideal conditions off Kinsale Photo: Bob Bateman
And for the first two stages, they up the ante in the distance stakes. If the full course is sailed from Caen to Kinsale, they’ll have covered 610 nautical miles. Then Kinsale to Morlaix, with that Isle of Man dogleg thrown in, is 630 miles. And though the final stage of Morlaix to Piriac-sur-Mer is back to a “mere” 620 miles, it gets that total through a there-and-back across the Bay of Biscay to a turn off the north coast of Spain, just as the notorious Bay – or the Gulf of Gascony if you look at it from France - is starting to experience its interesting Autumn weather.
This is serious sport, and not at all for the faint-hearted.
