More than 50 entries have been confirmed so far for the fifth edition of the Drheam Cup, which will take place from 11-21 July 2024 between Cherbourg-en Cotentin and La Trinité-sur-Mer in north-western France.

As previously reported on Afloat.ie, 11 classes — including for the first time the new Sun Fast 30 one design — will take part in the event, the second race in the IRC Two-Handed European Championship, with all results also counting towards the RORC Championship.

In addition, the race will be part of the 2024 European Trophy, along with the Spi Ouest-France, Armen Race and CIC Normandy Channel Race.

“To date, 54 entries have been confirmed, which is very promising,” says Jacques Civilise, founder and organiser of the race. “We expect a large fleet, which will be different to precious editions, due to a very busy race calendar this year.

“We will probably not see some boats that have attended previous editions, the IMOCAs for example, which will be just back from the New York Vendée-Les Sables d’Olonne race and will be going back to their home ports for work before the Vendée Globe, or some of the Class40, who will be finishing the Transat Québec-Saint-Malo or the Figaro Bénéteau 3, who will be on the Tour Voile.”

Several Class40 racers will attend, however, notably the winner of the 2022 edition, Xavier Macaire, who has spoken about his attachment to the Drheam Cup.

“I have made a habit of including the race in my programme, because I love the atmosphere and organisers. This year, it is particularly important to me to defend my title”, says the skipper of Groupe SNEF, who will battle it out in the dynamic 40-foot monohull class with Nicolas Jossier (La Manche Évidence Nautique), the Normandy entrepreneur Alexandre Le Gallais (Trim Control) and two newcomers in Class40, former Mini sailors Louis Mayaud (Belco) and Nicolas Guibal (NG Grand Large).

The majority of the fleet will be made up of IRC, with a large proportion of two-handed IRC entries (26 to date). Another noteworthy fact is that half of the entries are from abroad, with 10 nationalities represented, including many British sailors.

“We are incredible satisfied to welcome so many crews from abroad; it fits fully into the Drheam Cup/Grand Prix de France de Course au Large’s DNA, which is a race open to all,” Civilise says.

“It rewards our hard work in developing the race internationally. Thanks to our friends at the Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC), the race will not only be written into the RORC calendar, it will also be part of the RORC Championship, meaning points will count towards the season’s rankings.”

The Drheam Cup is listed in the Manche/Atlantique IRC Championship 2024 programme run by the racing division of the Yacht Club de France, the Multi 2000 class (several boats including Jess, skippered by Gilles Buekenhout and Rayon Vert, skippered by Oren Nataf are already entered) and the Figaro Bénéteau class.

Last but not least, for the first time it will welcome a fleet of Sun Fast 30 one designs, the new prototypes designed by VPLP Design and built by Multiplast and Jeanneau, which will then meet again in September in Lorient for the mixed Double-handed World Offshore Championships. A fleet of ready-to-race boats is available for hire from Cap Regatta.

In addition, the first classic yacht has officially entered the race, the 1938 FIFE design Merry Dancer, owned by Vincent Delaroche, chairman and CEO of Cast Software.

Suffice it to say, the 2024 edition fleet — in which organisers are hoping to also welcome Ultims on the DC1500 course designed for them — is shaping up to be particularly rich in terms of the variety of boats on the water, with the mix of professionals and amateurs that has contributed to its success since 2016.

For more details see the Drheam Cup website HERE.

Entries are now open for the fifth edition of the Drheam Cup, which will take place from 11-21 July 2024 between Cherbourg-en Cotentin and La Trinité-sur-Mer in north-western France.

As previously reported on Afloat.ie, 11 classes — including for the first time the new Sun Fast 30 one design — will take part in the event, the second race in the IRC Two-Handed European Championship, with all results also counting towards the RORC Championship.

In addition, the race will be part of the 2024 European Trophy, along with the Spi Ouest-France, Armen Race and CIC Normandy Channel Race.

Mayor of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin, Benoit Arrivé, said he is delighted to welcome the start again in 2024.

“From Cotentin to South Brittany, La Drheam-Cup/Grand Prix de France de Course au Large is one of the most beautiful regattas that you could imagine, between two sea-going regions, two great French marinas: Cherbourg-en Cotentin and La Trinité-sur-Mer.

“One hundred boats were at the start in the last edition in 2022 and we are expecting the same number or more in 2024. The spirit of the event is what best attracts skippers: a race between big names in international sailing and dozens of amateur crews in a festive and popular atmosphere.

“It is of course a great time of gathering on the quayside of a town that will come alive with preparations until the start, between the outer harbour and the coast of La Hague. We all have great memories of the 2022 edition and we are eagerly looking forwards to 2024 and the start of the summer season.”

For more details see the Drheam Cup website HERE.

The Notice of Race is now available for the fifth edition of the Drheam Cup, which will take place from 11-21 July 2024.

As previously reported on Afloat.ie, the competition’s three courses will be identical to the previous edition’s, between Cherbourg-en Cotentin and La Trinité-sur-Mer.

Eleven classes are invited to the race: Ultime, Imoca, Ocean Fifty, Class40, Figaro Beneteau 3, Mini 6.50, Multi 2000, Large Monohulls Open class, IRC, classic yachts and for the first time the new Sun Fast 30 one design, whose design was initiated by the RORC and UNCL - Racing Division of Yacht Club de France.

What’s more, all results will count towards the RORC Championship and it will be the second race in the IRC Two-Handed European Championship.

RORC Vice-Commodore Eric de Turckheim, who confirmed he will be taking the start in Cherbourg-en-Cotentin on board his NYMD 54 Teasing Machine on 15 July, said: “We brought the 2022 edition of La Drheam-Cup/Grand Prix de France de Course au Large into the RORC calendar as it fulfilled our criteria: a great course, open to IRC, a race authority the meets the standards of the RORC and it does not run the same years as the Rolex Fastnet Race.

“Following that edition, we discussed with Debbie Fish, who will soon succeed me as head of the programme and race commission, to establish a number of conditions for La Drheam-Cup/Grand Prix de France de Course au Large to award points and enter the RORC Championship. This meant an audit of sailing instructions, safety, inspections of boats, etc. Jacques Civilise [president of Drheam-Promotion, organisers of the race] and his team met our demands, leading us to this decision to integrate the race into our championship.”

The fifth Dhream Cup will also be the second leg of the second edition of the IRC Two Handed European Championship, organised in part by the RORC. “In 2024, the two events that will be included are Cowes-Dinard-Saint-Malo and La Drheam-Cup,” De Turckheim said.

The Notice of Race is available HERE.

The fifth edition of the Drheam Cup will be held from 11-21 July 2024, organisers have announced.

The three courses will be identical to the previous edition’s, between Cherbourg-en Cotentin and La Trinité-sur-Mer, with 11 classes invited and the same ingredients that have been key to its success: competition, sharing and celebration.

Forty crews entered the first edition in 2016, 76 two years later, 95 in 2020 despite the disruption of COVID — among them a particularly successful Tom Dolan — and 134 in 2022.

The Dhream Cup/Grand Prix de France de Course au Large has attracted increasing numbers of crews since the first edition, fulfilling its creator Jacques Civilise’s aim to make it a popular race that is open to all.

When this former “captain of innovation” — who was born in Guadeloupe and has personal connections to Cherbourg-en-Cotentin, where he first started sailing and La Trinité-sur-Mer, where he lives for part of the year — first launched the race, he gave it the motto “competition, sharing, celebration”.

That meant competition, with challenging courses in the Channel, Irish Sea, Breton peninsula and Quiberon Bay, attracting the best sailors; sharing, with the Rêves de Large scheme, during which young people can sail on racing yachts in the Drheam Trophy prologue and discover the offshore racing world; and celebration, with many events open to the public around the race in mid-summer, enabling everyone to enjoy it, especially the 14 July fireworks in Cherbourg-en-Cotentin.

All these ingredients will come together again in the fifth edition next July. The key moments will be the Drheam Trophy on Saturday 13 July 2024, fireworks the following day, the start in Cherbourg-en-Cotentin outer harbour on Monday 15, with arrivals in La Trinité-sur-Mer expected from Wednesday 17 July, and prize-giving on Sunday 21 July.

Eleven classes are invited to the race: Ultime, Imoca, Ocean Fifty, Class40, Figaro Beneteau 3, Mini 6.50, Multi 2000, Large Monohulls Open class, IRC, classic yachts and for the first time the new Sun Fast 30 one design, whose design was initiated by the RORC and UNCL - Racing Division of Yacht Club de France.

The fleet will be divided into three courses, depending on the size and speed of the boats: the Drheam Cup 600 will race to southern England, the Isles of Scilly, Ushant and the Plateau de Rochebonne; the Drheam Cup 1000 will head up to the Fastnet before passing BXA buoy in the Gironde estuary; the Drheam Cup 1500 will take the Ultime trimarans to the Isle of Man and Fastne, before crossing the Bay of Biscay to Bilbao and back up towards La Trinité-sur-Mer.

Organisers add that the Notice of Race will be published in September and entries will open in early January 2024.

Looking ahead to next month's Round Ireland Yacht Race, last weekend's French Drheam Cup that proved so successful for Tom Dolan in the Figaro Duo class also provided offshore pundits with plenty of results to pore over.

The Cherbourg fixture, the first major French sailing event of this COVID hit season, was a winning one for Ian Lipinski, a host nation competitor who also has ties to Ireland as a 2018 Round Ireland Race competitor in the Class 40, Corum.

The Drheam Cup's two-handed IRC class has dished up some results that may provide some insights for next month's Irish 700-miler.

For example, the top five boats in the 400-mile Drheam two-hander class all crossed the finish line within seven minutes of each other in the 26-boat fleet.

Three of the Top five were JPK designed boats and two were the New Sunfast 3300 designs, the same as Cian McCarthy's Cinnamon Girl from Kinsale, that will be racing fully crewed in Round Ireland and was captured at full speed below and here three weeks ago.

The Doublehanded IRC class overall winner was Xpresso a JPK 10.30, which was just 17 seconds ahead on corrected from the Sunfast 3300 Gentoo. This will be a feather in the cap of Jeanneau's designers, who came to the Royal Irish Yacht Club for the unveiling of the Cinnamon Girl, as Afloat's WM Nixon's described here.

Another Sunfast 3300, Leyton was third, a JPK 10.30 was fourth, and in Fifth was a JPK 10.80, Raging Bee, (similar to Irish yacht of the year, Rockabill VI).