The Ocean Race Europe: From the Baltic to the Adriatic, Vendée Globe skippers take on the seas bordering the Old Continent

The Ocean Race Europe fleet, seven monohulls, including several skippers from the last Vendée Globe, sets sail from Kiel, Germany, on Sunday. The program includes an 8,000-km journey around the continent.

Sailing enthusiasts are familiar with The Ocean Race, a crewed round-the-world race with stopovers created over fifty years ago. Here is the European version, simply called The Ocean Race Europe. The race sets off Sunday from Kiel, Germany, for five legs around the Old Continent. Seven weeks of racing to cover over 8,000 km. Seven monohulls are taking part, including many sailors who completed the Vendée Globe earlier this year.

The Ocean Race Europe comes at just the right time for skippers who were sorely tested by the last Vendée Globe. They needed time to recover. "The Vendée Globe is the flagship of our circuit, but it also requires a lot of preparation ," explains Nicolas Lunven, sixth in the last solo round the world race. "It's still a lot of investment, commitment, stress, and a pretty tough race."

This round-the-Europe race is the ideal format for getting back on your monohull. " The fact of switching back to a very different format, much shorter, close to the coast, with a crew, in conditions that are normally milder than those encountered in a Vendée Globe, since it's in August and September, already allows you to approach things in a slightly lighter way," says Nicolas Lunven.

The field remains very high-level: seven monohulls will battle it out on very different seas. First, there will be the Baltic and its many pitfalls starting on Sunday. "We'll be sailing in areas where there's a lot of traffic, wind turbines, coastlines, bypasses, and islands ," explains Amélie Grassi. "For us, these are areas with potentially quite a few dangers. We'll have to race and take care of the boat."

After the Baltic, there will be the English Channel and the Atlantic – more familiar playing fields – before entering the Mediterranean with Spain, Nice and Genoa and before the finale in the Adriatic, in the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro in a month and a half. A program that delights Paul Meilhat, fifth in the last Vendée Globe: "Instead of leaving from a port between Les Sables-d'Olonne and Le Havre, which we do all the time and several times every year, we will go and discover new European countries."

"I've never raced in the Adriatic Sea. It's interesting to explore new areas, meet people in the countries, and show our boats in places other than the Atlantic coast."

Paul Meilhat, fifth in the last Vendée Globe

to franceinfo

On board these boats, there are four sailors – including a woman – which changes the approach to the race. "There's a bit of a difference between the solo race, which is very French, and the crew race, which is more Anglo-Saxon ," explains Yoann Richomme, second in the Vendée Globe. " Despite everything, we remain a nation that is quite gifted in this exercise. It's still a discipline that we love and are attached to, but on the other hand, it doesn't get much media coverage in France. It's good, we have a circuit that alternates between the two, so we're happy."

The first leg, on Sunday, is to take the fleet from Kiel to the English port of Portsmouth.