The route for the next three editions of the Mini-Transat has been finalised. The infamous single-handed regatta across the Atlantic in the Mini 6.50 will start in 2021, 2023 and 2025 in Les Sables d'Olonne on the French Atlantic coast.
The course then continues to Guadeloupe in the Caribbean with a stopover in Santa Cruz de la Palma on the Canary Islands. In the last editions of the ocean race, the soloists sailed from La Rochelle via Gran Canaria to Martinique. However, the organisation and course of the regatta are changed every few years.
Caribbean instead of Brazil
The successful application of the regatta associationLes Sables d'Olonne Vendée Course au Large now opposed the concept of theCollective Rochelais which had proposed a course to Brazil or back to Martinique. However, the Classe Mini, the class association for Mini 6.50 sailors, decided in favour of the version from Les Sables d'Olonne.
The President of Classe Mini, Sébastien Pebélier, commented on the future course to the French online magazine Bateaux.com:
"Ultimately, the course won't change that much. It will still be a start in the Bay of Biscay with a subsequent crossing of the Bay of Biscay and a leg down to the Canary Islands."
With the second leg to the Antilles that followed, however, the chances for sailors on an older Mini 6.50 remained better.
"Even if Brazil would have been a great destination, the course there would have meant mostly reaching courses after the calms, which would have further penalised older boats," says Pebélier.
Official start and finish for circumnavigators
The harbour town of Les Sables d'Olonne is now home to another well-known French ocean race. The Vendée Globe already starts here every four years and, since 2018, the new Golden Globe Race, in which single-handed skippers sail around the world on aged GRP boats.
The official announcement that the next Golden Globe Race in 2022 will also return from Les Sables to Les Sables was made at the beginning of December at the French boat show Paris Nautic.
