Regatta: Mathis Bourgnon was the unexpected winner of the Mini-Transat 2025
Tatjana Pokorny
· 09.12.2025
The Mini with the nose number 934 is the talk of the town. Mathis Bourgnon drove the 2017 design to victory in the particularly competitive prototype division. The Swiss coup succeeded for three reasons: 1. top favourite and superfoiler Benoit Marie ran out of breath after too much breakage in the final sprint. 2) Mathis Bourgnon sailed his eight-year-old Mini with uncompromising intensity, galloping over the 2,613 nautical mile course from the Canary Islands to Guadeloupe at an average speed of 7.9 knots. 3. the winning boat "Assomast", forerunner of the Vector Minis, once designed by Etienne Bertrand for Offshore Team Germany and built by Magic Marine in Tunis, has been tested and is sailing to its full potential.
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In 2017, professional Jörg Riechers achieved the best GER result in Mini-Transat history with this boat under its first name "Lilienthal" with second place. In 2019, Morten Bogacki sailed "Lilienthal" to third place, although he had to steer the powerhouse exclusively by hand for five days on the first of the two legs after the autopilot failed. Bourgnon had the boat back on form with a small budget. And how! His story is made even more beautiful by the family success: 30 years after his father Yvan Bourgnon's mini-Transat triumph, he has now followed in his footsteps as one of five sons. To the delight of the old man, who proudly welcomed his offspring at the finish harbour.
Mini-Transat only in one stage
Ten years younger than race favourite Benoit Marie, 28-year-old Mathis Bourgnon got everything out of his "Assomast". It was the chase of his life - with a crowning finale: only 55 nautical miles before the finish was he able to catch up with - and defeat - Benoit Marie, the season's all-time dominator, who had been suffering badly. In a final show of strength, Bourgnon landed his coup, crossing the finish line 18 nautical miles ahead of Marie. In the finishing harbour of Saint-François, the winner was still shaking hours after his jubilant arrival and his exclamation: "Long live Switzerland and long live the Atlantic!"
This year's mini-Transat, which was reduced to just one big stage across the Atlantic after the storm stop and the cancellation of section one, was his, although Bourgnon was also severely tested. In the finish harbour of Saint-François, the likeable proto-winner admitted: "I didn't sleep for a long time, I just steered, steered ... I beat myself up. I had a few problems with the GPS and I didn't have a centre spinnaker. I really pushed myself to my limits, with a lot of stress: the stress of constantly sailing with the big spinnaker, the cracking of the rudder, which I was worried might break. The lack of sleep was the worst."
Mathis Bourgnon also had an encounter with a whale: "I was sitting comfortably in the back eating when I heard a loud noise and saw a huge back as wide as the boat emerge. It hit me with its tail fin on the starboard side." Bourgnon also recounted the remarkable radio conversation with Benoit Marie when he caught up with him in the final: "We were talking on VHF. We were 55 nautical miles from the finish. He told me that it was over for him, that he had a lot of damage to the boat. We have a lot of respect for each other."
Bourgnon has found and exploited a gap
However, the beaten top favourite Marie takes away from the 25th anniversary edition that he is on the right track with his foiling concept. And was also able to claim a remarkable consolation prize with his 24-hour record of 352.59 nautical miles. Nicomatic x Petit Bateau" achieved an average speed of 14.69 knots, demonstrating what future Minis will be capable of. At the finish line, Marie swallowed his frustration and said: "Thank you for pushing me so hard! It's unbelievable what you've achieved!"
Marie then gave an insight into his end track world in ruins: "The last 24 hours were tough because I broke everything: the bowsprit, the boat, the crash box ... I feel like I've hurt my companion and I don't like that. I wasn't performing at the level I would have liked. Mathis found the gap and capitalised on it." But he, Marie, also enjoyed the race until shortly before the end. He said: "This transatlantic regatta was an absolute thrill. Flying over the sea day and night with the autopilot was extraordinary!"
This air show almost didn't happen because Marie lost a foil early on in the race. His review: "It all started when the starboard foil came loose from the boat. The foil broke off and tore open part of the hull. I made makeshift repairs to secure the boat, pump out the water and seal the leak. It was a bit dicey." He considered stopping the repairs, but decided against it.
German participation not under a good star
Two of the three German starters in the series boat classification were hit even harder in this 25th Mini-Transat. Only Hendrik Lenz came through in 14th place with his Bertrand Vector 650 "Monoka" after a few setbacks and a furious final spurt. Thiemo Huuk and the German-Frenchman Victor David paid dearly for their mini passion: they fought their way to the finish line with broken masts as the penultimate and last series boat skippers in 56th and 57th place. Thiemo Huuk's 2020 Bertrand Vector "Europe" had already been hit on 3 November. Then, on 6 November, David's Verdier-Pogo "Ich bin en Solitaire", built in the same year.
David had just fought his way back to 25th place after a weak start and good chases to catch up. The conditions were unpleasant in winds of around 25 knots. His recollection of the mast-breaking moment: "Above all, the wave was relatively short, so my boat was really constantly thundering in. I had just had a short rest inside. All hell broke loose there too. My avocados had flown around and mixed with seawater. There was green soup everywhere. Suddenly the sun shot. And three seconds later, the big bang."
The autopilot was "a bit overwhelmed". Almost three metres of the mast broke off. David's assessment: "It's just a predetermined breaking point on these masts, above the second spreader. It's often a bit more fragile there. In inverted commas, I was lucky that it broke there and not lower down. That meant I could still use a bit of mast height, but anything that was a spinnaker or gennaker was no longer possible."
Three years of work for nothing in two seconds
David didn't see the chance to climb the mast again. "I no longer had a halyard to belay myself with. I would have had to climb up barefoot and without safety equipment. That was too dangerous for me. I decided to continue with the storm and mainsail for the time being. That worked out quite well." Victor David shifted his weight forwards in the boat. "I also saw ten or eleven knots of speed in the surfs." Then the wind dropped quickly.
The weight of events was initially overwhelming for Victor David. He says: "It's brutal - after three years of work, it's all over in two seconds." After the mast broke and the most important safety measures were taken, he "literally collapsed". He locked himself in the boat for two days, sealed everything up, including the windows, and put on noise-cancelling headphones "so I didn't have to listen to the sound of the mast banging". He only returned to "minimal mode" after 48 hours.
After two days, acceptance set in. From day four onwards, David started listening to music again. He also wrote a lot, filling the logbook with his thoughts. With a little distance, Victor David looked back on the race with a sense of reconciliation: "You can also see it that I was lucky to experience this second chapter. The others didn't. It was also nice to have this strange rhythm. I lost track of time a bit, which was kind of cool." So cool that he voluntarily stayed at sea longer on the last night of his race and only crossed the line with the first rays of sunshine.
"I cried for a moment too"
The race ended very differently, but with a similar feeling for the best German athlete: Hendrik Lenz may not have achieved his dream result with 14th place, but the Mini-Transat motto applied to him: small victories can be big ones. After ups and downs, the Transat première came to a furious end for the man from Düsseldorf. Shortly before the finish in 16th place, the 31-year-old was able to catch two more boats in the strong wind final. That did him good. The broken bowsprit 16 nautical miles before the finish line shocked him, but did not stop him.
Behind the soloist, who was covered in green, blue and red spots, lay the last night, the "worst horror night of the whole race", in which he and the top 20 sailors around him were confronted with thunderstorm gusts every quarter of an hour. Lenz says he experienced "at least 20 sun shots". The autopilot was no help in gusts of up to 40 knots. The hours of manual steering and hooking one arm under the railing had left heavy marks. The broken bowsprit seemed like a screaming injustice to Lenz: had he survived the night's gateway only to lose his hard-won position again? "I even cried for a moment," he recalls later. At the low point, however, he spotted his closest rival Pierrick Evenou on the horizon about four nautical miles behind him. Without a headsail. This gave Lenz new hope that he might be able to defend his 14th place after all. Without further ado, he tied the large Code Zero to the boat and pulled it up the spinnaker. "It wasn't pretty, but it was faster than with just the jib," says Lenz.
Soon it seemed to him "as if Pierrick Evenou's spinnaker was filling the entire horizon". But the Frenchman also had to contend with sun shots on the mogul slope. Everyone was tired in the final hours of the race. Those who could still fight now had an advantage. Lenz could. He finished in 14th place after 15 days, 23 hours, 17 minutes and 1 second at sea. His conclusion: "That's a great result that I can be at peace with."
Potting in the permanent doldrums
His first mini-transat demanded strong taker qualities from Lenz. Throughout the entire mini season, things had previously only gone upwards for him. He has learnt in many different ways that transats are a different kettle of fish to two- to four-day mini races. Vector skipper Lenz also knows that all of the top ten places in the series boats were taken by Raison-Maxis. His verdict: "There are good reasons for this. It was a race with a lot of wind, often 23, 24 knots, but often also the transitional conditions of 16 to 20 knots. Plus the often short and unpleasant waves. That's where the maxis set themselves apart."
The fact that Lenz slipped on deck on the fourth day of the race and flew onto the winch gave him a cracked rib. "That was a big boo-boo and affected my mood. It was particularly painful when I was sleeping," he recalls. For him, the first mini-transat had "three and a half phases": the initial days of pot-hitting in the permanent lull for everyone, during which he often felt as if "I had a shorter pot-hitting stick than the others". Then came the second phase, in which he was able to move up to fifth place again. "I was often able to keep up well in 24, 25 knots," says Lenz. His Vector likes strong winds.
But then his gap to leader Paul Cousin grew to almost 180 nautical miles in the third phase. The speedbolting of the maxis could not be maintained with the Vector. "My boat didn't really get going at 16, 17 knots. The others were travelling at 12 to 15 knots, I was at 9. I'm not usually like that, but I was so angry about everything that I crushed an empty bucket of water. That was also the phase in which I rediscovered Rammstein for myself," the usually peaceful Lenz remembers the dark time in the race and his musical accompaniment.
Phase three and a half
During this time, the Mini is "completely wet like I've never experienced before," he says. Lenz is convinced that the Mini-Transat "breaks every challenger at least once". The trick, he says, is to recover from "this head break" that you simply have in a race like this alone and without communication with the outside world. Lenz says: "A regatta like this always breaks you somewhere. The only question is how you carry on afterwards. It takes a lot of strength, but you have to do it. Felix Oberle (Swiss, sixth with the Protos) says: 'This is simply Transat."
In this third phase of the race, Lenz also had to contend with autopilot problems in the short and steep wave. His strategic decision to head north once again in the final act, which he then referred to as "phase three and a half", formed the basis for him being able to make up two places in the final sprint. Smiling in the Caribbean harbour, Lenz said: "I made up with my boat again."
It should be noted that Hendrik Lenz - like Felix Oberle with the Protos - was in a formidable third place when stage one was abandoned and cancelled. Naturally, both were among the soloists who regretted the cancellation. What would have happened if the stage had gone through remains a theory.
Hendrik Lenz, who may want to gain his first Figaro experience in the coming season, has learnt a lot in the mini-transat. Including this: "You can't rely on what you've done before." Lenz takes his hat off to Proto winner Mathis Bourgnon and series boat winner Paul Cousin, who reached the finish line almost exactly 24 hours ahead of him. Lenz says of Cousin: "He was abnormally fast."
