The IMOCA D’Ieteren Group on the coffee route

A delayed start

On Sunday 29 October, the announced arrival of storm Ciaran kept the Class Imoca competitors dockside.

In fact, given the Dantean conditions forecast, Denis doubled up on his vigilance by remaining aboard D’Ieteren Group for over a week.

“I had up to 56 knots of breeze on the pontoon. There was no breakage on the boat. Lots of people slept on board throughout. We crossed paths during the storm as we firmed up our mooring lines or repositioned a fender.”

This Tuesday 7 November at 08:30 UTC, the fleet of IMOCAs finally set sail on the Transat Jacques Vabre.

A highly complementary Belgian duo

A legendary race awaits Denis Van Weynbergh and Gilles Buekenhout on the IMOCA D’Ieteren Group. Also known as the Coffee Route, this year it celebrates its 30th anniversary with 190 sailors of 17 nationalities signed up for the event.

Denis has already participated in the Transat Jacques Vabre twice before. The first time was in Class40 and the second in IMOCA on this same boat with Tanguy Le Turquais. “It’s a first for me to compete in the same transatlantic race three times. It’s a whole different approach to the event. I’m very familiar with the locations and the way the organisation operates, which makes things easier in terms of all the preparation,” explains Denis.

For his part, Gilles is coming into the project with fresh eyes: “For me it’s a fantastic experience to make the switch from multihull to these superb IMOCAs. I’m approaching this race with real calmness. Denis knows his boat inside out. I’m going to support him, be tuned into his every need and I will take great pleasure in giving him all the help I can.”

This pairing will rely on this diversity to optimise their performance in this double-handed event to the full. “During the transatlantic race, the idea is that we’ll work together. Gilles has masses of experience of multihull racing, which means he can handle a great deal of stress. His calmness and his maturity will be a real bonus for me,” explains Denis. The dynamics are the same for Gilles, who’s making his debut on the IMOCA circuit: “Double-handed sailing is false single-handed sailing. Denis is the skipper, but when he’s sleeping or resting, he won’t be present, so I’ll be his eyes, his hands and his brain with a focus on getting the boat making headway as best I can and making the right decisions.”

A shortened course

Due to the delayed start, the fleet kick off this week with a reduced course of 3,750 nautical miles.

The fleet will commence with an exit from the English Channel with its notorious shipping and currents, followed by a sprint along France’s Atlantic coast. “The exit from the English Channel is always complicated, and like the Route du Rhum start, it’s a tough section. There are breaking seas, you’re punching into the wind and there are a lot of boats around us. You have to be vigilant, night falls quickly and it’s a section that can be dreaded as there’s a real risk of collision,” says Gilles.

The first few days of racing will be punctuated by the famous passage across the Bay of Biscay, followed by La Coruña off northern Spain. “The La Coruña passage is always very tricky. There are some fairly hard fronts rolling through, but it’s a compulsory stage,” adds the co-skipper.

From there, a more direct course will take the fleet towards Martinique, leaving the island of Santa Maria in the Azores to starboard.

Finally, the sunshine of the West Indies will herald the end of the race for the IMOCAs as they make landfall in Fort-de-France.

Excellent training

For our Belgian skipper, the Coffee Route is excellent training for the season’s next race. Before you can set sail on a non-stop, unassisted race around the world, a few more steps need to be completed to qualify for the race.

Denis will be participating in the Retour à La Base race setting sail from Martinique, which is a single-handed event and the last race of 2023 to serve as a qualifier for the round the world.

Prior to that though, Denis and Gilles need to focus on their pairing in the Transat Jacques Vabre, which has got off to very strong start in these autumnal conditions.

“I don’t have any particular fears, but the key skill is to be able to anticipate things and do so with humility. You have to be humble at sea,” explains Gilles.

Verbatim Denis

“The objective is to tick off the miles for qualification purposes and have some fun out on the water. These races serve as preparation for the Vendée Globe. They enable us to get our logistics practices up to speed and everyone learns a lot from them.

Since the start of the year, we’ve been working on the in-house organisation again and we’ve made a number of modifications to the boat so we can plan for these end of year races with confidence.

We now have some new sails, a new automatic pilot, new hydro-generators and we’ve revamped the electronics system. All this is geared around improving performance and reliability and we’re taking things another step forward in terms of our adjustments and refinements on the boat.”

Verbatim Gilles

“During qualification, we saw that we got on well. Denis is well aware that I don’t know the boat like he does, so I don’t have the automatic reflexes yet. It’s going to take me a few days to get my head round them.

I hope Denis will be able to shake off the pressure of racking up miles and the fear of potentially breaking his boat. He needs to be able to trust me whilst I focus on driving his boat as I would my own.

I hope we’ll enjoy some epic sessions of slipping along under spinnaker with a positive energy. I’m keen for us to enjoy sailing this boat, whilst getting her to make headway as best she can.”