Achille Nebout wins Route du Rhum Class40 and breaks the course record

Achille Nebout (Amarris) has won Class40 in the Route du Rhum – Destination Guadeloupe, crossing the finish line in Pointe-à-Pitre at 0904hrs local time (13:04:05hrs UTC) on Sunday 15 November after an exciting final showdown on the last lap of Guadeloupe.

His elapsed time for the solo ocean sprint was 14 days 1 hour 2 minutes 45 seconds. That makes him the winner of the Route du Rhum's biggest class, which had 49 starters off Saint-Malo on Sunday 1 November, and it sets a new course record, 2 hours 5 minutes 55 seconds quicker than Yoann Richomme's winning time in 2022.

Guillaume Pirouelle (Sogestran Seafrigo) was second, less than half an hour behind, and Pierre Leboucher (Institut Imagine) was third.

A final lap to forget about sleep

Nebout lost more than 12 miles of his lead on the final lap of Guadeloupe, with Pirouelle getting to within a mile and a half of him. The 36-year-old held his nerve and stayed fast to clinch the win from the Normandy skipper, who with Cédric Chateau won the Transat Café L'Or in Martinique a year ago aboard Sogestran Seafrigo.

Nebout races a Lift v2 design, the same boat that won this race four years ago in Richomme's hands.

The winner's race in numbers

• Finish time (Pointe-à-Pitre): 09:04:05hrs
• Finish time (UTC): 13:04:05hrs
• Race duration: 14d 1h 2m 45s
• Distance covered: 3874.13 nm
• Second: Guillaume Pirouelle (Sogestran Seafrigo), 13:31:35hrs UTC
• Third: Pierre Leboucher (Institut Imagine), 16:30:48hrs UTC

How the race was won

The 40-footers were forced to take a route north of the great-circle course, because the trade winds had failed to establish themselves properly. Working with a pre-start weather plan, Nebout decided that crossing the light-wind trough south of Ireland to the south would pay off.

It did, but he spent days chasing Pirouelle. When the leader got stuck in a light-wind transition zone, Nebout struck and built a lead that he held for six days to the finish, at one point stretching it to the best part of 20 miles.

Pirouelle, who won last year's two-handed Transat with Chateau, closed right up overnight and into the morning. This time Nebout held firm against a sailor who has been a rival and a friend since they raced 420 dinghies as teenagers.

Destined to shine

Nebout's path is a little different from that of the Bretons who tend to dominate French ocean racing. He grew up on the Mediterranean shore in the Hérault, near Montpellier, rather than on the rugged, tidal Brittany coast. His father, an architect and sailing enthusiast from La Grande-Motte, took the family out on the water and raced with friends.

Among those friends was local ace Kito de Pavant, a winner of La Solitaire du Figaro who raced on the IMOCA and Class40 circuits for many years. He has been Nebout's mentor for years, and Nebout paid tribute to him from the victory pontoon. When Achille was three, the family travelled to the West Indies to visit Kito and his family.

He also tried football and rock climbing as a youngster, but sailing took hold. He joined the Carnon sailing club, then studied at the INSA engineering school in Lyon while immersing himself in everything from Olympic-class sailing to match racing in J/70, Diam24 and the SB20, in which he won the world championship.

The Figaro circuit followed, and he has contested La Solitaire four times. His best result was third in 2022, behind winner Tom Laperche and runner-up Guillaume Pirouelle, the man who has now taken second to him in Guadeloupe.

Nebout then acquired the boat Richomme had sailed to victory in the 2022 Route du Rhum, and set about optimising and campaigning it with a small, dedicated team. There were hard moments, including losing his mast in the 2025 Normandy CIC Channel Race. There were highs too: a win in the Québec–Saint-Marlo race with Gildas Mahé and Alan Roberts, another in the 2024 Med Max Occitanie Saidia Resorts, and second in the 2023 Transat Jacques Vabre. He also became a father last year.

Often labelled an outsider rather than a clear favourite, Nebout has now shown that actions speak louder than words.

"I sailed the race of my life"

Arriving at the pontoon, Nebout savoured his first ti'punch with his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter in his arms, his face salt- and sweat-encrusted. He snacked on fresh fruit, sitting cross-legged on the deck of Amarris, and kept repeating, "It was hard, so hard."

It was a battle against the elements, against Pirouelle, who beat him to second place in the 2022 La Solitaire du Figaro, and above all against himself.

"I never once thought I would win the Route du Rhum; it wasn't part of the plan! It wasn't until I was five miles from the finish line that I realized: 'This is it—I've finally set the gennaker, I'm heading straight for the line; nothing much can go wrong now!' But before that, I just couldn't process it—and I think it's going to take me a little while to do so. I wasn't exactly among the favorites, and I think I sailed the race of my life, at just the right moment. But, man, was it tough!" – Achille Nebout

Read Nebout's full interview on the official Route du Rhum site:

https://www.routedurhum.com/en/post/class40-winner-achille-nebout-i-sailed-the-race-of-my-life

Source: Route du Rhum - Destination Guadeloupe