Clarisse Crémer sets sail in The Transat CIC aboard L'Occitane en Provence!
The 2024 edition of the Transat CIC is underway! After weeks of intense preparations, the starting gun for this legendary transatlantic race was fired this Sunday, April 28th at 1:30 PM, off the coast of Lorient.
Among the 33 skippers competing, Clarisse Crémer, aboard her IMOCA L'Occitane en Provence, got off to a great start. At 34 years old, the sailor is aiming to complete her qualification for the Vendée Globe 2024, the solo round-the-world race.
L’Occitane Sailing team was created by Clarisse Cremer and Alex Thomson in 2023 and prior to the start of this race Alex said: “The Transat CIC, formerly known as the OSTAR / Transat Anglaise, is a race I have never taken part in and it’s up there as one of the toughest Transatlantic races. Dare I say the race was started by the Brits and it’s where the ‘greats’ of the sport were born including Chichester, Tabarly, Peyron to name a few. Yet again our technical team have pulled out all the stops to get the boat ready for Clarisse and I hope that some of the improvements will make it a bit more comfortable for her when she is foiling upwind.”
"A few hours before the start, everything is going well. The winter shipyard work was quick, the team did a great job, and the boat is ready," she explained this morning on the pontoons. "Overall, the weather this afternoon will allow us to have a nice start. The conditions will be fairly soft, and we'll have a fairly quiet start on the water, which is rare but pleasant!"
For Clarisse, this Transat CIC marks the beginning of the final sprint that will allow her to qualify with her 60-foot blue and yellow boat for the Vendée Globe. "My goal is not to make mistakes, not to break anything, and to preserve the boat. So I'm quite serene, I'm not putting pressure on the result. My goal is really to finish the race and qualify for the Vendée Globe."
Another objective for the skipper: to train for the Vendée Globe and gain more experience on this east-to-west transatlantic. "It's the first time I'll be sailing so far north in the Atlantic. I've never arrived in the United States by boat. It's going to create quite a few surprises because the northwest area of the Atlantic, the weather is quite different from the classic patterns we know," she explained before adding, "When we cross a front, right after Brittany, it's often a bit of a textbook case, it's always a bit the same. So we have our little habits in a certain way, even if it's never a pleasant moment. And there, there will be quite a few new things, quite a few discoveries!"
The IMOCA fleet will now have to negotiate the whims of the North Atlantic Ocean, with a storm front expected as early as Monday morning. "There will be good weather conditions for the start. Then a depression accompanied by a front will arrive quickly. That's always a bit of a stressful moment. You have to reduce the sail well, you have to do things well, cleanly. We've known from the start that on this transat, we're going against the weather systems. So everything will follow one another all the time, it won't be long days of reaching. So we'll have a sustained rhythm, where every 12 hours, we'll change the weather system" Clarisse emphasized.
Once this bad weather zone is crossed, Clarisse and the other skippers will then have to face a high pressure ridge, a zone without wind, before being able to continue their journey towards New York, their final destination. "There are a lot of new things like that, and I'm quite curious to see what it looks like" the sailor confessed.
This 2024 Transat CIC promises to be thrilling and full of challenges for the fleet. Arrival of the first boats to New York is expected in just over 8 days. Stay tuned!
