GUYOT Environnement-Team Europe face challenges to return in 2023 The Ocean Race after dismasting

GUYOT Environnement-Team Europe are weighing up when they can return to The Ocean Race after losing their mast on Leg 4.

Despite the frustration and uncertainty about the reasons for the mast mishap, Dutreux is trying to look ahead to the next stage of the adventure, even if he recognises that the budgetary constraints pose some concerns for a team of this size.

A race against the clock was brilliantly won, but fate intervened again when the mast broke as they approached Newport.

“There was wind and sea, and even though we were fairly conservative, being only under mainsail with three reefs, the boat was hitting hard,” says Dutreux.

Disappointed and inevitably frustrated, Dutreux is all the more so because he still doesn’t know the reasons for the dismasting.

“As everything is instrumented now, we know that all the tensions were good and that everything fell at the same time. So we don’t know why, and it’s even more frustrating”, he says.

While waiting to find the origin of the incident, GUYOT Environnement-Team Europe must face another unanswered question: when will the boat be able to go back to sea and compete?

If Holcim-PRB, skippered by Kevin Escoffier, will be able to attack again in the next leg despite their dismasting during Leg 4, it is another story for GUYOT Environnement-Team Europe.

As they wait for a “real study of the boat” to know the extent of the damage, the team already knows that it will have to give up Leg 5, which starts on May 21 and features a transatlantic race from Newport to Denmark.

It is planned for a cargo ship to bring the boat back to Europe and the team intend to keep going at The Ocean Race, even if it looks “very complicated” for the start of Leg 6 in early June.

“There is a 50% chance that we will be in Aarhus and 90% in The Hague [for the start of leg 7],” says Dutreux.

“For that, we have to find another team that agrees to lend us a mast. We know that some teams have spare masts on the shelf, we have to see if they agree to lend it to us or rent it to us. It is possible but it is also a question of money. We must not jeopardise our future projects.

“We are the smallest team in The Ocean Race. We have a young team that doesn’t necessarily have the same means as the others. Here, we may reach our budgetary limits.”

While the team is determined “not to get into trouble” for the future, the desire to return is nevertheless strong.

“We have lived through difficult moments since the beginning but we have also lived through magical moments and it’s been more than five months since we left home, so it would be nice to close this project with a last step for the morale,” concludes the skipper.

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