© © Jean-Louis Carli / Alea / Retour à La Base

Sébastien Marsset crossed the finish line of the first edition of the Retour à La Base in twenty-first position at 5:37 on Tuesday 12th December. The skipper of "Foussier - Mon Courtier Energie" will have covered the 3,500 theoretical miles of the course in the space of 12 days 00 hours 37 minutes 59 seconds, at an average speed of 12.12 knots. After a frustrating start and a technical stopover right from the start, the sturdy Breton quickly regained his composure and clawed his way back into the pack, even making a fine comeback in the rankings. In the end, he actually covered 4176.31 miles at an average speed of 14.47 knots.

 

He said on the pontoon

The skipper had to come back to Fort-de-France with power problems but restarted quickly…..
“After my false start and my keel battery problems, I just took things day by day. I had fun on the race course but I must say that the last few days were hard.
Like everyone else I've had my share of difficulties, things happened, I had a lot of water in the boat with my access hatch to the keel because it came loose. Overall I'm super happy because after a month and a half now I have ticked off all the objectives we had to tick for the 2024 season and the Vendée Globe, it's great. I left Martinique without a lot of confidence in the boat. We lost the J2 forestay on the way out (on the Transat Jacques Vabre) and the keel batteries did not charge at the start of the race, so I did not end up with a lot of confidence in the boat. Throughout the race I had to rebuild more confidence in the boat. In the end it was super interesting, especially the end of the race with a view towards the Vendée. I learned a lot about sail configurations, the sea state, the conditions we sailed in. It was very interesting and I learned a lot from it!"