Figaro : les dernières infos Tip & Shaft

French based Irish skipper Tom Dolan (Smurfit Kappa) will sail the Tour de Bretagne à la Voile with aspiring young Turkish solo racer Ediz Onen. In the new Figaro Beneteau 3, the Smurfit Kappa skipper had a mixed La Solitaire URGO Le Figaro, showing many bright moments, but was ultimately disappointed to come away with 32nd. Tip & Shaft caught up with Tom in between training sessions with the Lorient group. 

After finishing top rookie in 2016, British solo racer Will Harris finished 22nd of his second Solitaire URGO Le Figaro. Tip & Shaft caught up with the 25 year old from Surrey in Dieppe last Thursday. 

On Sunday 47 solo sailors took the start of the first leg of the 50th La Solitaire URGO Le Figaro to KInsale, Ireland. As we do before each major race Tip & Shaft speak with a panel of experts, soliciting their ideas of who might win. This time, with the introduction of the new Figaro Beneteau 3, the month long, four stage race is very open and hard to call. Nontheless a stellar panel have put their necks on the line including the last two winners of the Solitaire, Sébastien Simon and Nicolas Lunven, as well as Charlie Dalin, Sam Davies, Paul Meilhat, Pascal Bidégorry, Tanguy Leglatin, coach of the Lorient race group, Denis Hugues who is race director of Solo Maitre CoQ, Charles Darbyshire head of the Offshore Academy in England, journalists Serge Messager (Le Figaro) and Frédéric Pelatan (Journal de Nautisme).

On June 2nd the fiftieth Solitaire Urgo Le Figaro will start in Nantes with four legs taking the 47 solo skippers to Kinsale, Roscoff and Dieppe  a total of 2,115 miles. Ten days before the start of this special edition with the new Figaro Bénéteau 3, Tip & Shaft chats with the race director, Francis Le Goff.

The first race for the new Figaro Bénéteau 3, the Sardinha Cup was certainly exciting at sea with victory going to Yann Eliès and Sam Davies (StMichel), but a lot happened ashore too with a number of technical problems which led to a series of meetings. Tip & Shaft identifies the lessons learnt from this race with several of the participants (Yann Eliès, Jérémie Beyou, Anthony Marchand, Fred Duthil, Gildas Mahé and Pierre Quiroga) and the Race Director, Francis Le Goff.