At 735 nautical miles long, the Banque Populaire Grand Ouest Trophy race, which starts Saturday at 1300hrs local time, is one of the most extended offshore courses of the 2024 season for Ireland’s Tom Dolan.
For the double-handed course, which will take four to five days, Dolan will resume his partnership with the young French co-skipper Paul Morvan, whom he sailed with on the Laura Vergne Trophy race earlier in the season, finishing in fourth place.
“It looks quite light and flukey so that it will be interesting. Certainly, the first 48 hours up to the Iles de Chausée look light and flukey. It will be important to be well positioned up there because it will stretch open after that.” Explained Dolan as he and Morvan prepared the Figaro Beneteau Smurfit Kappa-Kingspan.
The course takes the fleet out of Concarneau—where the Irish skipper lives now—up the Brittany coast to turn at the Iles de Chaussée, a set of small rocky islets just to the west, offshore of Granville, NE of Saint-Malo and Mont St Michel.
The 735 nautical miles long the Banque Populaire Grand Ouest Trophy race course
“Paul and I are ready to go. We know that we will not sleep much because there will be so much going on, lots of stop-starts, especially in the Channel.” Dolan adds, “The first part of the course promises to be particularly challenging as we will be working between the thermal breeze and the synoptic wind, which will make it interesting to the Channel Islands.”.
Morvan, whose background has been in ILCA 7 Olympic class dinghy racing, enthuses, “Tom and I complement each other perfectly. We have full confidence in each other. We are solid together.”
“Paul brings an extra layer of confidence; he is strong on starting and boat-on-boat racing, and I think together we are a good team.” Concludes Dolan, who is looking to better the eighth overall he placed last time with Brit Alan Roberts.
