The Transat JACQUES VABRE is an event organized by Pen Duick with the participation of the city of Le Havre for the start arrangements and the city of Puerto Limon for the arrival arrangements with the support of the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ICT, in Spanish).
Together with the ICT, the enterprise Transat CR, representative of Pen Duick in Costa Rica, Japdeva, the Commerce and Tourism Chamber of the Province of Limón and, of course, the Municipality of Limon, are the Executive Committee of Transat in Costa Rica.
The Concept
Transat Jacques Vabre is a regatta organized every two years. The race is a double-handed race.
Each boat must have the only two-people-crew during the whole competition on board.
Transat is open to the monohulls and multihulls, divided in two different classes:
- IMOCA Class Monohulls as defined by IMOCA handicap rules.
- Class 2 Monohulls Monohulls from 45.1’ to 50’ as defined in FICO rules.
- Class 50 Multihulls as defined by Class 50 open Rules.
- Class 40 Monohulls as defined by Class 40 rules.
The starting point
The boats began the competition in the French Port of Le Havre on Sunday 8th at 2pm (the multihulls) and at 2:30pm (the monohulls).
The novelty
The innovation for this 9th Edition is the “BLACK OUT”: between the starting point and the arrival point the sailors have the possibility of not giving their position during 24 hours. It represents a whole day to take an option, try a different strategy or get rid of a competitor that is following them very close.
The prizes
The global amount of the prizes is US$215,000 (around 125 million colones).
The Journey: Le Havre – Port Limón
The monohull boats must leave the Dominican Republic starboard.
The multihull boats must leave the Barbados starboard.
After La Mancha, the monohull boats will continue a route towards the Dominican Republic where they must leave starboard before getting to the Caribbean Sea, while the multihulls must go around Barbados, south the Antilles, before directing with the monohulls to Costa Rica.
There will be a journey of 4730 nautical miles for the monohulls and 5005 for the multihulls. The journey for the multihulls and the monohulls will differ for being tougher on the Mona way for the monohulls and for the multihulls when choosing between a straight way to Barbados or bordering south looking for trade winds.
In La Mancha there will be all kinds of winds this November: 15% chance of having very strong winds, about 30% of excessively soft winds and a 50% possibility to have normal winds. Once in the Atlantic, the monohulls must be prepared to face disturbances of the North Atlantic. They are rarely stormy during this season but the winds and the waves do not always play well.
The transition to the trade winds could happen very fast in favor of the Occidental North with an unstable wind after a disturbance passage.
For the multihulls, the strategy will be a determination between an almost-straight-way through the archipelago of the Azores and the route of the trade winds. For the Southerner way, the crew must be very intuitive to avoid the Gascona Gulf with the idea of getting Portugal trade winds.
If there is not so much threat with the Azores anticyclone, the calculus will consist to evaluate the previous and ample surround: up to “where” we should go to get the trade winds?
The conditions will be similar in the Caribbean Sea. The trade winds from the northeast will sometimes be chaotic and the conditions will be more random when getting closer to Costa Rica.
There will be a lot of surprises with the “Northern Wind”. This kind of wind is a characteristic of the winter in America.
Jacques Vabre sustainable sponsor
Jacques Vabre is a coffee brand distributed in France, property of the American group of Kraft Food. Jacques Vabre, a professor, was born in 1921 in the city of Montpellier in the south of France. He decided to continue with the coffee enterprise of his father in 1952.
In 1958, it was the first brand in the whole Europe to sell grounded coffee “sous vide”, vacuumed. Since 20 years ago, the communication of Jacques Vabre is focused on its own capacity to bring the best coffees from Latin America. But it is with the Transat, that takes its name, when Jacques Vabre really started the communication with great ample.
It is a symbol for the brand to organize a competition between the port of Le Havre, port of the arrival of the Latin America coffee, and the ports of the countries that produce the coffee. Because 95% of the coffee is transported by boat and it is one of the main commerce products transported from one side of the Atlantic to the other side.
In Costa Rica, Jacques Vabre buys its coffee from Aquiares near the Turrialba Volcano. “La Finca”, certified Rainforest Alliance, counts with 917 hectares where 675 are exclusively use to grow coffee.
The main thematic of the Jacques Vabre communication for the 2009 Edition, is to “Take care the oceans to preserve the planet” (“Prendre la mer, Agir pour la terre”). Jacques Vabre and all the participants are coming with a great illusion to Costa Rica, because of its image of being committed with the environment protection and sustainability.
Costa Rica’s image in Europe, the program “En Paz con la Naturaleza” (“In Peace with Nature”), and the commitment of the country to act for a sustainable development were enough reasons why Costa Rica was chosen among destinations such as Panama and Mexico. The commitment of the Transat with the topic of the environment was one of the reasons which President Oscar Arias declared this nautical competition as an event of Public and National Interest by decree (Official Newspaper La Gaceta, Friday September 4th, 2009).
And because of being sustainable, Transat Jacques Vabre wants to arrive four times continuously 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015.
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