Nico d’Estais knew what he wanted to say before the Vendée Arctique even began. The French skipper, campaigning Café Joyeux, sees the race not as a footnote in his path to the Vendée Globe 2028, but as the kind of learning opportunity that money cannot buy. He is one of the newer names in the IMOCA cycle, stepping up from Class40, and he arrives at this Arctic venture with both hunger and clarity.
The course itself intrigues him most. Unlike traditional offshore races with their prescribed waypoints and familiar routing, the Vendée Arctique demands only that competitors cross the Arctic Circle and return. It is a blank canvas. D’Estais expects wildly divergent strategies, boats scattering across the polar ice to find wind and current in ways no two crews will chart identically. That chaos, he believes, is where the race finds its character.
“It’s a brilliant opportunity,” he said simply. “We’re heading somewhere most of us never sail. There aren’t many races like that.”
Where this venture might favour his campaign remains uncertain. D’Estais skippers the fleet’s only non-foiling IMOCA, a boat without the hydrofoil technology that gives rivals lift and speed in marginal breeze. High winds and steep seas loom ahead, conditions that suit foiling machines more than conventional hull designs. He does not pretend otherwise. Yet he frames it as a problem to solve, not a reason to accept defeat.
At the 1000 Race earlier in his campaign, he crossed the finish line with another boat behind him. Small victories matter in a cycle that leads to 2028. If he can repeat that feat here, if he can find even one or two rivals slower than his crew, he will take it. The Arctic may test his boat’s geometry and his own resourcefulness, but neither prospect frightens him.
What fires d’Estais is the sheer novelty. His team has navigated the IMOCA for only a short time. Learning curves exist for all of them. The Vendée Arctique offers polar waters as a classroom, where the boat speaks its truths without the noise of established competitive wisdom. For a skipper building toward the world’s toughest ocean race, that education matters more than a single podium.
