Normandy Channel Race 2026 Day 2

Normandy Channel Race 2026 Day 1 © Jean-Marie Liot / CIC NCR2026

First Express English Channel Crossing

Departing at 2:00 PM on Sunday from the Caen-Ouistreham bay, the 22 Class40s of the 17th edition of the CIC NORMANDY CHANNEL RACE headed towards the Saint-Marcouf Islands at the foot of the Cotentin Peninsula, the first waypoint.

They reached the islands around 8:45 PM, with Quentin le Nabour and Thierry Chabagny in the lead on BLEU BLANC PLANETE LOCATION. The leading group, which also included SOGESTRAN - SEAFRIGO and LEGALLAIS, then sailed along the eastern Cotentin coast, reaching Barfleur around 10:00 PM and beginning the first crossing of the English Channel. A lightning-fast crossing, as the 60 miles were covered in 5 hours, with the first Class40s arriving at the eastern entrance to the Solent at 3:15 AM.

As expected, the first hours of the race saw intense competition after a beautiful coastal course starting from the Caen-Ouistreham bay under a sky of impressionistic hues. The competitors then headed towards the D-Day landing beaches, and just days before the June 6th commemorations, the American crew of SWIFT, Greg Leonard and his son Hannes (7 participations), couldn't contain their emotion: "It was a spectacular sail close up to the D-Day beaches. So impossible to imagine how different it was 82 years ago and the courage that was on display here. Very humbling."

The Saint-Marcouf mark, a major traditional landmark of the race, followed, then the journey up the eastern Cotentin Peninsula. As night fell, the first Channel crossing was on the horizon, always a tricky passage because, even though the route was outside the official traffic separation schemes, commercial shipping traffic was still very much present, both in the shipping lanes heading south in the Channel and in the lanes heading south along the English coast.

The arrival at the Isle of Wight and the infamous Solent was also one of the "totems" of the CIC Normandy Channel Race, often leaving crews with painful memories of sudden braking against the current, sandbanks, or unlit buoys. Arriving with the current, the leading boats were at 08:30, near the western exit of the Needles, but the opposing current was starting to affect their speeds.

A first group of about ten competitors had already exited the Solent or were about to, with LEGALLAIS in the lead, followed by SOGESTRAN - SEAFRIGO, while the third, BLEU BLANC PLANÈTE LOCATION, had taken a more southerly route. The second group, a few miles away in the western branch of the Solent, was already struggling against the current and wind. A third group, currently off Cowes, will have even more difficulty extricating themselves from this famous and beautiful stretch of water. For all of them, it will then be down the southwest coast of England in around twenty knots of wind, with an expected arrival tomorrow morning near Land's End.

To follow the race: normandy-race.com/suivre-la-course