Most people who have heard of the Vendee Globe have never heard of La Solitaire du Figaro, and that is a shame, because the Figaro is where half those round-the-world skippers learned to sail alone. It is the toughest solo race you can follow on an ordinary cruising budget, and unlike a single grand start it gives you several stopover ports over a couple of weeks. You do not chase one departure. You can follow the whole circus around the coast, dipping in and out as your own cruise allows.
I have followed two editions in fragments, catching a leg start here and a finish there while pottering along the same coastline. It is the most rewarding way I know to combine a normal summer cruise with front-row racing.
What the race actually is
La Solitaire du Figaro is a solo offshore race run in stages, with all competitors sailing the same one-design boat, the Figaro Beneteau 3, a 10.85 metre foiling monohull. Because everyone has identical boats, it is a pure test of the sailor. The 2025 edition, the 56th, was made up of three legs covering 1,850 nautical miles, with 35 skippers on the line, including 13 newcomers, 8 women and 5 sailors from outside France. It is annual, not every-four-years, so there is a fresh edition to follow each season.
The course changes every year. The 2025 race did something unusual, starting on the Seine at Rouen and running down to Cape Finisterre, with one leg of 638 miles between the Baie de Seine and the Baie de Morlaix and another of 450 miles from Vigo in Spain to Pornichet. So the first thing to do, every year, is check the published route and the stopover ports, because that is where you decide which bits to follow.
Why it suits a cruising sailor
A single race start is a one-shot event. You either make it or you miss it. The Figaro is different. The fleet sails a leg, then sits in a stopover port for a few days before the next start. That rhythm is a gift to a cruiser:
- You can plan your own passages to coincide with a stopover
- You get to walk the pontoons and study the boats while they are in port
- You can watch a leg start, then carry on cruising while the fleet races
- You can rejoin them at the next port if your route allows
Because the ports change yearly, the race tours different stretches of the French coast, often the Atlantic seaboard and Brittany. In a year when it visits ports you were heading to anyway, following the fleet costs you almost nothing extra.
Watching a leg start from the water
Each leg starts with a line in open water off the stopover port, and as a spectator afloat this is the moment to aim for. The starts are smaller and more intimate than a Vendee Globe departure, 35 identical boats rather than 40 ocean giants, but that sameness makes the tactics easy to read. You watch the fleet split, some boats going inshore, some offshore, and within minutes you can see who has called the wind right.
The usual rules apply. The organisers and local authorities set up a start area that spectator craft must keep clear of, patrolled by safety boats. Before you head out:
- Find the published start time and the approximate line position
- Stay well clear of the line and the committee boat
- Keep out of the racing lanes as the fleet manoeuvres before the gun
- Monitor the local VHF for any race or safety broadcast
- Watch your wash near the racing boats
The Figaro starts are short on ceremony and long on tactics. Sit to leeward of the line where you can watch the whole fleet bear away together, and you will learn more about offshore strategy in ten minutes than in a season of reading.
Where the fleet goes, and how to be there
Because the route shifts, the right preparation is to read each year's announced stopovers and match them to your cruising plans. In years when the race runs down the Atlantic coast, the natural place to intercept it is around the great offshore-sailing towns of the region. Les Sables-d'Olonne, home of the Vendee Globe, often features in this world, and if a leg starts or finishes nearby my les sables dolonne marina guide will help you find a berth in what becomes a busy town during any race event.
When the course runs through Brittany, the stopovers tend to cluster around the sailing-mad ports of the south coast and the approaches to Morlaix in the north. Either way, get into the relevant port a day or two before the fleet, because berths fill once the race village sets up.
Mind the same water the racers do
Following the Figaro means sailing the same exposed coast the competitors race on, and the Bay of Biscay and the Brittany approaches are not to be taken lightly. The 2025 second leg ran 450 miles up from Vigo across open water, and even the inshore legs cross serious tidal gates and the long Atlantic swell. As a cruiser you face the same weather the skippers do, just with the option to stay in port when it turns nasty.
Read the conditions properly before each hop. The Atlantic swell behaves differently from the Med, and the tides on this coast run hard. I keep my notes on the atlantic tides crash course close at hand when I am working this stretch, and the timing of your own passages between stopovers depends on getting them right.
The pleasure of the pontoon
The unsung joy of following the Figaro is the port time. The boats are identical, so when you walk the line you are looking at how 35 sailors set up the same hull differently, the sail wardrobes, the deck layouts, the personal touches in the cabin where they will sleep in 20-minute snatches for days. The skippers are accessible in a way the Vendee Globe stars are not, and the fleet has a friendly, almost amateur warmth despite the brutal level of the racing.
The race village in each stopover is open to the public, and the skippers are usually around their boats between legs, tweaking, drying kit and grabbing sleep. They are generous with their time when they have it, and a polite question about how they set up for the next leg often gets a proper answer. For anyone thinking of stepping up from cruising to short-handed racing, a few days hanging around a Figaro village is worth more than any book.
If the Figaro hooks you, the progression is obvious. These are the boats and the sailors that feed the big solo classics. Watching the route du rhum spectator start at Saint-Malo or the great round-the-world departure further south is the next chapter, and you will recognise half the names from the Figaro pontoons.
The short version
Check this year's route and stopover ports first, because they change every edition. Use the stages to your advantage: time your own passages to catch a leg start, walk the pontoons in port, then cruise on and rejoin the fleet down the coast. Watch the starts from to leeward of the line, keep clear of the racing lanes, and read the Atlantic weather and tides as carefully as the skippers do. It is the most accessible front-row seat in French offshore racing, and it folds neatly into any summer on the water.
