One of the most known sailboat competitions in the World, the famous Transat Jacques Vabre, left this Wednesday the French port Le Havre with 35 participants that will sail their boats to Puerto Limón, one of most visited destinies of Costa Rica tourism, where they expect to get by the 14th of this upcoming November.

Two years ago, the Transat arrived to Costa Rica for the first time, and the winners at that time were the Safran monohull and the multihull Wahou, becoming part of Costa Rica history, who are participating once more on this new edition. In this new edition, 36 sailboats were planned, but one was left out due to technical problems at the last minute. Now these participants are sailing to take The Safran and The Wahou’s place of the last arrival to the country.

Costa Rica’s Transat coordinator, Jacques Lanusse, informed that the competition’s departure had to be rescheduled from last Sunday to this Wednesday because of the bad weather. Still the weather experts and the weather forecasts for the next days point that the first sailors will arrive to Limón this November 14th as planned.

“The competition started this Wednesday at 3 p.m. (8 a.m. in Costa Rica) and the wind accompanying the participants during this first week is expected to give them wings to turn 15 days into 12 or 13”, Lanusse said.

On the other hand, the arrival of the competition to our country was close to be cancelled due to a lack of organization from the event organizers and the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo (ICT). However, the organizers found a way that Japdeva and the ICT could lower the costs even if this was sacrificing their participation on the sailors’ departure in France, where Lanusse assured were more than 320 000 people, and for this Wednesday during the departure and because is a weekday was expected to be around 60 000 people.

“Windy conditions are expected on this first week of competition. Luckily on the Caribbean hurricanes are not forecast, even though small storms are expected. This forces the participants to use the take advantage of weather conditions’ strategy” informed Lanusse.

About the arrival of the sailors to Costa Rica, the fair that the ICT had initially planned was changed to a small Caribbean party and a gala dinner as a welcome. Plus the free access to the pier on those days becomes one of the best travel deals to Costa Rica!

Below you can see the map in how the boats are doing in this Amazing Race! Do not miss any detail: