Updated: Oct 23
For the Australian solo skipper Rupert Henry the Route du Rhum Destination Guadeloupe is unfinished business. Sailing his 2021 Lift V2 Class, Eora, Henry was one of the casualties relatively early in a 2022 edition which suffered a high rate of attrition. Suffering structural damage to a frame he had to sail back from near the Azores to La Coruna where his dream ended abruptly.
“When I got home I think I cried in the kitchen every night for a month.’ Henry recalls this week in the gentle sunshine blessing the Class40 dock in Saint Malo.
A successful engineer for whom the sale of his business has allowed him to pursue his offshore racing goals, Henry has been successful at home in Sydney offshore and at a high level in the ILCA 6 singlehander. But it is his love of the Class40 and a burning desire to complete this pinnacle ocean sprint from Saint-Malo to Guadeloupe.
His Eora is named in recognition of and with respect for the native Aboriginal people whose home was the extensive Sydney basin before it was developed. He is by all measures an amateur with no external funding help. But his biggest barrier to success is that he lives on the other side of the world to the French ocean racing scene and can only dedicate a few weeks each year to pursuing his Class40 programme.
Remind us of your career, one which has contributed to being able to self fund your project? I had a 30 year career in commercial construction, which is a great industry. So for the first 10 of that I worked for what was at that time Australia's largest contractor and then I started my own business which was in steel. So we did steel fabrication and then we ended up doing steel wholesaling out of Shanghai and sold all that to go sailing in 2019.
And this is your final attempt at the Rhum? These boats are so physical. I thought if I don't do it now, I won't have the strength and the stamina. And to be honest I'm probably one of the oldest guys in the Class 40 fleet. The biggest challenge with doing it as an Australian is coming over here and trying to do this race. As much as you love sailing, you leave everything else you love behind to come and do a race. In the past four years I've tried to do that twice a year, come over for the Normandy Channel Race or last year the single-handed stuff out to the Azores. But you end up living like a 50-year-old bachelor when you're in France and it's tough. And I love being home with my family and friends and sailing and life at home. But the this Class 40 sailing's been great. I feel like I've become a much better sailor for it. Which is, I guess, the ultimate goal.
And what did you learn from last time? For sure now four years on I'm much more experienced in Class 40 and as a sailor generally, an offshore sailor. I've tried in the past four years in the double-handed stuff to sail with the best French guys, like Corentin Douguet, Antoine Carpentier, Francois Guiffon, I have been conscious about trying to sail with good guys. They have been pro offshore sailors since the age of 20. And in terms of language my Franglais is not too bad. I learned at school and I've been working on it the past four years. But all these guys speak very good English.
The last three Sydney Hobarts I've done with guys I met through Class 40s. I did it with Jack Boutell. We won the Sydney-Hobart Double-handed in 2023 together, then with Corentin Douguet in 2024 we won again. And last year I sailed with Pablo Santurde. He is one best in the class.
How do you feel you're prepared and ready to go, what are you hoping for? Look, I don't know. For me, as my friends in Australia say, finishing will be victory. So, you know, it's fine. I'm not a pro. I'm not going to be up the front end, and I'm happy with that.
How many days have you sailed on the boat this year? I don't know, maybe 20. It is hard because of the tyranny of distance. Anyway, that's what it is.It's for the pursuit of sailing, which is a lovely art form.
".....I think I cried in the kitchen every night for a month....."
What's your general strategy in terms of getting to the finish line? I don't know (laughs) I want to keep the boat, myself and the boat in one piece. Last time was a disaster. I had to sail back just from just short of the Azores. Took me two and a half days to sail back to Portugal. And after that when I got home I think I cried in the kitchen every night for a month. So I'm hoping not to repeat that, I just abandoned the boat in La Coruna in the end. And just flew home. I was just so disappointed. But, you know, I learned a lot out of that failure.
What are the key things you take with you this time? Well, maybe try and check the boat more thoroughly. And prioritise the checking. God, I hope I'm not jinxing myself. But go for the structural connections first. And work down from there. But last year was actually a bulkhead collapsed. But the race was horrendous, 17 Class 40s pulled out. A lot of these broke their masts. So let's hope the weather's not that bad this time! You're hoping.
"For me, this is it"
Do you have ambitions beyond this race? For me, this is it. I mean, if I lived in Europe, I'd be thinking of more. But it's the distance and the travel. It is hard to bring friends and family along. They've got their own lives happening down there. It is expensive, of course, but just the inconvenience too.
So what got you into this in the first place? I've always liked offshore sailing and espcially shorthanded. When we had a young family, we had quite a large cruising yacht, so I ended up having to sail that single-handed while the kids were asleep and maybe my wife was a bit under the weather. That sort of gave me a little taste for it. And then in 2016, I was driving through Port-La-Foret. I was delivering a 420 dinghy, my son's a great dinghy sailor and I was moving a 420 to the French Championships with him and we stopped because it's a famous port and I saw the first Class 40 I'd ever seen, that was in 2016. So I thought, that's for me. Try and wrap up the business, get a boat designed and build one.
How have you developed the boat since the last four years?Since the last four years, we've optimised it quite a bit actually. We put a new Lombard-designed keel, so the keel's swept aft, just basically moved the longitudinal centre of gravity aft. We cut out the cockpit and put a new cockpit in. Rearranged the ballast configurations.
You love all that stuff, the technical geeky stuff? I've an engineering background, I’m that kind of guy. So that was fun. It's stressful trying to manage things, work getting done when you're not even in the country. But anyway, live and learn, right?
Do you have aspirations for any place, any position in the fleet? I’d like to be the first old guy that pays his own bills. That's my goal in every race I do!
" I’d like to be the first old guy that pays his own bills....."