Shared visions on a "rocket ship" Sasha Lanièce and Susann Beucke team up on Alderan

Class40

Édition 2025 | 21 October 2025 - 16h45

Sanni Beucke, Germany’s 2021 Olympic silver medallist in the 49erFX skiff, and her French co-skipper Sasha Lanièce share the same fundamental objectives and ideals. Both are looking to empower and inspire women, but onboard their potent Class 40 Alderan, which they will race to Martinique from Le Havre on the TRANSAT CAFÉ L’OR, they have very different, complementary styles.

Lanièce is a doctor of data science by profession, Beucke an Olympic medallist, World and European champion and studies psychology.

Beucke observes, “It is an interesting partnership as we are very diverse, Sacha Is very numbers based, she loves to analyse and do numerical things and I am more intuitive and I love to trust my gut. We really meet in the middle. In the end Sacha is the skipper and we have a clear order of who is ultimately responsible. But we discuss and exchange all the time.”

Beucke is determined to attract more women into sailing and sport, under her ‘This Race is Female’ banner. Lanièce founded and runs the Les Deferlantes sailing team in whose colours she and Beucke race this famous double handed coffee route course, but they also have a Mini project too. Lanièce has already done four years on the Mini 6.50, including and MiniTransat on which she set a 24 hours speed record. She is looking to compete solo on next year’s Route du Rhum and then do this two handed race again in two years time.

But this will be Beucke’s first Transatlantic on a Class 40. “We have a really, really good boat under us, the old IBSA, but it is our first season. We have said to ourselves we would be happy to finish in the top 15 but we did the Les Sables Horta race together and it was a really nice experience together, so if we keep up the good work, get back to good routines and make a good strategy I think we would be happy with a top 15.”

After two seasons solo in the Figaro Beneteau 3 competing on La Solitaire, Beucke is clearly enjoying sailing double handed with a like minded, campaigning woman, “The Class 40 is such a cool boat, it is fast it is comfortable, you are trimming all the time, I learned that and it is nice to do the strategy together. On the Figaro you are all by yourself, you make your own mistakes yourself but you are not really learning, reflecting with another person so I learned a lot.”

She reflects, “This is our first participation and for me I am really, really excited as I have no idea what is going to happen. It is still quite crazy to me to be racing across the Atlantic.”

And for her it is a welcome bonus as she seeks to carve out her solo career, working towards racing round the world with her own project, “My career path goes up and down. I did a lot of work last year to try and keep my sponsors. But I started again pretty much from the beginning and Sacha came along and is enabling me to do this race on the Class40. And it is great to be doing this famous race. It is a great opportunity. And it is very cool to have some of the big names in our class like Michel Desjoyeaux and Vincent Riou.”

She concludes, “I am really looking forwards to being out there, just the two of us sailing. Usually at this point I am mostly just looking most forwards to the finish, but this time I am really looking forwards to being ou there. I like this boat and I want to experience sailing on it for a longer time.”

Their boat finished third on the 2023 race, “The boat is a very good reaching boat, really fast, on the Les Sables Horta race we were the fastest boat for two days reaching in 20-25knots, this is a bit more of a downwind course but for sure this boat is a machine, a rocket ship.”

Shared visions on a "rocket ship" Sasha Lanièce and Susann Beucke team up on Alderan

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