Around the world in 40 days
BY ADMIN • FEBRUARY 9, 2017 • BREAKING NEWS, HOMEMOSAIC, RACING • COMMENTS (0) • 140
© JM Liot / DPPI / IDEC SPORT
It’s not so long ago that the first non-stop circumnavigation under sail in less than 80 days was completed. In 1993 Bruno Peyron completed a circuit of the globe in 79 days, six hours and 15 minutes to become the first winner of the Jules Verne Trophy. One of the coolest trophies in the yacht racing sphere, it is in the form of a hull hovering over a magnetic field and therefore appears to be suspended in space. The shape of the trophy is defined by a set of curves proportional to the circumferences of the sun, the Earth and the moon.
Since 1993 the trophy has been won a further eight times, with the record time reducing to an impressive 45 days, 13 hours when Loick Peyron’s giant 130ft trimaran Banque Populaire V and her 14 strong crew completed their lap of the planet in 2012. At the time it appeared as though their record would be safe for a long time, but there have been numerous attempts to better Peyron’s time. Last season Francis Joyon’s 103ft Idec Sport challenged again for the trophy, but missed out on the record by two days, as did Dona Bertarelli’s Spindrift Racing (the former Banque Populaire V).
© JM Liot / DPPI / IDEC SPORT
This season Joyon set out again, with a crew of just six, but was forced to return when there was no clear path through the doldrums. He then set out for another attempt, crossing the start line off Ushant in north western France, on December 16, 2016. They sped quickly south, initially gaining a 200-mile advantage on Banque Populaire’s time. However, as they crossed the equator on day five the doldrums were only just relinquishing their grip on Joyon’s team and they had slipped back compared to the reference time.
However, they quickly recovered this and gained further ground in the Southern Ocean, where they were able to leave one weather system behind and hook into the one ahead, gaining a significant advantage. Idec Sport rounded Cape Horn after only 26 days and 15 hours, setting a new record more than four days ahead of the reference time.
© JM Liot / DPPI / IDEC SPORT
From there the team – Francis Joyon, Bernard Stamm, Alex Pella, Sébastien Audigane, Clément Surtel and Gwénolé Gahinet – had a fast passage north, taking less than 14 days to cover more than 7,000 miles between Cape Horn and Ushant. The final night gave no respite with rough and wet reaching conditions that saw the boat maintaining speeds of 30 knots or more under a deep reefed sail plan.
“We weren’t aiming for 40 days,” Joyon said after completing the voyage. “It was something we couldn’t even have imagined. Beating the record by a minute would already have been an achievement. Some people thought we were having a laugh trying to take up this challenge with such a small crew. It took us about two and a half circumnavigations to beat the record. That is around the same score for all the boats that have attempted the Jules Verne Trophy. Only Bruno Peyron managed it on his first attempt in 1993.”
A measure of the technology in these yachts, and the achievements of their crews, is that the record for a circumnavigation by a motor yacht stands at more than 60 days.
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