Coville and navigator Benjamin Schwartz, along with Frédéric Denis, Pierre Leboucher, Léonard Legrand, Guillaume Pirouelle, crossed the finish line between France’s Ushant and England’s Lizard Point at 0746 French time on Sunday morning after nursing their 32-metre (105-foot) boat for two days through the horrendous wind and waves of the intense Atlantic storm ‘Ingrid’.
Sodebo’s new record time is 12 hours and 45 minutes quicker than the previous one set by another French crew led by Francis Joyon on the 100-foot trimaran IDEC Sport back in 2017.
While Coville and his cohorts will no doubt be rightfully delighted to have finally bettered Joyon’s eight-year-old record, they had for much of their high-speed lap of the planet looked set to break the mythical 40-day barrier. After setting new record times from the start to the equator (four days and four hours) and to Australia’s Cape Leeuwin (17 days and one hour), they crossed the Pacific in seven days, 12 hours and 12 minutes.
By the time they recrossed the equator on the way back north up the Atlantic they were 20 hours and 49 minutes up on IDEC Sport’s 2017 pace. The 40 day milestone looked set to be surpassed, but Coville’s crew and his team of expert weather routers back on land were well aware that storm Ingrid would slow the French team down significantly over the final 1,000 miles.
Sailing well outside the design parameters for the boat – and likely their own experience – the French sailors put on a masterclass of seamanship to keep their boat free from major damage as they crossed the notoriously treacherous seas in the Bay of Biscay on the way to the Jules Verne Trophy finish line.
So Joyon’s JVT record has finally fallen. How long this new record will stand is hard to predict. Coville’s Ultim is one of a handful of monster-sized foiling Ultim multihulls capable of such remarkable sustained open-ocean speeds.
However, February 14 sees the launch of Gitana 18, the new Gitana/Verdier-designed Maxi Edmond de Rothschild in Lorient, Brittany – a boat reputed to be able to deliver 100 per cent flight on record attempts such as the Jules Verne Trophy.
And later in the year we could see the launch of Giovanni Soldini’s Ferrari Hypersail ocean-going foiling monohull – another groundbreaking project designed specifically to smash open-ocean records.
