Among the most extreme and captivating craft in offshore sailing are the boats of the Ultim class – 100-foot-long trimarans, most of them fully foiling, designed to race around the world either single-handed or with a small crew.
There are currently only seven of these astonishing yachts in existence, and they’re reserved for the elite: highly experienced sailors with serious silverware to their names.
At just 28 years old, Tom Laperche is skipper of the newest Ultim afloat: SVR-Lazartigue. In short, he’s climbing the ranks faster than anyone before him. Like so many of France’s top sailors, Tom hails from Brittany – specifically La Trinité-sur-Mer, a small town on Quiberon Bay long regarded as the beating heart of the country’s offshore multihull scene.
“Growing up in La Trinité, sailing was inevitable,” Tom recalls. “I started dreaming of becoming a sailor pretty young. As a family, we’d go sailing on our holidays so I quickly started accumulating hours offshore. I sailed Optis, I did a lot of windsurfing, and then some Open 5.70 and Open 7.50 for the club in La Trinité. While I was studying, I sailed the Flying Phantom with Tim Mourniac – that was quite a lot of fun.”
As is increasingly common among elite offshore sailors, Laperche studied engineering – in his case, at UTC Compiègne. Sailing was still front of mind for the young Frenchman, but smartly he decided to prioritise his academic endeavours.
Shortly after starting his degree he took part in the trials for Team Région Bretagne – CMB for a place in the team and a chance to campaign a Beneteau Figaro 3 in the French Elite Offshore Racing Championship – which included the legendary Solitaire du Figaro.
“I did the trials, but just to have a look,” he says. “I’d already decided that regardless of the outcome I’d finish my studies. Two years later everything clicked: in November I passed my final exams, in December I won the next trials, and a month later I started sailing on the new Figaro 3.”
Winning the selection trials is, as Tom puts it, “a million dollar contract”. The chosen sailor gets two seasons as the ‘Youth’ skipper, followed by two more as the ‘Performance’ skipper, with a season budget of €250,000.
At the end of his first year on the Figaro circuit, Laperche had begun an internship at François Gabart’s MerConcept – the organisation then building the new 100-foot trimaran that would become SVR-Lazartigue.
2020 saw Laperche step up his game. He won his first race on the Figaro circuit and finished third overall in that year’s Solitaire du Figaro. In 2021, as Performance skipper, he matched that result in the Solitaire again. But that wasn’t the end of his season. At just 24, he was tapped by Gabart to co-skipper SVR-Lazartigue in the Transat Jacques Vabre.
“Before the boat was launched that summer, François offered me the role of co-skipper,: Laperche recounts. And right away, he mentioned the idea of me becoming the skipper of the boat in the medium term for an upcoming solo race around the world.”
That solo race would be the inaugural Arkea Ultim Challenge which took place in 2024. Despite the daunting prospect of solo-skippering a 100-foot multihull around the world non-stop, Laperche was mostly unfazed by the challenge.
“The idea of going around the world on my own on these boats is – for me – the pinnacle of offshore racing. It did scare me. I asked myself a lot of questions, the most important one being did I think I was capable of doing it, so it took me a while to answer. But on the other hand, the Transat Jacques Vabre is double-handed, so less of a challenge. And it would be with François so there’d be a big learning part I was very happy about.”
Gabart and Laperche went on to finish second in the 2021 Transat Jacques Vabre – the highly technical trimaran's first competitive outing.
In 2022, now in his final season with Team Région Bretagne – CMB, Tom returned with unfinished business. Nicknamed “Tom LaPorsche” for his renowned boat speed, he swept the board in the build-up events with a remarkable string of three back-to-back victories. It was a feat the class had never seen before and made him the clear favourite for the season’s climax – the Solitaire du Figaro.
“I noticed a shift in my status between 2021 and 2022, where I became the leader of the class,” Laperche remembers. “I’d won all the races that season which made me the favourite for the Solitaire – and I had no issue with that. I was happy to be the favourite, but the Solitaire is a particular race. It has many twists and turns and sometimes some randomness is thrown into the mix. With this race, one bad choice and you can lose everything.”
This time there were no bad choices. After a ninth and a third in the opening two stages, won the final stage to claim overall victory.
With this key victory under his belt, switched his focus to step into his mentor Gabart’s sea boots and to skipper SVR-Lazartigue in the Arkea Ultim Challenge in January 2024. To gain Southern Ocean experience, he joined the crew of the Holcim-PRB IMOCA for the first three legs of The Ocean Race.
“I was more or less the navigator on the boat,” Laperche recalls. “It was a great experience, my first real one on a foiling IMOCA. We won the first two legs and finished second on Leg 3. So when I stepped off we were only one point down from the maximum available.”
Sadly, Tom’s first solo round-the-world attempt came to a premature end.
On the eleventh day of the race – and while in second place and battling for the lead with Charles Caudrelier on Maxi Edmond de Rothschild – the SVR-Lazartigue trimaran’s rudder struck an unidentifiable floating object while travelling at speed.
The severe impact drove the blade back so hard it cracked open the central hull and caused a major water intake. With no chance of affecting any sort of meaningful repairs on his own at sea, Laperche reluctantly stopped racing and headed for Cape Town.
The year didn’t get easier for the SVR-Lazartigue team. Multiple winter attempts at the Jules Verne Trophy (fastest non-stop circumnavigation) also came up short.
“There is a bit of disappointment because we didn’t go very far,” Laperche admits. “But we ended up sailing quite a bit and learned a lot about the boat.”
In 2025, Laperche’s focus is on double-handed racing, with this autumn’s rebranded Transat Café L’Or (formerly Transat Jacques Vabre) as the marquee event. Tom has brought in arguably the biggest name in French offshore racing as his co-skipper – in the form of Franck Cammas.
“I’d been thinking of Franck for a while now, so I was happy that when I called him he said yes quite quickly," says Laperche. “No one has more experience on these boats than him. In addition to being a great sailor he’s also excellent on shore as a boat developer – I’m counting on him a lot for that part.”
In 2026 Laperche will line up for his first ever Route du Rhum – a race he’s dreamed of since childhood. In 2010 his father finished fifth in the Multi50 class, and a then-13-year-old Laperche helped sail the boat home from Guadeloupe.
What, then, does the future hold for Tom Laperche?
“SVR-Lazartigue is signed on until 2027,” he says “Our main goal is to succeed in continuing this partnership for the 2028 edition of the Arkea Ultim Challenge. Post Arkea, I don’t really know – I’m not thinking that far ahead. I'm interested in the America’s Cup, there’s a parallel between my project and the Cup with both being cutting-edge in their domain. It would be too difficult to do both projects simultaneously, but it is something that interests me.”
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