In doing so, the crew – skippered by Alex Barrier (FRA) and Dee Caffari (GBR) – have become the first all-women crew to sail nonstop around the world.
When Barrier and Caffari, along with Annemieke Bes (NED), Rebecca Gmür Hornell (NZL), Deborah Blair (GBR), Molly Lambert LaPointe (USA/ITA), Támara Echegoyen (ESP), and Stacey Jackson (USA), departed at the end of November last year, the crew had hopes of beating Francis Joyon’s 2017 fully crewed circumnavigation time of 40 days and 23 hours aboard the same boat – then named IDEC Sport.
However, a jammed halyard hook on the 100-foot trimaran’s mainsail shortly after passing the Cape of Good Hope put paid to any hopes of sailing the boat to its full potential.
Rather than concede defeat at that point by pulling into Cape Town for repairs, the sailors took the collective decision to press on with the secondary goal of becoming the first female crew to complete a nonstop circumnavigation.
Further mainsail damage and the ferocity of Atlantic storm Ingrid in the final days of the passage meant more delays, before the international crew could eventually nurse their boat across the finish line and head for a well-deserved warm welcome in the nearby French port of Brest.
