The Famous Project CIC, the all-women challenge for the Jules Verne Trophy, the non-stop around the world record, departed on Saturday 29 November.

The team, which is skippered by French former Vendée Globe skipper Alexia Barrier and was set up together with British record-breaking yachtswoman Dee Caffari, is aiming to become the first all-female crew to complete a Jules Verne attempt.

But above all they are chasing one of the all-time great sailing records, the non-stop, no-holds-barred around the world record time, which currently stands at 40 days and 23 hours, set by Idec Sport in 2017.

As Dee Caffari posted on her Facebook page: “Sh*t is about to get real!”

Barrier and Caffari are racing with Annemieke Bes, Rebecca Gmuer, Deb Blair, Molly Lapointe, Xiquita Etchegoyen, and Stacey Jackson aboard Idec Sport, the same maxi-trimaran which set the current Jules Verne record in 2017, skippered by Francis Joyon.

The Famous Project CIC, 100% women crew, crossing the start line for Trophée Jules Verne on November 29, in Brest, France. Photo by Jean-Marie Liot / The Famous Project CIC

Starting a Jules Verne challenge

The Jules Verne Trophy has an official start/finish line between the Créac’h lighthouse on the island of Ouessant, France, and Lizard Point lighthouse on the southernmost tip of England.

Crews must sail around the world, passing Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin, and Cape Horn to port, before crossing the same line in the opposite direction to finish – a ‘great circle’ distance of 21,760 nautical miles (40,300km).

But the Jules Verne has no set start time, so teams may leave whenever their weather routers believe a suitable window of opportunity for a fast Atlantic descent is opening up.The Famous Project first moved to what’s known as ‘Code Green’, or ready to depart. Having left Brest, they crossed the line at 01.40 UTC (14 h 40 FR) on Saturday, November 29.

The Jules Verne Trophy course

Toughest 24 hours at start

The Famous Project crew set off in tough conditions with a blustery north-westerly, and will immediately face 4-5m waves in the Bay of Biscay.

“I feel very lucky and grateful for all the work that has been done over the last few months and years, all together. It’s really a collective celebration to be at the starting line,” said Barrier.

“Obviously, I’m a little nervous because what we’re doing is huge. But what reassures me a lot is having these incredible girls by my side. I’m not alone and I know my team is up to the task.

“We’ll be sailing downwind until we reach the equator. These are conditions we know well. Further on, the doldrums are still shifting.

“As Brian Thompson, who has helped us a lot throughout this training course on trimarans with the girls, would say, ‘You’re going to experience the toughest 24 hours of your Jules Verne Trophy.’ So we need to stay focused and conservative so we don’t hurt ourselves or break anything on the first day.”

Boat and crew of The Famous Project CIC, 100% women crew, before start for Trophée Jules Verne on November 29, in Brest, France. Photo by Jean-Marie Liot / The Famous Project CIC

“I’m surprisingly calm, but I think I’m calm to help everyone else, because you can feel a certain nervousness,” said Dee Caffari on the morning of the start.

“The main goal has always been to get to the starting line, and I think today we took a big step forward. It’s an important milestone, and I think it deserves a little celebration.

“It’s been a long road, with ups and downs, but Alexia never lost confidence or faith in herself, and I supported her throughout. So I’m very happy to be here. Today it’s about reminding the girls that we’re just going to sail, which is what they do perfectly, but simply that they won’t be sleeping in a bed for a few days. That’s exactly what we practiced in training, so we’re just going to set off, enjoy ourselves, and do what we know how to do.

“We wanted a perfect start, but perfection doesn’t exist in sailing, because we’re at the mercy of Mother Nature. That said, it’s a very good start.”

Skipper Alexia Barrier (FRA) before start of The Famous Project CIC attempt on the Trophée Jules Verne. Photo by Jean-Marie Liot / The Famous Project CIC

Jules Verne weather window

Ashore the team is supported by meteorologist Christian Dumard. The circulation of two high pressure systems over the North Atlantic has created an opportunity for a starting window, though the team will have an immediate race against time as the movement of an anticyclone threatens to close the route off Cape Finisterre.

“The front will pass over the starting area on Saturday morning,” explains Dumard. “The idea is to leave just behind it, in the early afternoon, in a north-westerly wind of less than 30 knots, which will gradually weaken.

“This window is very short and does not necessarily offer an absolute chance of achieving a ‘blistering’ time at the equator. But it does offer favorable wind and sea conditions for downwind sailing and a relatively comfortable start for the crew.”

“We will leave Brest on Saturday before noon and cross the line about two hours later. There will be rough seas, with swells of over 4 meters, which are perfectly manageable aboard Idec Sport,” adds Barrier.

“The danger is that the high-pressure system centered off the coast of Portugal will grow and block us as we pass Cape Finisterre. We would then have to turn back and resume our standby in Brest.”

A big crowd turned out to see the crew of The Famous Project off from Brest. Photo Jean-Marie Liot/The Famous Project CIC

All-female team

The Famous Project was launched in 2022, with the team initially training in a MOD70 before taking delivery of Idec Sport. They have been working with round the world yachtsman Brian Thomspon, with fellow British ocean sailor Jonny Malbon the Team Director.

In a recent blog post, Dee Caffari reported that the team’s final training sessions in late October ahead of the record were both invaluable, and challenging.

“These training sessions are where theory meets reality – intense, demanding, and absolutely invaluable.

“We were fortunate to train with Brian Thompson, whose expertise and calm authority at sea are second to none. Brian’s coaching has helped us fine-tune our performance and strengthen our team dynamics – those crucial marginal gains that will make all the difference when we take on the planet’s toughest challenge.

“This month, Mother Nature decided to push us harder. The conditions were significantly bigger and stronger than what we experienced during the summer -exactly what we needed. It’s one thing to sail fast in perfect conditions; it’s quite another to maintain that performance when the waves are towering and the wind is howling.

“These challenging sessions gave us a much more realistic preview of what life will really be like as we chase the record around the world.”

Skipper Alexia Barrier and his crew training onboard the Maxi-Trimaran The Famous Project CIC, off Groix island. Photo: Jean-Marie LIOT / The Famous Project CIC

Jules Verne attempts

There have been numerous attempts on the Jules Trophy record since Joyon set the current record in 2017. That time of 40 days, 23 hours, 30 minutes requires an average speed of 22.84 knots.

The foiling Ultim trimarans – capable of maintaining consistent speeds in the high 30s – have set off several times. In 2024 Thomas Coville’s Sodebo and Francois Gabart’s SVR-Lazartigue started within hours of each other, but both had to pause their attempt after damage or gear failure. Sodebo restarted last winter, but later had to retire after losing their central rudder.

In 2020, Charles Caudrelier’s team on Gitana 17 and Sodebo also set off in the same weather window in late November, but both had retired by mid-December after colliding with underwater objects.

Sodebo is among the Ultims that has made numerous attempts at the Jules Verne Trophy. Photo: Pierre Bouras/DPPI

The last all-female attempt on the Jules Verne, Tracy Edwards’ Royal & Sun Alliance in 1998, ended when the 92ft catamaran dismasted in the South Pacific 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile.

Idec Sport, the trimaran the Famous Project CIC crew are sailing, is a non-foiling design that was originally launched in 2006 as Groupama 3, and won the Jules Verne Trophy in 2010, skippered by Franck Cammas. While its peak speed is less than that of an Ultim, it is a robust and well-proven boat which has successfully completed multiple non-stop around the world passages – the first challenge of any Jules Verne attempt.

How to follow The Famous Project Jules Verne bid

You can follow The Famous Project’s attempt at thefamousproject.io

The team also has an app, active social media, and plan to share live daily updates on their YouTube channel.

The post All-female round the world record attempt sets sail in tough conditions appeared first on Yachting World.

The two Ultim foiling trimarans which had set off on a Jules Verne Trophy around the world non-stop record attempt have both aborted their current circumnavigation.

Francois Gabart‘s SVR-Lazartigue was first to end its record bid. At 0110 (UTC) this morning, Tuesday, December 3 the crew reported that they felt an impact while sailing in 25-30 knots of wind, around 500 miles from the Azores. The impact was described as a shock from an ‘OANI’, or an unidentified animal or object – the marine equivalent of a UFO.

The crew discovered that the trimaran’s starboard foil was damaged and made the decision to turn around, heading back to the team’s home port of Concarneau, Brittany, as soon as possible. The Ultim is expected to reach port between Friday 8 and Sunday 8 December.

After three days of racing, the SVR-Lazartigue crew were at best 145 minutes behind Francis Joyon on IDEC Sport‘s record time from 2017. On day three the crew also hit a sustained speed of 49.9 knots.

SVR-Lazartigue was one of two foiling Ultims bidding for a Jules Verne Trophy record in 2024.

Sodebo abandons Jules Verne attempt

Second to abandon their attempt was Thomas Coville’s Sodebo Ultim 3 The team reported that this afternoon, while making progress in the trade winds towards the Equator, the Sodebo Ultim 3 sustained damage to the central rudder.

The team statement explained: “Following an initial inspection, the crew noted the total loss of the central rudder flush with the bottom of the hull. Investigations are underway to determine whether the breakage of the central rudder stock was due to a mechanical problem or an impact.”

Hanging on for the ride: the crew of Sodebo during the Trophee Jules Verne attempt. Photo:
Vincent Curutchet/Team Sodebo

The crew has also turned back to its team base in Lorient to make repairs. The Sodebo team confirmed that the boat has no water ingress or collateral damage and the sailors can return by their own means.

While both Ultims had initially set off within 12 hours of each other in what initially looked set to be a compelling head-to-head battle around the world, the notoriously vulnerable trimarans also both succumbed to foil damage within the same day.

The question for both teams will be whether they can return to port, then get the complex trimarans back up to optimum record-breaking condition, in time to take advantage of any future weather scenarios that could offer a fast Atlantic southbound passage.

Tom Laperche steering, jet fighter-style, on SVR-Lazartigue. Photo: Guillaume Gatefait

SVR-Lazartigue reported that: ‘The team was hard at work exploring the different options including using their spare foil to go back to the Jules Verne Trophy as soon as a favorable weather window presents itself.

Heading for home

The Sodebo tracker dashboard includes a fascinating live chat function showing communication between the race crew, and the technical and routing teams ashore.

At 1513 today the boat reported: ‘Problem with the CC rudder.’

The technical crew can remotely monitor onboard telemetry, load cells etc, and observed that the boat had ‘probably lost all the saffron (foil)’.

Half an hour later, the routing cell posted: ‘Ok guys, we’re coming back home, damn it. Phil, can you work on a safe route home? Thanks, sorry.’

The router added: ‘It’s hard for everyone, it [the challenge] was good.’

Sodebo skipper Thomas Coville. Photo: Vincent Curutchet/Team Sodebo

The technical team then added some advice to the team: ‘You can open the whale hatch, check that there is no water first before a wave rises on the deck. Depending on what we see, we will probably have to open the inspection hatch to visually inspect the rest of the stock to be sure that it has not come loose from the lower bearing (risk of reaching the aft bulkhead).

“Carefully inspect the torque tube and the entire chain connecting the rudders and the steering system.

“We can see on the telemetry that the clutch release worked [the Ultims have various ‘shock-absorber’ systems built in to protect the boat in the event of an impact] but a good check of the entire system is necessary.”

The post Foil damage halts Jules Verne record attempts: both Gabart and Coville’s crews turn for home appeared first on Yachting World.

The two crews are both attempting to break the non-stop, around the world record – the ‘no limits’ Jules Verne Trophy – which currently stands at 40 days, 23 hours, 30 minutes and 30 seconds.

Thomas Coville’s Sodebo Ultim 3 was first to start, crossing the virtual start line off Brest in western France, at 2103 last night, Friday 29 November. The ‘line’ is between Ouessant and the Lizard, UK.

The crew set off at nearly 30 knots, though this morning were some 100 miles behind the equivalent pace set by current record holder IDEC Sport.

Sodebo’s tracker shows the bid’s progress against current Jules Verne Trophy record holder IDEC Sport

In order to break the record, Sodebo will need to return to cross the line by January 9, 2025 at 2034hrs.

Francois Gabart’s SVR-Lazartigue then set off this morning, Saturday 30 November, at 08.51 (local time). They will need to return by the morning of January 10 in order to break the record.

Record-breaking routing

Both teams set off independently, but their weather routing teams have identified the same weather window which is currently forecasting the boats to reach the Equator in around five days.

In order to be in with a shout of beating the record, they will then need to be at the Cape of Good Hope within a dozen days of starting. Both teams progressively went from ‘Code Orange’ standby mode, to ‘Code Green’ before starting just 12 hours apart.

Sodebo Ultim 3 Skipper Thomas Coville sets off on a Jules Verne Trophy bid from Lorient on 29 November, 2024. Photo: Vincent Curutchet / Team Sodebo

Thomas Coville, skipper of Sodebo, explained: “The transition from orange to green is often quite brutal, you have to change mode and mentality.

“Personally, what helps me to switch is when I get dressed in my sea gear, when I put on my boots, it allows me to enter another world, that of a sailor.”

Thomas Coville (far left), Benjamin Schwartz (centre) and the Sodebo Ultim 3 crew. Photo: Vincent Curutchet / Team Sodebo

Crew member and navigator Benjamin Schwartz explained the team’s start strategy: “We will set off close-hauled/reaching to look for a first front in the south of a depression, with a tack planned for Saturday afternoon, then dive south in a wind that will pick up, so downwind.

“The objective is to go around the Azores high from the east and slip under it for a final gybe, probably Monday morning, which will take us straight towards the equator in about five days, so a little ahead of the record time.”

But he cautions: “The window is quite short, insofar as the Azores High tends to emit a ridge  (an extension)  which closes the route to Portugal, so we will have to manage to slip into a fairly narrow corridor in time.”

Jules Verne Trophy crews

Sodebo is sailing with a crew of seven: Thomas Coville, Frédéric Denis, Pierre Leboucher, Léonard Legrand, Guillaume Pirouelle, Benjamin Schwartz and Nicolas Troussel.

Skipper Francois Gabart, third from left, and the SVR-Lazartigue crew setting off on their way to the Jules Verne Trophy start line in Brest on Saturday, 30 November 2024. Photo: Clement Gerbaud/SVR-Lazartigue

SVR-Lazartigue is sailing with six: Francois Gabart, Tom Laperche, Pascal Bidégorry, Amélie Grassi, Antoine Gautier, and Émilien Lavigne.

For the Jules Verne Trophy the teams may use on shore routers, and each will have a team monitoring the weather, position of ice, and potential routing strategies. Sodebo’s is headed up by Philippe Legros and Simon Fisher, while SVR-Lazartigue’s router is Jean-Yves Bernot.

Record holders rematch

The current time was set by Francis Joyon on IDEC Sport in 2017, when his six-man crew completed a non-stop circumnavigation – in the non-foiling trimaran – at a blistering average speed of 26.8 knots.

Both skippers have claimed the solo non-stop around the world record, Coville setting a record time in December 2016 of 49d 3h 7m 38s.

Gabart set the current benchmark of 42d 16h 40m 35s the following year – remarkably just two days slower than the crewed record they are both attempting to beat, including an astonishing 24hr record of 851 miles solo.

The newest of the Ultims, SVR-Lazartigue is perhaps the most advanced design. Photo: Guillaume Gatefait

Going head to head

In 2016, IDEC Sport and Spindrift 2 set off within hours of each other, in the first ‘head-to-head’ Jules Verne attempt. Both teams made it round, but neither broke the record.

The last time two boats set off together was in 2020, when Gitana 17 and Sodebo started within hours of each other in late November.

Both retired from their attempt early: Gitana turning back after three days after colliding with a ‘UFO’ (unidentified floating object), while Sodebo had a great start to their bid – extending to over 200 miles ahead of IDEC Sport’s position, and regularly posting days with 30-35-knot averages.

But by mid-December they too had to retire, after colliding with an underwater object and damaging the starboard rudder.

The foiling Ultims are notoriously vulnerable to collisions, but in February 2024 Charles Caudrelier won the first ever single-handed around the world race in the giant trimarans, after his Gitana 17 made the circumnavigation without stopping for a technical repair (he did stop in the Azores to avoid ‘impassable’ conditions in the Bay of Biscay, with a forecast of 7-10m waves and 50 knot winds). That passage proved it can be done.

Support crew bid farewell to the Sodebo Ultim 3 crew. Photo: Vincent Curutchet / Team Sodebo

How to follow the Jules Verne Trophy

You can follow the Sodebo attempt at their own tracker dashboard, which besides boat speed, wind data etc also includes the option to message the crew and even see who is on watch.

SVR-Lazartigue also has it’s own tracker – which also shows relative position to IDEC Sport (100 miles ahead after two hours of racing), wind data etc.

If they make it that far, the two crews are also likely to overtake the Vendée Globe fleet in the southern oceans.

The post Head-to-head Jules Verne attempts: two Ultim trimarans set off to try and break 40 days around the world appeared first on Yachting World.

French former Vendée Globe skipper Alexia Barrier announced her plans for the ‘Famous Project’ last year. Since then the project has gathered huge momentum, and Barrier and her team now have the use of two giant trimarans, including a MOD70 and the 103ft record-breaking Ultim trimaran IDEC, and around half the funding required.

Barrier has teamed up with British around the world skipper Dee Caffari to co-skipper the team. For Caffari, who has completed solo and crewed races and records, both eastabout and westabout around the world, the project had immediate appeal.

“The call came in the second half of last year. And I was immediately: yes! As a sporting challenge, that’s the last Holy Grail for me,” she told Yachting World.

“But then the momentum and the speed at which everything has come together has been super quick, and probably even surprised Alexia.”

Dee Caffari (left) and Alexia Barrier (right) doing some team building in the alps

Barrier and Caffari initially spent a week ski touring in the Alps together to see how they worked as a duo. “It was good to put us in a situation of both testing ourselves physically and mentally and seeing how we communicate with each other,” Caffari reflects.

In Easter this year the team took delivery of a MOD70 (ex-Spindrift, now named Limosa), and began training with coaching from Brian Thompson and Tom Dawson, plus team director Johnny Malbon, sailing out of La Grand Motte.

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A strong Mistral breeze arrived mid-way through the team’s first training block. “With a Mistral, you either go for a record or you sit on the dock,” recalls Caffari. “So we decided to go for a record. And to do that in your first week, after we’ve been on the boat for three days, was just awesome. I think we gave Brian Thompson a few extra grey hairs, but it was a really good way to put everything we’d practised together under pressure.

“When everything’s at 30 knots, the transitions are massive. If you need to do a sail change, it’s a massive dial down. You have to think so far ahead, the speed of thought is much quicker. So it was really good to put us under pressure because you don’t choose to train under pressure that often.”

The team set a benchmark time for one of a series of speed run courses established by offshore racer Kito de Pavant. Later this year the team also plan to attempt an around Corsica record, followed by the Rolex Middle Sea Race in October in the MOD70.

IDEC sport in the giant Ultim upon which the crew wants to set a new Jules Verne

In June Barrier also took delivery of the 31.5m (103ft) trimaran IDEC Sport, in which the team will attempt their non-stop round the world. IDEC Sport is the current holder of the Jules Verne record at 40 days (set in 2017 by Francis Joyon).

IDEC will go into refit this year, and Barrier says they have had good technical support from the boat’s many previous skippers, including Franck Cammas, and designers VPLP, before an intensive sailing programme in 2024 both racing the MOD70 and aboard the Ultim, training and record attempts. They intend to go on standby for the Jules Verne record attempt in the autumn of 2025.

Once on standby, the crew will be seeking a viable weather window, rather than the tiny optimal time frames the Ultimes have been waiting for. “I think we’re keen to go on schedule and go for it because although we want to go for the record, ultimately, lap one is about us finishing, and if we finish, that’s the first female reference record,” explains Caffari.

The maxi trimaran will race with a crew of eight. Alongside Barrier and Caffari, the crew currently includes Helena Darvelid, who holds multiple speed records, Volvo Ocean Race sailors Marie Riou, Sara Hstreiter and Elodie Mettraux, Irish Figaro and IMOCA sailor Joan Mulloy, who has co-skippered with Barrier, and Marie Taberly. They are also welcoming applications from young female sailors.

During training

A big part of the project’s aims, Barrier says, is to achieve parity in pay for her female crew with male offshore professionals. “I want to pay women like men, and in our sport that doesn’t really exist,” she explains.

‘We are still paid around a third of what the men are paid – when we are paid, because there are so few opportunities for women to do projects like this that sometimes you have to accept that you come for free, but that’s not the way you can be a professional sailor.

“So for me, it’s a big goal and why we are looking to have a proper budget to do it.”

Impressively, Barrier has secured around 50% of the funding needed for the project in just one year with founding partners including CIC and IDEC. Running costs are around €3 million a year, for three years, which leaves the title sponsorship available at what could be a veritable bargain compared to a foiling Ultime campaign.

For Barrier, the project dates back to her childhood dreams. “Since I was 12, I wanted to do the Vendée Globe and I was dreaming of the Trophée Jules Verne,” she recalls. She achieved her Vendée ambition in the last edition, finishing 24th with a shoestring campaign. “But there were no women doing the Trophée Jules Verne, so for me it was just impossible,” she recalls.

“I did try many times to jump onto a project, but it never worked. So I think it’s just the lack of opportunities for women which drove me to lead this project. It’s not a choice that I don’t want to sail with other teams, it’s just there is no space for women so I have to build my space.”

Female Jules Verne challengers

It’s been 25 years since the last all-female Jules Verne record attempt:

• Tracy Edwards, Royal & Sun Alliance (1998), with an all-female crew including Sam Davies, Emma Richards, Sharon Ferris, Helena Darvelid, Adrienne Cahalan, Emma Westmacott, and Miranda Merron. The attempt ended when the 90ft catamaran dismasted 2,000 miles from Cape Horn.
• Ellen MacArthur, Kingfisher 2 (2003). MacArthur was skipper and sole female member of the crew. The 110ft maxi catamaran Kingfisher2 also dismasted in the southern Indian Ocean.
• Dona Bertarelli, Spindrift 2 (2015). Bertarelli, who funds her own Spindrift campaign, is currently the fastest woman to sail non-stop around the world, having been a full member of the crew of 12 aboard the 140ft trimaran during a 2015 Jules Verne record bid. It was the third fastest lap of the planet ever completed, finishing in 47d 10h 59m 2s, and the fastest ever by a female sailor.

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The post The all-female team aiming to set a new round the world record appeared first on Yachting World.

Ocean racing is an unsentimental world. It’s deeply unglamorous, stripping its participants of every iota of vanity. Failures in preparedness will be hurriedly found out, but even the most careful and thorough, most deserving of campaigns can see their chance of victory slip away in the sudden tumbling of a rig or the slow veer of a weather system. It’s an arena where the funds required to play are eye-watering – but where money, ultimately, cannot buy success.

So why on earth would a billionaire choose to undergo all the privations of six weeks at sea, of using a bucket for a toilet and eating freeze-dried food, sleeping in a damp, hot-bunk, and living in a state of constant adrenaline and anxiety? Because that’s what Dona Bertarelli has signed up for, as she goes on standby with the rest of the Sails of Change team for another tilt at the non-stop crewed around the world record, the elusive Jules Verne Trophy.

The Spindrift campaign, now Sails of Change, is unique on many levels. For starters, it’s a privately-backed campaign. While other ocean racing stables – such as Gitana which enjoys the largesse of the Rothschild family – may rely on the enthusiasm of a few key decision makers, the boats are raced by paid hands.

On board Spindrift, Dona herself is a member of crew, while her husband, Frenchman Yann Guichard, is the professional skipper. Her adult son has been part of the race team, and Yann’s brother is one of the team’s core pro members. It’s a unique family endeavour, for a unique family.

Dona Bertarelli has her sights on the Jules Verne Trophy. Photo: Gauthier Lebec/Spindrift

Family affair

The Bertarelli name is deeply entwined with sailing at the highest level. Italian-born Dona, now 53, and her elder brother Ernesto moved to Switzerland when they were children. She was not quite 30 when she and Ernesto inherited Serono, a multi-million pound pharmaceutical company that had been built by their grandfather. Under Ernesto as CEO, the company diversified, with revenues reportedly increasing from $809 million in 1996 to $2.8 billion in 2006.

Ernesto famously poured his passion for sailing, and ability to invest staggering funds, into the America’s Cup. His Alinghi team shook things up and brought sailing’s most famous trophy to Europe, taking back to back wins before being defeated in 2010. It placed the Bertarelli family firmly in the annals of yachting history.

Ernesto and Dona’s father was a keen sailor, and they spent time in childhood sailing on the Swiss lakes or Tuscan sea. Although Dona has previously described the decision to helm her Decision 35 Lady Cat in races as a major step up, both Bertarelli siblings are skilled drivers, and have each competed very successfully on the extreme multihulls which dominate the Swiss lake sailing scene.

Bertarelli is hoping to complete her second circumnavigation with the trimaran team, here with crew member Thierry Chabagny. Photo: Gauthier Lebec/Spindrift

However, while Dona’s double victories in Lake Geneva’s famous Bol d’Or (she was the only the second ever female skipper to win the iconic race in 2010 and repeated the win in 2014) are impressive, they barely register on the sliding scale of ambition alongside her other project: challenging for the Jules Verne Trophy.

Bertarelli credits her husband as introducing her to offshore racing. The pair met some 14 years ago, when Guichard had moved from Olympic catamaran sailing (he finished 4th at the 2000 Sydney Olympics in the Tornado) into ocean multihulls, racing 60ft trimarans both double-handed and crewed.

“I followed Yann in his offshore campaigns and little by little, that passion for the ocean made me realise I want to go and see it. I want to go and see how vast the ocean is. Every ocean you go through is different – the Atlantic doesn’t look like the Indian Ocean, and the Indian Ocean doesn’t look like the Pacific Ocean, or the Southern Ocean. And I just wanted to experience that. But some people are not made for that, and the big question mark was whether I felt comfortable at sea. I didn’t know until we actually bought the boat and we started racing offshore,” she recalls, “but here we are!”

Dona Bertarelli working with husband and skipper Yann Guichard. Photo: Gauthier Lebec/Spindrift

Rites of passage

And here they are, 11 years later. The Spindrift campaign is notable for its longevity. Set up by Dona and Guichard in 2011, the programme began with a MOD70 (Spindrift), instantly topping podiums on the circuit in 2012. But it was when they purchased the 140ft former Banque Populaire V – the largest racing trimaran in the world – that things really stepped up a gear.

In 2013 the team set two benchmarks with their new weapon Spindrift 2: a Discovery Route record (of 6d 14h), and a win in the Rolex Fastnet Race. While both were impressive results, for Dona they were significant because they marked the point when she felt she could call herself a offshore sailor.

Bertarelli is sailing the Jules Verne attempt as onboard reporter. Photo: Gauthier Lebec/Spindrift

“I think I really felt that during the Discovery Route, which is the first record we did. I had never crossed the Atlantic before, so that was a first for me. Then beating the record I said, ‘Okay, I think I can do this’. The other times where I also started feeling that I could do this is when we did a Fastnet, there was quite a bit of wind and we won. I think for a lot of people a Fastnet is like a waypoint passage.

“But there’s nothing that beats an around the world attempt. It takes something different to go for such a long time.”

In 2015 Spindrift 2 set off on a full Jules Verne record bid, with Dona part of the race crew of 12, Guichard skippering. It was the third fastest lap of the planet ever completed, in a remarkable head-to-head record attempt at the same time as Francis Joyon’s IDEC Sport.

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Trying to break the 40-day barrier: Thomas Coville and the most radical Ultime yet

This week solo yachtsman Thomas Coville opened the doors to the build of his Sodebo Ultim 3, the newest Ultime…

They had a furious sprint to the Equator, a close battle with IDEC in the South Pacific – at one point sailing within sight of the other boat – and were still ahead of the record as they rounded Cape Horn. But the Atlantic return was a cruel jumbled maze of light winds and pressure ridges that saw Spindrift 2 slip behind the record by the Equator.

The Jules Verne trophy was not to be.

Persistence

Yet Spindrift 2 went on to make multiple other attempts. In January 2018 the crew readied to start in early January, then aborted on the way to the start line when the forecast deteriorated. As they headed out for a second attempt a few days later, they were dismasted on the way to the startline.

In 2019 they started in early December, only to retire just days later following rudder issues. Again they restarted, this time making it as far as Australia, blasting along to clock 870-plus-mile days before rudder issues again sabotaged the attempt. Few would have been surprised if the campaign had been shuttered over lockdown. But now, post-refit, they’re back to try yet again, and Bertarelli will be back on board.

The original Banque Populaire V has been substantially modified to become Sails of Change. Photo: Gauthier Lebec/Spindrift

When Bertarelli finished the 2015 circumnavigation in 47d 10h, at an average speed of 25.3 knots, she became the fastest woman to sail around the world (a record she still holds). Conditions were brutal, but the discomfort involved did not put off Bertarelli (who could live literally in the lap of luxury if she chose, with a property portfolio that includes 5-star hotels in Gstaad and Cannes) from attempting it again.

“Last time I was preparing in my head for the worst.

I wanted to be ready for it, I knew I’m going to suffer like hell. And in the end, I didn’t suffer. I mean, it was difficult, but I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t sick. It was fine. So I know that physically, I can do it. My body can take it,” she recalls.

The harder thing was to be away from her children for such a long period. “Where I struggled was that my youngest daughter, she was 12 years old, it’s Christmas, you’re not there. And in our case, it’s the entire family that goes to sea, not just the mother or the father. I felt really bad then,” she explains.

on previous record attempts Spindrift’s crew were very exposed. Photo: Chris Schmid/Spindrift Racing

Total engagement

Seven years after that first attempt, it was her family who encouraged her to get back on board. “I had been super busy with my philanthropic work, that took a lot of time and we had lots of things going on. When you go around the world, the mental engagement is total. Your brain needs to be 100% focused on what you have to do. So these past years, I couldn’t do it. And when my son became part of the team I felt it was his time. He needs to be able to experience that without his mother there!”

Bertarelli’s philanthropic work has long included a focus on marine conservation – she and Ernesto established a foundation in their father’s name and she is a special advisor to a United Nations Conference on marine health.

In 2021 Bertarelli and Guichard reframed their Spindrift campaign as Sails of Change, using it as a platform to lobby for 30% of the world’s oceans to be protected by 2030. “Last year Yann said, well, now we have Sails of Change on the boat. We have a big programme ahead. Who’s better to talk about it than you coming around the world? So then that’s when I thought, maybe it’s time to go again.

“I’m going for different reasons. The first time it was about can I really do it? But this time around, I know where I’m going.”

That’s not to say she has an entirely rose-tinted view of the experience. “The thing that I hate the most is the waiting, the standby period. Twice a day we receive weather forecasts. We do the routes and we look at the models, and every time we have 8, 9, 10 days visibility. So you cannot plan anything further than 10 days.

In the middle of the last Jules Verne attempt. Chris Schmid/Spindrift Racing

“Then we know we have three weeks which are going to be tough in the Southern Ocean and Indian Oceans. It’s cold, about 3°C inside the boat, it’s transpiring with humidity, and those are tough days. But at the same time, you know what you’re going into. So you can better prepare for the moment.”

This time around she’ll be going as an onboard reporter, out of the watch system. But does her presence aboard make for an unusual dynamic? Not only is it rare for a team’s backer to be part of the crew, but she and Yann are husband and wife.

“Well, we have sailed together for a really long time,” she points out. “When we started, I had my own project and Yann came along as my tactician, on Lady Cat. The rule is the skipper is the skipper, right? I’m crew and he’s the skipper if we’re on the Maxi. There are no discussions about that.

“The difference comes when you are in those tougher times. Maybe when there are some tough decisions for Yann to make. Like in 2015 at one point we had two routes, two models. One would make us plunge into the ice, and the other went a bit more north. In situations like that, to have the support of your husband or wife is super helpful.

“But yes, I think the dynamic is different. Actually anytime you have a woman in a crew I think it brings something different. Sometimes we’re a bit more rational or a bit more calm. And we also selected a crew of people who share the same values. We look after each other. We’re not mercenaries. It’s really a family.”

Why, after so many failed attempts, is she still chasing the record? “Because there isn’t anything greater, I think,” she answers quickly.

30×30: Sails of Change is lobbying to have 30% of the world’s oceans protected by 2030. Photo: Gauthier Lebec/Spindrift

“We leave from the northern hemisphere, go south, around Antarctica and come back home. That’s the magic of the Jules Verne trophy. We have no waypoints to respect, you are just free to sail your own race. And it’s about that freedom. That freedom of experiencing your passion and sharing it as a family also.

“And you’ve got to go all in. Once you’re all in, it’s refreshing. I’ve never been happier than when at sea. We’re still connected online, of course, especially me. But it’s like your brain just empties. The only worry is about the people you leave at home, but my children are older now.”

At the time of publication, the team had been on standby for several weeks, their chances of a weather window that would see them around the world in less than 40 days shrinking with each day, although viable attempts have previously started in January.

Time running out for Jules Verne

But there is another window which is closing, and that’s the race before the giant tri is overtaken by a younger generation boat. Banque Populaire was launched 14 years ago, while the winter of 2020/21 saw two latest generation foiling Ultimes (Gitana 17 and Sodebo) attempt Jules Verne bids. Neither completed, but with more foiling Ultimes launched, it can only be a matter of time before one goes successfully around the world non-stop.

“This boat was a legend when we bought it,” explains Bertarelli. “It was a conscious decision not to build a new boat because we always believed this boat was built, designed and made to win this trophy. And that’s still true today.

“We take every year as it comes. I don’t know when the window will close and she’ll become obsolete. Are we already there? Not yet, I don’t think. We still have a chance. One day this boat will need to retire. But today, this lady, she still has it.”

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The post Fastest woman around the world: Dona Bertarelli’s quest for the Jules Verne Trophy appeared first on Yachting World.

Forty days, 23 hours, 30 minutes and 30 seconds: that is the time that is embedded in the psyche of crews currently challenging for the Jules Verne trophy.

The clock will mercilessly count down 983 hours as they attempt the near-impossible: to beat Francis Joyon’s blistering time set on Idec Sport three years ago; to become the first foiling trimarans to fly around the world; and maybe, just maybe, to break the incredible 40-day barrier.

The odds are stacked against them. Thomas Coville, skipper of Sodebo, says the chance of success is “only 20 to 25%”.

Sodebo training in strong winds in the Gulf of Morbihan. Photo: Pierre Bouras/DPPI

Charles Caudrelier, co-skipper of rival challenger Gitana 17, ranks his fortunes similarly. “I was surprised, I think the statistics are very optimistic, and in the statistics the boats never break, but it’s around a 30% chance to beat the record [based on] the polars. “Which is quite good,” he adds sanguinely.

On November 25, both trimarans set off within hours of each other on their first Jules Verne record attempt of 2020. Gitana had to turn back after three days after colliding with a ‘UFO’ (unidentified floating object), but the team has vowed to repair and restart as soon as possible.

Sodebo, meanwhile, was having a great run – extending to over 200 miles ahead of Idec Sport’s position, and regularly posting days with 30-35-knot averages. But on 11 December they too had to retire, after colliding with an underwater object and damaging the starboard rudder. Skipper Thomas Coville explained: “I am very disappointed, but I am not downcast because it is obvious: we will come back. We have a group and a boat to do it, we have a partner who wants to go back too, so the future is in front of us…. it got off to a good start, [and] it’s not over yet!”

But how do you plan to attack something with such a gossamer thin margin, when you have at best a 1 in 4 chance of success?

Man versus machine

There are two teams hoping to defy the improbable. Franck Cammas is looking to claim his second Jules Verne trophy with Gitana 17, the Edmond de Rothschild trimaran he co-skippers with Charles Caudrelier. Gitana will be sailing with a crew of just six.

The Verdier-designed Gitana was launched in 2017 and was originally part of the embryonic Ultime class, but the team wanted to incorporate more automation than Ultime rules permitted and this year stepped out of the class. For the Jules Verne, they have a flight control ‘servo loop’ that automatically trims some of the foils.

Article continues below…

Battle of the giants: The inside story of the Brest Atlantiques Race

On Tuesday 5 November four giant trimarans – Maxi Edmond de Rothschild, Macif, Sodebo and Actual Leader, and their double-handed…

Trying to break the 40-day barrier: Thomas Coville and the most radical Ultime yet

This week solo yachtsman Thomas Coville opened the doors to the build of his Sodebo Ultim 3, the newest Ultime…

“It’s not a race, so we are allowed to use an auto-trim for the appendages,” explained Caudrelier. “We don’t have enough energy to [use it] to move the foils, but all the flaps of the rudders and the daggerboards can be managed by the pilot. It’s new, and it’s quite efficient.

“The question is: how much energy do we want to spend on that, [how much] weight of fuel do we carry? So we have to find a balance, but we think we’ll use it probably 50% of the time, because in certain conditions it’s really another jump of performance.” The gain can be as much as 5%.

The Gitana team will be sailing with two crew on deck on watch, and a third on standby. “With two guys we can have one driver and one adjusting all the appendages. On these big boats you don’t trim the sails so much, you find an average and you don’t spend your time trimming because you would kill your rigging very quickly,” says Caudrelier.

Photo: Vincent Curutchet / Sodebo

Thomas Coville has taken a different approach, choosing to sail with eight. His Sodebo Ultim 3 is the newest of the big tris, and designed to be lighter, less loaded, with a smaller sailplan. It is not automated.

“I decided to invest in humans,” Coville says. “I’ve made the choice to be eight to have two guys – myself and Mark Keruzoré, our media man – off watch. Then two guys on stand-by and two guys off, and you can be sure that when you’re off, you won’t be disturbed.”

Rest will be key. “These machines need to have people who are well recovered, that are fresh and can concentrate. We’re going to be potentially able to steer all the time. We’ve got autopilot, but sometimes you need to be to be 100% and to push the boat,” he explains.

Autopilot development in both the foiling multihulls and IMOCAs has made huge advances, but there are still conditions when a human on the wheel is faster, particularly in downwind VMG mode.

Constant crew rotation will be necessary, however, because maintaining concentration on the helm is so critical. “One hour is the maximum. When we are flying in VMG mode it’s a very narrow margin on the helm and you have to be very concentrated,” explains Cammas.

There are other drains on the crew. Besides the workload of manoeuvres, simply existing on board is exhausting. “These boats are pretty hard on your body now,” explains Sodebo crew member Sam Goodchild, “We do everything we can to avoid injuries, which includes protective gear. We’ve got helmets and skullcaps and padding in basically everywhere you can have padding in foul weather gear.”

Apparent windspeeds over the deck can easily hit 50-60 knots. Photo: Martin Keruzoré

The relentless noise of flying through the ocean for five weeks is also energy sapping. “Life on board is quite difficult. With the foils humming and just the banging of waves going fast all the time it’s quite tiring. So we take earplugs and noise cancelling headphones to help us with our off watches,” explains Goodchild.

The noise level is so high that a crew member in the pit, basically next to the helmsman’s knees on Sodebo, would not be able to hear the helmsman in his ‘tank commander’ driving position, so they use a headset comms system.

“In every manoeuvre we’ve got the helmsman, pitman and bowman connected and there’s also a speaker in the cockpit so the whole cockpit can hear what’s happening,” explains Goodchild. “The apparent wind over the deck is huge; if the boat’s going 30, 40 knots, which is quite normal, and we’ve got 25 knots of wind you can have 50 or 60 knots of apparent wind over the deck quite easily. So fairly quickly you don’t hear a lot!”

Life at 40 knots in the cockpit. Photo: Vincent Curutchet / Sodebo

20,000 miles of foiling

The trimarans are on the very edge of development and go through a constant cycle of modifications. Since last year’s Brest Atlantiques race the Gitana team has worked on aerodynamics, including a new cuddy roof which endplates more closely to the boom, and altering the angles of the enormous fairings that stretch across the beams.

The foil and appendages shapes have also been refined. “Today our big problem is cavitation, because we reach some very high speeds, 45 or 46 knots,” says Caudrelier. The jumps in performance are considerable. “We have managed to push the maximum speed before cavitation from around 40-42 knots to 44-45 knots, so that’s a big step. The boat has never been so fast.”

Sodebo has also gained T-foils on the centre daggerboard and main rudder, which means that sustained flight is now possible at levels that are surpassing even Coville’s expectations. “Last week we were delivering the boat for sponsor sailing in Vendée. For three hours, we were in rough seas. It was 4 or 5m on the offside and we were sailing between 35-45 knots of boat speed all the time. I have to admit that I would not have even imagined that one year ago.”

The central ‘pod’ is situated forward of the mast on the Sodebo Ultim 3. Photo: Martin Keruzoré

Over the 26,000-odd miles of their circumnavigation, how much could potentially be sailed in foiling mode? “About a year ago, I would have told you 20%. Now, I would say it could be more like 80%,” says Coville, “And we are just at the beginning. Every day we go sailing, we’re learning more. But I’m pretty sure that we are going to fly for more than 50%.”

Caudrelier agrees: “If you stop flying you lose more than 10 or 20% of performance, so it’s not the same boat. And there will be strong winds where we will not really fly, but we will be in skimming mode, when the waves are too big. But still, 50 to 60% around the world in some sort of flight mode is space travel.”

Shoreside commanders

Yet a Jules Verne record is not won on the water: a huge factor in each challenger’s chances is down to their weather routing, directed by a commander on shore.

Photo: Martin Keruzoré

Sodebo’s weather router is Jean Luc Nelias, Coville’s right hand man for many years, who also directed him to his 2016 solo around the world record. Gitana has the legendary Marcel van Triest, who has worked with Caudrelier and Cammas closely in the past on their Dongfeng and Groupama campaigns, and routed both Loïck Peyron on Banque Populaire and current record holder Francis Joyon on Idec Sport to Jules Verne wins.

The first, and greatest, challenge is to choose the best weather window in which to leave Ushant. Get this wrong – even by a few hours – and a team’s chances of beating the record could be over even before they have exited the Bay of Biscay.

With the benchmark time to the Cape of Good Hope less than 12 days, there is a balancing act between not only finding the optimal forecast for the Atlantic, but also setting up the boat with the best chances of hooking into a favourable low pressure system roaring eastwards around the Southern Oceans.

‘These new machines are going to beat the record. It will happen’ – Thomas Coville. Photo: Martin Keruzoré

“I try to look at the situation from the start line in Ushant to more or less the point of entry to the Indian Ocean, so basically south of Cape Town,” explains van Triest. “We know the reference times for that, so we can have a forecast, although in the South Altantic it will be no more than a trend.

“Then you try to judge what happens after Cape Town, because you can have a situation with a high pressure ridge off South Africa and ice to the south, which makes the entry into the Indian Ocean really narrow. To get around it, if you see a situation that is a 600-mile wide entry into the Indian Ocean, you’re willing to arrive at Cape Town a little bit slower, but it will be easier to get into the westerlies.

“Also, these boats are now so quick that you need a Southern Ocean weather system that is quick enough that they can stay in the same system the whole time. So you’re going around at more or less at the speed that the low is.” Idec Sport, van Triest says, rode a single system from Madagascar almost to New Zealand.

The Atlantic may also be where the foilers make the biggest gains on the record. “Where we have most improved the speed of the boat is upwind reaching – like the parts of the Doldrums where you are upwind and slowly the wind is lifting. This is where we have the biggest difference of speed compared to boats like Idec,” says Caudrelier.

“Their upwind speed was between 19-21, now we can achieve between 25-30 depending on the sea state.” In order to determine the best window, van Triest is reanalysing historic weather data. “We have done 6,000 routings covering the last 12 years,” explains Caudrelier, “One start every six hours, every day, during the standby period.”

Seeing the unknown

Once the crews are underway, the routers will fall into a twilight world of 24-7 weather analysis, endlessly programming routes further and further down the track and offering a constant stream of information to the skippers. One key decision is how far south to go, and for that the routers need to know where the icebergs are. Sailing additional mileage to avoid ice can be fatal to a record bid’s chances; not avoiding ice at 35 knots doesn’t bear thinking about.

Photo: Eloi Stichelbaut / PolaRYSE / Gitana

“They’re going to a part of the world no one is interested in. Further north there is commercial shipping, and further south is the ice shelf where there is lots of scientific interest, but the bit in the middle: no-one cares basically. Which means there is very, very little data available in the public domain,” explains van Triest.

The solution is to request the data from specialist companies. “We use a company called CLS. They’ve got two techniques mainly: one is with altimeters that measures the distance from satellites to the Earth’s surface, or sea level in this case, and if that is higher because there is an object there, you know it is either an iceberg or a ship.

“Then you cross-reference that against AIS to take out any ships, and the other ones are possibly ice. The disadvantage is this has got a very narrow footprint, so it’s like throwing a big fishing net to catch a small fish.

Gitana’s crew have been maximising sea trial time in preparation for the gruelling Jules Verne Trophy attempt. Photo: Eloi Stichelbaut / PolaRYSE / Gitana

“That defines the zones that are really of interest. And then you can order pictures, which are called SAR images. They are done with a radar on a satellite: the scatter that comes back from the earth’s surface gets captured, and analysed and it creates an artificial image.” But the costs of this are eye-watering: a single image can easily range up to £4,000. “It adds up pretty quickly,” notes van Triest.

Request your image at short notice and the price rises steeply, request it too early, and the ice may have drifted from its known position, rendering it useless. That the Jules Verne trimarans are likely to be in the Southern Ocean at a similar time to this year’s Vendée Globe fleet may ameliorate the costs slightly, as the Vendée race committee will also be analysing ice position.

It is not only ice that the crews need to avoid. During the Brest Atlantiques Race three-quarters of the Ultimes suffered serious foil damage, all attributed to suspected collisions with unidentified floating objects. The teams are trying to develop various solutions, but none are reliable.

Gitana 17 training off Lorient – the new trimarans have made major upwind speed gains. Photo: Eloi Stichelbaut / PolaRYSE / Gitana

They include a ‘whale pinger’ – an alarm audible to sea life that is designed to scare large mammals away from the oncoming boat – and an infrared camera in the mast that interfaces with software to identify hazards. At these speeds, however, its accuracy is limited.

“It is supposed to send an alarm when it sees something not normal in the water, but that is very difficult and it’s not working well. We are working every day on it but it’s just the beginning of this system,” explains Caudrelier.

Sodebo employs similar systems, but Coville concedes that, in practical terms, “We’ve got nothing, or nothing real.” Rather than trying to avoid collisions, they have been trying to protect the boat against the inevitable, with hydraulics that can absorb some of the loads if the rudders or boards have a moderate impact.

Photo: Yann Riou / polaRYSE / Gitana

“You can’t avoid everything, but [the hydraulics] can absorb 10 or 15 tons sometimes. They’ve been working pretty good actually, and a few times it’s saved our boat already,” he explains. “We want to control more and more, but at some stage you have to accept that you can’t control everything.”

Breaking 40

So are this generation of foiling adventurers attempting the impossible? Marcel van Triest knows the true chances of setting an around the world record better than almost anybody, based on cold, hard data: “I think sub-40 days is very realistic, given the potential of the boats.

“To get under 39, you need a perfect window. You need a bit of a break with the ice, and you need a bit of luck in the Atlantic coming back up. And above all, you have to keep all your bits underwater attached to the boat.”

The ebullient Thomas Coville is not a man who worries about things being deemed impossible.  “I don’t know if we’re going to beat that record this year, it’s the first time that a flying boat is attempting it. But one thing I know is that it is going to be beaten. There’s no doubt in my mind that these new machines are going to beat that record. It will happen.”

First published in the December 2020 issue of Yachting World.

The post Aiming for the impossible: The inside story of the 2020 Jules Verne contenders appeared first on Yachting World.

Francis Joyon and his crew of Clément Surtel, Alex Pella, Bernard Stamm, Gwénolé Gahinet and Sébastien Audigane have set a new crewed round the world record of 40d 23h 30m and 30s.

The maxi trimaran Idec Sport set a new record time for the Jules Verne Trophy, the outright round the world sailing record when the team crossed the finish line off Ushant at 0749 (UTC) on Thursday 26 January 2017 having sailed the 22,000-mile theoretical round the world course in 40d 23h 30m and 30s. On the water, they actually sailed 26,412 miles at a blistering average speed of 26.85 knots.

They shattered the previous record set by Loïck Peyron and the crew of the maxi trimaran Banque Populaire V in 2012 by 4d 14h 12m and 23s. During their round the world voyage, they also broke no fewer than six intermediate records with fastest times as they passed Cape Leeuwin, off Tasmania, the International Date Line, Cape Horn, the Equator and off Ushant.

Other impressive statistics include Day 14, when they clocked up 894 miles at an average pace of 37.3 knots. For eight days, they sailed more than 800 miles in 24 hours, and for another seven days their 24 hour mileage was over 700 miles.

While this winter has been dominated by record-breaking round the world courses – Thomas Coville setting a phenomenal sub-50 days solo round the world record last month (smashing Joyon’s own solo round the world record time in the process) and the Vendée Globe leaders also completed the course at an unprecedented pace for monohull sailors – Joyon and his team did not have an entirely smooth course.

After aborting their first attempt a few days before because of a hold-up in the Doldrums, Joyon and his men set off again, wondering about how the weather systems would evolve in the South Atlantic. “We set sail on 16 December, uncertain about the outcome,” explained the youngest member of the crew, Gwénolé Gahinet.

By the fifth day of racing the red trimaran had gained a lead of more than 210 miles over Peyron’s existing record. But in the Doldrums they suffered in an area of thunderstorms, huge wind shifts and calms. Averaging just 6.4 knots on 21 December, Idec Sport had their worst day, sailing just 186 miles in 24 hours. They dropped further and further behind the pace of their virtual rival, Banque Populaire V and when they entered the Roaring Forties on the eleventh day, were 755 miles behind.

Training for the maxi tri IDEC Sport, skipper Francis Joyon, and his crew, prior to their circumnavigation crew record attempt for Trophy Jules Verne, off Belle Ile, on october 12, 2016 – Photo Jean-Marie Liot / DPPI / IDEC

Pulling it back

However, in the Southern Ocean Joyon and crew were able to claw back the deficit. They had a good route past the calms of the St. Helena High, hopping onto a Southern low as they exited the Atlantic. Idec remained ahead of that system, taking advantage of strong NW’ly winds for 11 days, when their speed would rarely drop below 30 knots.

With peak boat speeds of more than 44 knots, Joyon’s gang had a fast run right across the Southern Ocean, taking just 4d 9h to sail from the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Leeuwin. By 4 January, they had extended their lead over the record to a day and a half, as they passed to the south of Tasmania. Just over a week later, they clocked up another record at Cape Horn, leaving Banque Populaire V 4d 6h behind.

As for Coville and the Vendée leaders, whilst the Southern Ocean provided a fast passage, the South Atlantic dealt a series of classically tricky weather patterns. Once past the Falklands, a deep low appeared off Argentina, creating a nasty head-on swell for Idec. The crew had to find a compromise between pushing hard to make headway north and preserving the boat.

There were three possible routes off the south of Brazil with a series of transition zones. They could look for wind out to the east or sail upwind close to Brazil. Joyon, with the support of his router, Marcel van Triest, chose a middle route to head north, which meant they had decent weather to pass Cape Frio and pick up the south-easterly Tradewinds. The Doldrums again slowed the trimaran, where analysis from van Triest suggested going a long way west and north of Fortaleza to enter the Northern Hemisphere. They pulled it off. “We never got entirely stopped,” exclaimed Joyon when he found the trade winds.

Off the Cape Verde Islands, the wind gradually came around with the Tradewinds offering Idec Sport a good angle and wind speed to approach the south of the Azores. They were back up to high speeds in excess of 30 knots on the final arc towards Brittany.

Intermediate times

Equator: 5 days, 18 hrs, 59 minutes, 4h 3m behind Banque Populaire V
Good Hope: 12 days, 19 hrs, 28 minutes, 21h 40m behind Banque Populaire V
Cape Agulhas: 12 days, 21 hrs, 22 minutes, 21h 34m behind Banque Populaire V
Cape Leeuwin: 17 days, 6 hrs, 59 minutes, 16h  58m ahead of Banque Populaire V
Tasmania: 18 days, 18 hrs, 31 minutes, 1d 12h 43m ahead of Banque Populaire V
Cape Horn: 26 days, 15 hrs and 45 minutes, 4d 6h ahead of Banque Populaire V
Equator: 35 days 4 hrs and 9 minutes, 2d 22h  36m ahead of Banque Populaire V.
Equator – Ushant: 5 days, 19 hrs, 21 minutes

Jules Verne records

2012 Loick Peyron, Banque Populaire V (trimaran) 45d 13h 42m 53s

2010 Franck Cammas, Groupama 3 (trimaran) 48d 7h 44m 52s

2005 Bruno Peyron, Orange II (catamaran) 50d 16h 20m 4s)

2004 Olivier de Kerauson, Geronimo (trimaran) 63d 13h 59m 46s

2002 Bruno Peyron, Orange (catamaran) 64d 8h 37m 24s

1997 Olivier de Kerauson, Sport Elec (trimaran) 71d 14h 22m 8s

1994 Peter Blake, Enza New Zealand (catamaran) 74d 22h 17m 22s

1993 Bruno Peyron, Explorer (catamaran) 79d 6h 15m 56s

Read more about the amazing head-to-head Jules Verne attempts by Idec Sport and Spindrift 2 last year here.

The post Francis Joyon and IDEC smash Jules Verne crewed round the world record with 26.8 knot average speed appeared first on Yachting World.

Maxi Trimaran IDEC SPORT skipper Francis Joyon and his crew, prior to their Jules Verne Trophy record attempt in Brest on November 20, 2016 – Photo Jean-Marie Liot / DPPI

Francis Joyon, twice the fastest man to sail around the world singlehandedly, has set off on an attempt at the Jules Verne trophy, the fully crewed non-stop round the world record.

French skipper Joyon, joined by Bernard Stamm (SUI) Boris Herrmann (GER), Alex Pella (ESP), Clément Surtel and Gwénolé Gahinet (FRA), crossed the Jules Verne start line off Brest on board the 100ft trimaran IDEC Sport at 2114 last night, Sunday November 20. The time they have to beat is Loïck Peyron’s current impressive record of 45 days, 13 hours, 42 minutes and 53 seconds, set in 2012 on board the 130ft Banque Populaire V.

“All we can see is the Créac’h Lighthouse. It’s pitch black. But we have the impression that this is the start of something big,” commented Joyon from the startline.

IDEC SPORT crew Boris Herrmann, Gwénole Gahinet, skipper Francis Joyon, Bernard Stamm, Alex Pella and Clement Surtel  – Photo Jean-Marie Liot / DPPI / IDEC Sport

Joyon and team made a previous attempt at the Jules Verne record last year, setting off the exact same week of November in 2015, only to finish just a couple of days short of Peyron’s time, successfully completing the circumnavigation in 47 days and 14 hours in a close-fought record battle with Spindrift 2.

This year’s conditions are unusual – the IDEC crew setting off in lighter breezes (albeit still at 22 knots of boat speed across the start line), but with northerly gales forecast which Joyon and his weather router Marcel van Triest hope they can pick up in order to cross the Bay of Biscay, before slotting into the trade winds off Portugal and the Canaries. Sea state has potential to be a limiting factor for the trimaran, with ‘Storm Angus’  – as it was dubbed in the UK – also sweeping western France and creating a heavy swell closest to the coast. However, the IDEC team reports that by Monday day time the swell had eased, and was largely running in the same direction as the wind.

Francis Joyon has twice circumnavigated the world solo, on both occasions breaking the record. His 2008 solo round the world record still holds today – read our profile of him from 2012 here, shortly after he had set a 24-hours solo distance record of 666.2NM.

https://www.yachtingworld.com/blogs/elaine-bunting/francis-joyon-worlds-fastest-sailor-2427

Training onboard the Maxi trimaran IDEC Sport prior to their attempt for Trophy Jules Verne, off Belle Ile in October 2016 – Photo Jean-Marie Liot / DPPI / IDEC

The trimaran IDEC Sport was previously Groupama 3 and is also a former record holder, having held the Jules Verne trophy in 2010. Joyon prefers to sail her with a crew of just six compared to the 13 that accompanied Peyron on his larger trimaran for his successful ecord trip in 2012.

In order to beat the record the team needs to return to Ouessant before 1056 on January 5, 2017. You can follow their progress against Banque Populaire’s record time at their live tracker on http://www.idecsport-sailing.com/live-map/?lang=en

Ironically, while Joyon is pursuing the Jules Verne trophy, Thomas Coville is chasing down his solo round the world record. Coville, on the 31m maxi trimaran Sodebo Ultim, began his singlehanded round the world record attempt from Brest on the same weekend that the 29 competitors left Les Sables d’Olonne to start the Vendée Globe, and has also benefitted from the rapid, but relatively smooth conditions which have sped the IMOCA 60s into the Southern Hemisphere in record time.

Coville is currently 388 miles ahead of Joyon’s equivalent position, and has to beat his time of 57 days 13 hours 34 minutes and 6 seconds. Coville also has a race tracker which shows his position relative to Joyon’s 2008 time, at http://tour-du-monde.sodebo.com/

Maxi Trimaran IDEC SPORT, Skipper Francis Joyon and his crew, prior to their Jules Verne Trophy record attempt, crew circumnavigation, in Brest on November 20, 2016 – Photo Jean-Marie Liot / DPPI

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It was one of the fastest ever laps of the planet under sail, but the crew of Spindrift found their race home interminable. Dona Bertarelli, the billionaire owner of the 130ft maxi catamaran, on board as part of the crew of 12, described the stretch from Cape Horn to the finish at Ushant as an “ascent . . . long, laborious, and it felt like time was standing still.”

After 29,000 miles of speed sailing, hunting the weather and often riding faster than the fronts they were seeking, Spindrift coasted comparatively sedately across the line that marks the start and finish of the non-stop round the world record. Their time of 47d 10h meant the Jules Verne Trophy eluded them by two days.

But though they failed to break the record, two attempts by two very different crews has rekindled interest in one of sailing’s most exciting challenges.

The record attempts began in strong northerlies on 22 November. Dona Bertarelli had been long planning this with her partner, French sailor Yann Guichard. Spindrift 2 was formerly Banque Populaire V, the 130ft trimaran that captured the record in 2012 under Loïck Peyron.

A good bet, then, for an improvement on the record time. The Spindrift team estimated that with favourable weather and a bit of luck there was as much as a day to shave from Banque Populaire’s time of 45d 13h.

Guichard, an experienced former Olympic and ocean sailor, had a view that the crew should contain a range of specialists: helmsmen (including Bertarelli), navigator, bowman, trimmers and so on – 12 in total.

Stamm and Joyon

Their rival for the record, the redoubtable Francis Joyon, one of France’s most famous solo sailors and a man famous for doing things his own way, had a contrasting approach.

Joyon also had been planning an attempt on the Jules Verne and selected a smaller trimaran and a smaller crew. He opted for the 105ft IDEC Sport (formerly record holder Groupama 3) and hand-picked a crew of six all-rounders, skippers in their own right, a band that included such names as Bernard Stamm and Roland Jourdain.

Photo Jean Marie Liot / DPPI / IDEC

Independently the two crews picked the same weather system on which to depart, sprinting over the line only two hours part. For the first time, and without planning, the Jules Verne Trophy was a proper boat-on-boat race.

Sprinting out of the traps

Spindrift 2 came out of the traps the quicker of the two and in strong following winds scorched south to the Equator in a record time of 4d 21h. It was fast, furious and soaking, and the crews said that it was the wettest they had ever been.

A slower spell in the South Atlantic followed, but they were always just ahead of Joyon’s crew until Guichard’s team picked up the ‘express train’: their first opportunity to hook into a Southern Ocean low pressure system.

One might think that the disparity in size and power of these two boats would make it impossible for the smaller of the two to be the faster round the world. But there is a catch to being big and fast in the Southern Ocean, and as long as IDEC Sport could catch the same train east there was every hope they could match each other to Cape Horn.

The conundrum for any Jules Verne attempt is that it will be won or lost in the Atlantic, out or back. These are the only sections of the circumnavigation where large enough gains can be made.

Giant trimarans such as Spindrift are quick enough to make those gains provided they get the weather breaks, but they are arguably too large for the Southern Ocean ‘train carriage’ lows. Here, they are too fast, as Spindrift’s weather router and forecaster, Jean-Yves Bernot, explains.

“We have a big problem with these boats,” he says. “They are too fast for the Southern Ocean, particularly with [the weather] we got in the Indian Ocean. We would be faster than the weather system, we would overtake it and then were stopped waiting for the low to come back.”

Work of the weather routers

The ideal position is to be east of a cold front at a good angle, in more stable winds and more regular seas that enable surfing. But with boats like Spindrift and IDEC, able to sail at mean speeds of 35-38 knots, keeping in this dialled in position for long is impossible: the weather systems themselves are moving at only 25 knots. While the yachts can make huge daily runs, sometimes in excess of 600 miles, before long they will get out of synch.

The work of the weather routers is critical to these records. Working with IDEC Sport was Marcel Van Triest. These were the invisible crew, on land but always on call, day and night, unable to leave home without phone and computer.

For Bernot, each day revolved around preparing two forecasts, with detailed correspondence by email, as well as talking by phone to Guichard or to Spindrift’s navigator, Erwan Israel. There are many considerations to weigh up, by no means simply speed. Sea state is frequently as important, or more so, as are the number and pace of sail changes required.

“We had a lot of conversations [about that],” explains Bernot. “For them it was important that when there was a sail change, it was not for half an hour. We’d ask: ‘What if we alter course some degrees to make it easier?’ Fine-tuning is important on these vessels – it’s not sending a weather bulletin in the morning and saying ‘Good luck, guys’. “

Within sight of each other

Despite IDEC being 800 miles behind and taking a very different course, the two boats almost converged mid-December in the Southern Pacific after 15,000 miles of sailing. For part of a day they were in sight of each other.

As the two crews crossed the Southern Pacific Ocean a huge high pressure area blocked their paths and presented a dilemma. The only options were to go round on a long route to the north, or dip deep south on a shorter route at risk of encounters with ice. Because the southern option could be tempting, the two weather routers made an unprecedented gentleman’s agreement.

“The idea of sending the guys down there would stop us from sleeping,” says Jean-Yves Bernot. “Marcel [van Triest] called me to ask my opinion and we said to each other ‘What are you doing? Are you diving south or not?’ Because if one does there would be the temptation for the other to do it too and as routers we said we didn’t want to risk it.

“We must not forget that this is a sport. That means that we want to know who is best when everyone is playing by the same rules.”

After a month at sea, Spindrift rounded Cape Horn ahead on 23 December, with 15 knots of wind and a flat sea. “Honestly, it was just fantastic,” Yann Guichard said. It was his first time round Cape Horn; his first circumnavigation. “Dona spoke with the lighthouse keeper; it was really a nice moment. Everyone was awake and on deck.”

“Now that’s done, it’s the weather that will decide,” he said. The weather did decide, and lay an obstacle course of light winds and ridges ahead of them. Their course, and IDEC’s behind was, as they described it, like needlework: ‘Cross stitch, daisy stitch, eyelet, feather stitch, blanket stitch, running stitch, chain stitch . . .’

Split at the Falklands

The two yachts split either side of the Falkland Islands, working hard to match the record time. Incredibly, on 26 December, while off the coast of Argentina at 43°N, IDEC’s crew reported a huge iceberg just over a mile away, the largest Bernard Stamm had ever seen, complete with cliffs and a light blue hue, “a huge wall of ice”.

“This is a matter that worries us all at the moment. We are pushing things too far with the climate. We really need to be careful,” said Francis Joyon. “It’s important for us to be here to bear witness to what is happening.”

Spindrift passed the Equator 1d 10h behind the record. It seemed possible to beat the target, but as the days counted down the route ahead began to close off.

The Azores High was huge. The two crews had some hopes that a cold front would cut a path through it, but this shortcut never materialised and they were forced to go the long way round. On these records, heavy weather is rarely the problem because even in the strongest winds the boats can average 25 knots. If the course is along the rhumb line everyone is happy. It is the light winds that make or break such voyages. “The high pressures are the real boss on the record; they decide how your course should be set,” observes Bernot.

Time standing still

It was, as Dona Bertarelli later said, as if time were standing still. After six weeks at sea, driving as hard as the boats and crews could manage, Spindrift and later IDEC finished out of time. Neither voyage, safely concluded, could be termed a failure, but they weren’t the successes they’d hoped for either. This is going to be a tough, lengthy, expensive record to crack.

Whether Joyon and his crew come back to try again next year remains to be seen. The rumour is that Spindrift’s crew will attempt it again, though not necessarily with Bertarelli on board.

But with such small margins to be gained now, a day or less if all goes swimmingly, could the record ever be reduced much below 44 days in future? Jean-Yves Bernot thinks it could, and the answer is not, as you might expect, all about improved yacht design. In his view, there is a lot to be done in terms of understanding how to navigate varying sea states.

“Waves are very important; they can make a 20 per cent difference between boat speed depending on sea state. The forecast information is pretty good for the wind, but for the waves it is not that accurate and we don’t know very accurately the impact on boat speed.”

Bernot believes there is a lot more testing and interpolating that can be done, and that this is a significant area of development. “A trimaran is complicated. We know how high waves are, but not the period and we need to know more about cross seas and how steep they are. It is more complicated than we can extract at the moment, but that will change. We are still at the stage of trying to define what we want from the data.

“First we need to try to make tests and understand how the speed depends on sea state. Getting data has not been properly done, it will help improve how boats are steered and for designers it’s a big chance in the next three or five years.”

Sooner or later this record is going to fall, and until a future giant multihull is built, Spindrift is the likeliest tool for the job. Not this time. But maybe next winter.

Who is Dona Bertarelli?

by James Boyd

Her elder brother, Ernesto, is famed for his America’s Cup victories, but Dona Bertarelli is now rivalling him when it comes to great endeavour in yachting – the Jules Verne Trophy attempt makes the 47-year-old the fastest woman round the world under sail.

The Bertarellis have sailed all their lives, initially cruising in the Mediterranean. Ernesto raced multihulls on Lake Geneva in the 1990s and Dona followed this same route by setting up the all-female Lady Cat campaign in late 2006 to compete on the Swiss D35 one-design catamaran circuit. Three years later with Dona at the helm, the fuchsia-coloured Lady Cat won Switzerland’s top sailing event, the Bol d’Or Mirabaud, with a crew of seven including two men.

Ernesto and Dona come from the Italian Bertarelli family, three generations of which developed the pharmaceuticals and biotech company Serono, best known for developing the first fertility drugs – one of which helped create the first test tube baby in 1978. Their father Fabio relocated Serono from Italy to Switzerland in the mid-1970s. From 1992-97 Dona served as an executive director, before leaving in 1998 to raise her two children.

The Bertarelli family sold their stake in Serono for £4.6 billion and Dona now owns the Grand Hotel Park in Gstaad, Five Seas Hotel in Cannes and Country Club Geneva. She also co-chairs the Bertarelli Foundation, set up in honour of her late father, which focuses on marine conservation and life science research.

In 2011, with her partner, former Olympic Tornado sailor Yann Guichard, Bertarelli established Spindrift Racing, initially to compete on the MOD70 one-design trimaran circuit. In 2013 they made their biggest acquisition, the 130ft Spindrift 2.

What drives Dona to do a Jules Verne Trophy attempt? “I think it’s the passion – you need to be passionate, you need to love sport, to love sailing and the sea. Yann and I have built this stable [Spindrift Racing] together and I want to be part of it completely.”

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Yann Guichard and crew on the 130ft maxi catamaran Spindrift 2 passed close to Cape Horn yesterday after only 30 days at sea since leaving the start line off Brittany. They were 18 hours ahead of the non-stop round the world record for the Jules Verne Trophy.

Guichard, Dona Bertarelli and their 12-man crew had good conditions for the rounding in daylight. Once she has cleared the Le Maire Strait Spindrift 2 will be heading for warmer waters.

And on Wednesday, a low is currently that will allow to sprint downwind past the Falkland Islands and maintain her fast pace all the way up to the latitude of Uruguay, after which the Saint Helena low will determine whether she can reach the Equator in a faster time than Banque Populaire in 2011: 7d 4h 27m.

This drone footage shows the boat off Cape Horn.

This morning, Spindrift 2’s skipper Yann Guichard shared his thoughts on the rounding, which he saw for the first time in his sailing career.

“My favourite memory will be of passing Cape Horn in the sun, with 15 knots of wind and a flat sea: we had time to enjoy it because we skirted the coast…Honestly, it was just fantastic. Dona spoke with the lighthouse keeper, it was really a nice moment: everyone was awake and on deck. This marks one month of adventure that is going well.”

“My goal since leaving Ushant was to arrive at Cape Horn within the time of Banque Populaire V: that’s done, now it’s the weather that will decide. But we’ve already had an excellent voyage; I’m delighted with my crew and the atmosphere on board, it’s really great.”

“It’s a once in a lifetime experience to see the rock at the end of the world after 30 days of shared enjoyment at sea. We were surrounded by birds all the way across the Indian and Pacific Oceans. We saw albatrosses but not the big swell.

Other than that, I have continuous stress about looking after things, because I know that if we finish, we will be in record time. It is really the management of men and the machine that preoccupies me every day; it’s tiring, but it’s also enjoyable.”

“We’ll try to catch a depression in 30 hours that will take us to Uruguay, where I expect that there will be an anticyclone to manage. These are not easy conditions in the South Atlantic, but it’s often the way.

“We will not be as fast as Banque Populaire V, which had an almost straight track. For us, it will be more complicated, but we’ll have to get out of the Le Maire Strait first to see things a little more clearly.”

“We’re on record pace and I hope that will still be the case at the Equator. We’ll surely have lost some ground, but I hope we can still try to beat the record whatever happens, but it’s going be really tight all the way to the end.”

Dona Bertarelli also became a Cape Horner and could not hide her excitement about this important moment.

“It was fantastic. I was blown away by the beauty of the place, at sunrise, with blue skies and 15 knots of wind gliding along the coast. Everything was just perfect. Right now the conditions are quite light, we have a little bit less of 12 knots of wind, we were expecting those conditions…”

“We just spent three weeks in the Southern seas where the conditions are quite hostile. There were tough moments. The team is doing a great job and we’re very happy with our performances. I will only keep the good memories.

“At the start, we were very happy that IDEC started at the same time, it seemed incredible to have two boats around the world. It was also reassuring to know that if there was a problem in the Southern Ocean, there were friends nearby. But all in all, it is still somewhat stressful that there is a competitor we have to worry about. Of course, we keep an eye on what they are doing.”

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Spindrift 2, the world’s largest racing trimaran is currently attemptng to beat the non-stop round the world record to win the Jules Verne Trophy.

Competing against IDEC Sport, led by Francis Joyon, this extraordinary match race around the world between two of the biggest and fastest offshore trimarans ever built is providing some fascinating twists and turns as both try to better the record pace of 45 days, 13 hours, 42 minutes and 53 seconds set by Banque Populaire in 2012.

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

Spindrift 2, Trophée Jules Verne, 2015

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To date Francis Joyon’s crew aboard IDEC Sport has trailed Yann Guichard & Donna Bertarelli’s team aboard Spindrift 2, (formerly Banque Populaire), but by staying south and keeping a straighter route, Joyon has now set a new world record for crossing the Indian Ocean.

Joyon’s crew crossed the longitude of Cape Leeuwin at 2240hrs UTC after 18 days, 20 hours and 41 minutes of sailing since leaving Ushant and has become the first sailing boat in history to sail from Cape Agulhas to Cape Leeuwin in less than six days.

To be precise, 5 days 11 hours and 23 minutes from South Africa to the south of Australia.

As Joyon and his team approach the halfway stage they trail the Jules Vernes record by just short of a day, (20 hours and 41 minutes more than Banque Pop V in 2012) and have yet to get their nose in front of Spindrift. But there is more to focus on than simply another boat and a record to chase, they have their own pace to match as their boat was formerly Groupama 3 and went for the same trophy in 2010.

Back then Frank Cammas was skipper and reached the same point in just over 21 days with his crew of ten. Joyon has just six aboard and is 2 days and 18 hours faster – food for thought and perhaps evidence of the validity of Joyon’s strategy.

Meanwhile Spindrift 2, (that has 12 crew members), is also upbeat about their performance, even though her current position and plot when compared to the record pace appears to put her behind.

Here’s their rationale:

It is difficult to explain how a boat can be in front when it is behind. But this is exactly what is happening on the water between Spindrift 2, who passed the longitude of Cape Leeuwin at 115° 08’ East, this Thursday, December 10 at 15:27 GMT and Banque Populaire V’s record time in 2011. The explanation is that the closer a boat is to the South Pole, the shorter its way around Antarctica, because the earth is a sphere. For example, a boat that sails along 40° South covers 459 miles for every 10° of longitude, but the same boat sailing along 50° South travels only 385 miles: a difference of 74 miles. So, for the same speed and the same course, the difference is significant. 

Reporting from the boat yesterday (Thursday) Yann Guichard said

“It’s not been an easy Indian Ocean because of the ice, but notably it was a quick Indian at the start and slow for the rest. In particular, the last two days, where we’ve got caught with a ridge of high pressure, that is stopping us from fully expressing the capabilities of the boat. And this may last until we are south of Tasmania. The wind will definitely strengthen from tomorrow (Friday) and we’ll accelerate a little.”

“As Banque Populaire V was quite slow in the Pacific, we can hope to be ahead at Cape Horn, but it’s still a long way away. For now, the performance of both crews is close and should remain almost identical until Auckland. But all this remains somewhat hypothetical because all the times on the Jules Verne Trophy are established in relation to an ideal route that no one can follow: when the holder is further south than us virtually, it gains ground, and vice versa.”

“So far, there is no drift ice ahead of us but this will depend on our route. The Pacific looks pretty calm, without large depressions. For now, there is no big weather either ahead of or behind us. In addition, we’re assessing the use of the port foil and don’t know if we can use it again. This will inevitably affect our performance over the long term.”

The bottom line is that both boats are maintaining a blistering pace around the world, how else can you describe 12,295 miles sailed at an average speed of 27.73 knots?

Both are easily close enough to break Banque Populaire’s record but only one can win the Jules Verne Trophy – It’s hard to think of a more exciting race around the world.

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Just two weeks after starting off Brest, the crew of maxi trimaran Spindrift is in the Southern Ocean and dodging ice on their attempt to break the non-stop round the world record. Yann Guichard and his crew are a little way behind the record time as they gybe downwind trying to avoid the dangers of ice, but some hundreds of miles ahead of Francis Joyon’s crew on IDEC Sport.

Crewmember and campaign head Dona Berterelli reports:

‘For 36 hours we have been sailing in an ice zone. Satellites can only detect the presence of icebergs that are at least 100m long. For safety reasons, Yann has decided to keep 50 nautical miles away from any ice in our way; the largest detected so far is 400m.

‘He has also set up a watch system, day and night, where we take it in turns to spot growlers, the blocks of ice that are smaller than an iceberg but still many tonnes, drifting on the surface of the water. There’s daylight at 1am, so, the binoculars replace the infrared glasses. The atmosphere on board is studious and focused.

‘The sea is grey, milky, like a high mountain lake. It is cold, inside and out, but Thierry warns me, this is nothing still. In a few hours, the wind is going to strengthen, this time from the south, straight from the polar ice, and we will feel the full power of the Southern Ocean.

‘I never take my gloves or my woolly hat off. Even to sleep. Everyday tasks like washing a pan or the dishes remind us that the water is 3 degrees. It’s impossible to brush your teeth without fearing for your enamel. You have to warm the water up.

‘The birds have become more numerous and seem to be heralding the approach of the Kerguelen islands. Our route will take us very close to there perhaps. We’ve been at sea two weeks now and to see a bit of land, would be very welcome.’

Joyon’s crew meanwhile report that they are stuck between two depressions, and are also in the middle of an area of icebergs and growlers. ‘The crew is watching with great care, observing a continuous radar watch and studying the latest satellite pictures the area obtained on land by router Marcel van Triest.’

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A record time from Ushant to the equator has been set by the 130ft maxi trimaran Spindrift 2. Yann Guichard and his crew have sprinted through the Doldrums and into the southern hemisphere on their round the world record attempt, covering 3,171 miles covered in 4d 21h.

That’s an average of 26.99 knots.

Right now, they are 17 hours ahead of the time set by the same boat when she was Banque Populaire V and in the hands of Loïck Peyron and his crew.

Francis Joyon and his crew on the smaller trimaran IDEC Sport set off at nearly the same time. So for the first time ever, we have a race going on as well as a record bid. Joyon and his crew are not far behind Yann Guichard’s team, crossing the equator five hours behind.

They have had favourable winds so far and, incredibly, have had a single gybe off the Azores.

The crew are heading on a course along the Brazilian coast in 15-knot south-easterlies. They will continue this until reach the latitude of Rio de Janeiro, where they will be looking for a runway to hook onto the first southern hemisphere depression and get down to the Roaring Forties.

Yesterday Yann Guichard commented: “We were still in the doldrums at the end of the afternoon. There were small windless squalls all round and speeds varying from 4 to 25 knots. We’ve been in the Intertropical Convergence Zone on Thursday morning, when the first squalls kicked in

“It meant we had to make quite a few sail changes, sometimes almost immediately after having just finished one. One reef, two reefs, gennaker, genoa, jib. We’ve had almost the entire wardrobe out! But we’ve never been at a full halt.

“But our friend (Francis Joyon and his crew) is not far behind and is sailing fast!”

Meanwhile, Joyon and a crew of five men are chasing hard in IDEC Sport. They, too, have been the time set to the equator by Banque Populaire, but had a somewhat slower transition through he Doldrums, where they found themselves entrapped for some 15 hours.

But they are going hard again now and Joyon remarks that everything is running smoothly.

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To win the trophy will mean breaking Loïck Peyron’s blistering record pace of 45 days, 13 hours, 42 minutes and 53 seconds.

For Spindrift 2 the trip will be a familiar one, at least for the boat, she was the tri that Peyron set the record when she was known as Banque Populaire V.

She was bought by Donna Bertarelli and was re-configured in 2014 by the Spindrift team based in La Trinite, France and led by skipper Yann Guichard who raced Spindrift 2 single handed in the Route du Rhum last year.

At 40m (131ft) she’s a monster but as Guichard demonstrated in the Route du Rhum last year when he raced her single handed across the Atlantic, she’s a versatile boat.

Her direct opponent, IDEC Sport is just under 10m (30ft) shorter yet at 31.50m (105ft) she is still no titch. She’s skippered by Francis Joyon who is no stranger to trips around the world having circumnavigated twice solo, on both occasions breaking the record. Indeed, in 2008 he not only set a solo round the world record that still holds, but beat the fully crewed record time of the day.

IDEC Sport used to be Groupama 3 and took the Jules Verne trophy in 2010 and has won the previous two editions of the Route du Rhum, beating Spindrift on the water.

Clearly Joyon believes that size is not the issue, at least not when you get to 30m.

But, while the boats have similar backgrounds, their skippers have taken two very different approaches to their campaigns.

Aboard Spindrift 2, Guichard has pulled together a team of 14 crew which includes eleven helmsmen. Among the long list of drivers is owner Donna Bertarelli, a highly accomplished multihull sailor in her own right and who has always been a regular member of the crew.

Joyon on the other hand has chosen to go for just six crew, all of them helmsmen.

“The smaller mast is more efficient and offers better performance when the wind is above twenty knots and it enables the boat to be safer and to cut through the water better,” says Joyon. “On top of that, having a smaller crew means the way we work on board will be simplified and we can go for a light weight approach.”

Interestingly, although her crew list is far longer, Spindrift 2’s modifications also included reducing her sail plan over the towering rig that was fitted when she was Banque Populaire V.

Since then Spindrift 2 has been on a significant diet and her displacement reduced from 24 tonnes to what the team estimates as being between 22-23 tonnes. Stripping between 4-9% of weight out of a grand prix machine is a big task, especially given that she was no slouch to start with.

“When we’re attempting records we often end up with a reef in so it makes no sense to carry the extra weight and drag of the top section of the mast,” Donna Bertarelli told me back in 2014 when the main work was being carried out. “We have fitted a new mast that is 6m (20ft) shorter reducing it to 41m (134ft) with a new sail plan that will be 800m2 as opposed to the 1000m2 that we had with the previous rig.”

Chasing the record

The Jules Verne Trophy is a prize for the fastest circumnavigation of the world by any type of yacht with no restrictions on the size of the crew, starting and finishing between the Le Créac’h Lighthouse off the tip of Brittany and the Lizard Point in Cornwall. The minimum distance for the course which takes them around the world via the three Capes, Good Hope, Leeuwin, the Horn, is 21,600 nautical miles.

Francis Joyon’s IDEC Sport started at 02:02:22 GMT on Sunday morning 22 Nov and must return by 15:44:15 GMT on January 6, 2016 to beat the record.

Yann Guichard’s Spindrift 2 started nearly two hours later at 4:01:58 GMT. She needs to return before 17:43:51 GMT on January 6, 2016 to beat the record.

Two days into the trip and both boats have been gradually increasing their average speeds from 25knots to over 30knots as they get wound into the solid NE breeze that will sling shot them down to the African coast where they should then make the equator in around five days’ time. The time they will be chasing to cross the equator to keep pace with Banque Populaire V’s pace is 5d 14h 55m.

Spindrift 2 crew list

Yann Guichard, skipper

Dona Bertarelli, helmsman-trimmer

Sébastien Audigane, helmsman-trimmer

Antoine Carraz, helmsman-trimmer

Thierry Duprey du Vorsent, helmsman-trimmer

Christophe Espagnon, helmsman-bowman

Jacques Guichard, helmsman-trimmer

Erwan Israël, navigator

Loïc Le Mignon, helmsman-trimmer

Sébastien Marsset, équipier d’avant

François Morvan, helmsman-trimmer

Xavier Revil, helmsman-trimmer

Yann Riou, media reporter

Thomas Rouxel, helmsman-bowman

Jean-Yves Bernot, onshore router

Simone Gaeta, substitute

Thomas Le Breton, substitute

Spindrift 2 Data

Designers: VPLP

Previous names: Banque Populaire V

Initial launch: June 2008

Length: 40.00m

Beam: 23.00m

Displacement: 21t

Draught: 5.10 m

Mast height: 41.00m

Upwind sail surface: 531m2

Downwind sail surface: 805m2

Spindrift 2 Home page

Spindrift 2 Jules Verne

Spindrift 2 Log book

IDEC Sport crew list

Francis Joyon (FRA), skipper

Bernard Stamm (SUI), helmsman-trimmer

Gwénolé Gahinet (FRA), helmsman-trimmer

Alex Pella (ESP), helmsman-trimmer

Clément Surtel (FRA), helmsman-trimmer

Boris Herrmann (GER), helmsman-trimmer

–

Marcel Van Triest (HOLL), router on dry land

Roland Jourdain (FRA), substitute

IDEC Sport Data

Designers: VPLP

Previous names: Groupama 3, Banque Populaire VII

Initial launch: June 2006

Length: 31.50 m

Beam: 22.50 m

Displacement: 15.5 t

Draught: 5.70 m

Mast height: 33.50 m

Structure: carbon-nomex

Upwind sail surface: 411 m2

Downwind sail surface: 678 m2

IDEC Sport – Jules Verne page

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