They are leaving the seas of the Great South behind them with a huge lead. Navigator Thomas Coville and his crew crossed Cape Horn, at the tip of South America, 26 days, 4 hours, 46 minutes and 25 seconds after their departure at sea off Ouessant (Brittany). An exceptional performance allowing them to maintain their lead over the holder of the Jules Verne Trophy and set the Pacific record.
Thomas Coville and his six crew, Benjamin Schwartz, Frédéric Denis, Pierre Leboucher, Léonard Legrand, Guillaume Pirouelle and Nicolas Troussel, are now beginning the journey up the Atlantic aboard the trimaran Sodebo Ultim 3 with a lead of 10h59′ on the absolute record established by Francis Joyon’s troupe in 2017 on Idec Sport (40 days, 23 hours and 30 minutes), current holder of the Jules Verne Trophy.
The icing on the cake, the crew of Sodebo Ultim 3 also set a new record for crossing the Pacific, completed in seven days, 12 hours and 12 minutes, 3h7′50″ less than François Gabart’s time in 2017.
“These are rare moments”
“We have just passed Cape Horn, this place is more than a cape, it is everything that happened before which has just been released to create an individual and collective emotion,” reacted Coville in a video transmitted from the boat. “On each of my twelve passages, I come to look for that, I come to feed on that, these are rare moments,” he revealed, he being the only member of his crew to have crossed Cape Horn several times under sail.
For Coville and his teammates, they will now have to tackle the tricky conditions of the South Atlantic, the only ones to stand between them and the Jules Verne Trophy record, which crowns the fastest crewed boat to sail around the world. To do this, they will have to complete the course before January 25, 2026 at 8:31 p.m. and 35 seconds (French time).
Imagined in the 1980s, the Jules Verne Trophy rewards the sailor who, imitating the hero Phileas Fogg, would circumnavigate the globe non-stop in less than 80 days. Bruno Peyron did it for the first time in 1993, in 79 days.
