the under 50 crowd

Another milestone has been broken, and it’s the biggest of them all.  Today Frank Cammas’ monster trimaran Groupama 3 crossed the imaginary finish line on her Jules Verne bid just 48 days, 7 hours after her departure on the 31st of January.  Cammas, along with navigator Stan Honey, knocks almost two and a half days off the mark Bruno Peyron set with Orange II, and as remarkable as that is, it’s even more so when you realize that Cammas was actually behind Peyron’s time less than a week ago.  Such was the legendary run that Honey put together (and kept us informed about himself in the forums), and the legendary team that Cammas assembled, and it’s been a real pleasure to watch the whole thing unfold.  It also marks a break with the design philosophy of Orange and the G-Class multihulls of the last decade, as VPLP said today: "Can we hope to break the record by reducing the size of the boat rather then creating something always bigger and more powerful? That was the challenge that Franck Cammas and team Groupama asked us to overcome together.  We concentrated on maximising versatility and responsiveness,  rather then on maximising power, in order to pass through the transition zones faster whilst trying to avoid conditions that were too violent. Groupama 3 was designed to fulfil this particular race strategy and evidently Franck and his crew responded perfectly and adopted the ideal methodology. The result is that the record was attainable despite the fact that the weather conditions were not ideal."

G3 will chill out offshore for the night, entering Brest Harbor in the morning to the cheers of tens of thousands of French fans, including Bruno Peyron, whose record has stood for perhaps longer than he expected.  We have scheduled an interview with Bruno tomorrow, so if you have any questions you’d like answered about Peyron’s feelings on his broken record, on his new launching of The Race, on the state of giant multihull technology, or anything else, post them in this thread.

And a huge congrats from Sailing Anarchy to the boys from Groupama 3.  Will any of this bunch be able to shift gears enough to join the VOR team, or will that be a monohull sailor-specific effort?  Many questions remain, but for now, applause.  Well done!

Here’s the finishing vido – "Seven miles, Stan!"