48 Days !

Jules Vernes would have been proud. It took only 48 days and 7 hrs for Frank Cammas and crew to sail Groupama 3 around the world ! It marks a break with the design philosophy of Orange and the G-Class multihulls of the last decade, as designers 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."