Franck Cammas and team about to shatter Bruno Peyron's New York-Lizard Transatlantic record 23/7/07
French sailor Franck Cammas and team are about to shatter Bruno Peyron’s New York-Lizard Transatlantic record aboard the 105ft trimaran Groupama 3.
Having started the transatlantic record attempt on Thursday 19 July at 18h02’55’ the team claimed their first world record (subject to ratification by the World Speed Sailing Record Council) on Friday (794 miles in 24-hours). They then went on to better their performance (795.2 miles in 24 hours) see previous news story here,and are now on target for the big one.
A jubilant-sounding Franck Proffit reporting from the boat this morning said that theyare now on the ‘home’ stretch: “?We passed a small zone of early calms this morning but we are still going well. The tension aboard will undoubtedly rise in the next few hours as we approach the finish. We are concentrating and the boat is always at 100 per cent.
Proffitt explained how difficult it was to sleep given the extreme speed of the yacht: “? It is very noisy, it is difficult to rest. In a three-hour period when you’re off watch you only really sleep for an hour and thirty minutes and sometimes you cannot even close your eyes.”
At 0645 this morning Team Groupama 3 had 471 miles to go to the Lizard finish line. Proffitt continued: “We have an interesting depression which is giving us good winds – we are in a good phase right now.”
The record to beat is: 4d 8h 23m 54s – Bruno Peyron and team sailing Orange II at an average speed of 28 kts in July 2006.