Sailing Update II–“Right Way” Joyon: It’s raining round the world sailing record attempts. Last Friday, French multihullista Francois Joyon set off from the English channel, sailing solo in a trimaran (French only). He’s attempting to break the solo round the world record, and unlike our friend VDH is going the right way around (west to east), so the winds in the Southern Ocean will be behind him. Joyon’s trimaran, sponsored by IDEC, is none other than Olivier De Kersauson’s old steed. DeK set a crewed round the world record in the old girl, in 1997, and has attempted at solo circumnavigations in the boat as well. His best solo time was 125 days, but he stopped at least once (and maybe twice) and did not go out of his way to admit that–which is one of the reasons he annoys people. I believe, in fact (based on research I did for my book), that no one has ever managed to solo a multihull around the world non-stop, so that is one first that Joyon can try to put on the board. In terms of time, interestingly, the fastest solo RTW voyage is 93 days, in a monohull. With a full crew, multihulls leave monohulls over the horizon (the crewed RTW record is about 30 days faster). But when one tired wretch is responsible for keeping everything going (and in the case of multihulls, responsible for keeping the boat upright) the performance difference between multis and monos shrinks fast. So it will be very interesting to see how Joyon does, and if he sails safely he will have the probable pleasure of waving to VDH somewhere off Antarctica as he skims downwind and VDH slogs upwind. Bon chance, Francois…..



“25 knots boatspeed, and downwind in the Southern Ocean. What’s Van Den Heede thinking, the poor bastard…..”