Veil. François Gabart sets off this Friday in the hunt for Francis Joyon's legendary record: the keys to the feat

“Francis' time is incredible, the record has never been held for so long by a boat. It will be very difficult to improve, which is what makes the challenge interesting. And to beat him, you have to at least try to beat him! » laughed Gabart on the sidelines of the start of the Vendée Globe.

You can follow the progress of “SVR-Lazartigue” on cartography by following this link

Eight years ago, weather blessed by the gods propelled the competitors of the 2016-2017 Vendée Globe and “Idec. Armel Le Cléac'h, solo and in a monohull, lowered the record of… Gabart from 78 to 74 days in 2012-2013. At the end of 2017, the original Charente skipper will beat the solo multihull record aboard the trimaran “Macif”, in 42 days and 16 hours, with some intermediate times even better than those of Joyon.

In short, he knows the path and the recipe for a record around the world, and in particular the choice of the weather window for departure off the coast of Ushant.

Optimize the departure

“The ideal is to have a fast North Atlantic, synchronized in some way with a fast South Atlantic too, with a train of depressions or a depression along Brazil, to go quickly towards South Africa with an anticyclone of Saint Helena shifted in the north which allows us to take a direct trajectory. We have to optimize the start and take advantage of every opportunity,” explains the 41-year-old sailor.

If the current Vendée Globe fleet did not have a quick start, because in the race you do not choose your departure date, it had exactly these conditions to the point of getting back on track to improve the 74 days of Le Cléac 'h.

Francis had managed to hook a depression in the Atlantic and keep it in the Indian and Pacific

The departure and the rapid continuation, “this is what we managed to do, Francis and his crew then me at the end of 2017. Francis did not have a very favorable North Atlantic, he also took a little time along of the Brazilian coasts, on the other hand he had managed to catch a depression which brought him towards South Africa and above all which he managed to keep in the Indian and in the Pacific. It's something that we don't control at the time of departure, a small part of luck, of chance. »

A picture consistent with that of the current Vendée, with a crossing of the Indian predicted to be very rapid in the surge of the southern depressions.

“History shows that the weather in Ecuador is not definitive,” insists Gabart. What you need is hard work and a good boat. On my record, I didn't have a great crossing of the Indian either, but I had success on the way up the Atlantic, especially to the south again. » And that, the initial weather forecasts, which are roughly a week away, cannot predict that…