Blink - and they've gone

Incredible 60ft trimaran fleet roar out of Le Havre. James Boyd reports

Nautica crossed the line first, but Groupama (out of picture to the right) took an early lead

The second start of the Transat Jacques Vabre, this time for the fleet of 60ft trimarans, looked set to be another drifting match, this time with an overcast sky, more befitting 4 November. However the Gods smiled on race organisers Gerard Petipas and Pierre Bojic, and an hour before the 1200GMT start the skies cleared and a 10 knot north westerly breeze established itself.

10 knots might not sound much but for your average 60ft trimaran, weighing a little over 5 tonnes, carrying a 100ft tall aeroplane wing for a mast and 300sqm of hi-tech sail, 10 knots is enough to be fully powered up with the main hull lifting clear of the water.

What was exceptional about the fleet which left Le Havre today was their number. Never have fourteen 60ft trimarans lined up on the same start line and with such class. This is not the motley collection of racing multihulls that turned up for races 20 years ago, but a collection of state of the art, highly developed racing machines sailed by some of the best in the business - Loick Peyron, Alain Gautier, Franck Cammas, Bertrand de Broc, Jean le Cam - and with some equally impressive names crewing in this double handed race - Michel Desjoyeaux, Yves Parlier, Ellen MacArthur, to name just a few.

The tris took their traditional laid back approach to the start with shore crews on board hoisting the mainsail (fortunately most of the boats now have coffee grinders so four guys can get cranking) half an hour before the start and most lying head to wind, in what can only be described as a predatory manner. One could almost imagine the crews finishing their last coffee and their last cigarette. With 15 minutes to go Solent jibs were unravelled and the boats began to tool about many an unusually long distance from the line.

But in the final minutes it was if all the boats had suddenly dropped several gears and collectively put their foot to the floor as the crews sheeted in and the boats hurtled to the line reaching at 20 knots. In the conditions - 10-12 knots of breeze and relatively flat water - this seemed un-naturally fast, but in light winds the 60ft tris are easily capable of sailing at twice wind speed.

Yvan Bourgnon on board Nautica, the former Primagaz, crossed the line first, but it was Groupama, who made the best start hitting the line at full tilt, powering along down to leeward to take an early lead. This van Peteghem-Prevost design is sailed by the nipper of the fleet Franck Cammas, who is just 28 but has already been campaigning this boat for three years. Ellen and Alain on board Foncia were third, followed by Fuji, newly rerigged after losing her revolutionary bendy mast at the Fecamps Grand Prix (she now has the rig that was due to go into Thomas Coville's new Sodebo trimaran - currently under construction).