New Lake Geneva 1 hour record

l’Hydroptère.ch eating up the miles again

During her attempt to break Lake Geneva’s Blue Ribbon record last week, the experimental foiler catamaran l’Hydroptère.ch broke the one-hour record, with an average speed of 25.25 knots, it was confirmed by officials at the Société Nautique de Genève today.

l’Hydroptère.ch has already held the best time over one hour on the lake since the end of 2011, with an average speed of 22.66 knots, and has now improved on this with an average speed of 25.25 knots.

“I am very proud of how the crew performed,” said Thierry Lombard, owner of the sailing boat and founder of the Hydros project. “We’ve had a new crew since the start of the season, led by skipper Daniel Schmaeh and a team of very talented young sailors under the supervision of Jérémie Lagarrigue. This first attempt is extremely promising, and the adjustments made by our design team this winter have clearly paid off.”

Led by Daniel Schmaeh, Stéphane Dyen, Gaël Ledoux, Guillaume Coyon and Cédric Pochelon, l’Hydroptère.ch covered the outbound course between Geneva and Le Bouveret in a time of 1 hour 44 minutes, which represents the absolute speed record on this course. It also improved its best performance over the course by 18 minutes. “We were never at our limit,” says Stéphane Dyen, who is not only designer of l’Hydroptère.ch and its foils, but also the bowman and crew member responsible for trimming the catamaran’s foils. “We are convinced that the Blue Ribbon record is well within our reach. We just need a bit of luck with the weather to beat it.”

Jérémie Lagarrigue, head of the Hydros project, stresses that “the conditions were not optimal. Our objective was to survey the course with our new crew, so this result exceeded our expectations. The one-hour record is the icing on the cake. It’s a great reward for all the hard work that we have done, and clearly demonstrates that hydrofoils generate less drag and therefore have a higher energy output.”