Fastest man on the planet

James Boyd spoke to Orange skipper Bruno Peyron about his latest triumph

Obviously 'the limit' is not something you want to reach on a multihull offshore because the conclusion of going faster and faster is either a catastrophic failure, the breaking of whatever is the boat's weakess link, or a capsize. Peyron's view is that with multihull racing it is a question of experience and learning where the limit is and having the utmost respect for this.

"That [the limit] is the key point of sailing a big multi - the compromise between power and pushing and protecting the boat. When you see that we blew up the genniker the day before the arrival - that proved that we probably were pushing at the right level. If we'd blown up this genniker four weeks before we would have been in deep shit," he explains.

So would he have sailed differently had he been racing another boat? "Probably at some point we would have had to push a little bit more at some specific times, but we decided that before the start. Of course if we were on the start line of The Race we would sail a bit different. If some people think I am racing, like I am sailing records, then let them think that. I know how to do that [racing] I have done it in the past. For me that's not a problem."

Back in 1993 Peyron's team on board Commodore Explorer comprised experienced multihulls sailors. For this record Orange had an entirely French crew (with the exception of Nick Moloney) with diverse backgrounds from the Olympics to the Volvo, America's Cup and Figaro. Peyron believes that this is the way forward in the future. "I believe that the future will lie in a mixture of experience where you need some old guys with a lot of experience, you need young guys with lots of energy, you need tactical skills, some physical skills, some offshore, inshore, strategic...

"Our attempt was not only to break this record, but to prepare for the next campaign. For me it is very important to continue this way. I think I helped this process to go another step allowing new guys to come with us. It is so easy to say when it has taken 20 years to get to the top level 'I stay here [top level] and you stay there [bottom level]'. Jojo [Sebastien Josse] was the youngest guy, he's a super guy, that's why I put him on the helm for the finish as we crossed the line".

On board Peyron says he started off as skipper but rapidly ended up being navigator with Gilles Chiorri. "I was skipper and co-navigator. It was not that way in the beginning, but I noticed that I am so interested in the strategy and I know so much what I want that maybe it was not so easy for Gilles at the beginning, because we shared a lot, but finally I spent a lot more time navigating than I thought I would. Of course we did it together, he was in charge of gathering all the information and preparing the 'dossier' with everything he could find and then we discussed it together. Then it was a case of mixing the rational information with a lot of my feeling of what was right or wrong".

Unusually Chiorri, the navigator, also had the added responsibility of being a watch captain. "At the beginning when I was not doing weather I was wondering whether I would share the watch with him, but in the end the three watches were working so well that I prefered to stay concentrated on my other jobs such as thinking of the future, navigating and so on. Just coming on deck when I could be of help - in the end it worked very well that way."

Peyron at Orange 's chart table