Groupama first to start

Maxi-trimaran dust-up gets underway on the north Atlantic race track

History:

Year	Skipper	Boat	Type	LOA	Days	Hours	Minutes	Seconds	Av speed
1905	Charlie Barr	Atlantic	Mono	56.4	12	4	1	19	10.02
1980	Eric Tabarly	Paul Ricard	Foiler	16.5	10	5	14	20	11.94
1981	Marc Pajot	Elf Aquitaine	Cat	19.2	9	10	6	34	12.94
1984	Patrick Morvan	Jet Services II	Cat	18	8	16	36		14
1986	Loick Caradec	Royale II	Cat	25	7	21	5	42	15.39
1987	Philippe Poupon	Fleury Michon VIII	Tri	22	7	12	49	34	16.16
1988	Serge Madec	Jet Services V	Cat	22	7	6	30		16.71
1990	Serge Madec	Jet Services V	Cat	22	6	13	3	32	18.63
2001	Steve Fossett	PlayStation	Cat	38	4	17	28		25.78
2006	Bruno Peyron	Orange 2	Cat	36	4	8	23	54	28
2007	Franck Cammas	Groupama 3	Tri	32	4	3	57	43	29.26

The world's two largest offshore maxi-trimarans have set off on their respective attempts to break the outright record eastwards across the North Atlantic between New York and the Lizard - the fastest and oldest of all the oceanic records.

The record for this 2925 mile course is currently held by Franck Cammas' Groupama 3, one of the two tris attempting to better the record on this occasion, with a time of 4 days 3 hours 57 minutes and 54 seconds (read more about this here)

Groupama 3 passed the Ambrose Light at 20:12:16 GMT. Thus to break the record she must reach the Lizard, or officially the line between the Lizard and the island of Ushant off northwest France, before Monday at 0:09:10 GMT.

Groupama's shore-based router and meteorologist, Sylvain Mondon of Météo France, gave his assessment: “ Groupama 3 left this Wednesday evening in a southerly wind of 20-25 knots. A line of storm squalls from southwest reached New York this afternoon reinforcing the gradient wind. That allowed us to set sail a little earlier than originally envisaged.”

Pascal Bidegorry's Banque Populaire V maxi-trimaran, set sail a little later, at 22:47:42 GMT and started in 25-30 knots. She must pass the Lizard on Monday at 06:44:42

This is the first dust-up between the two giant trimarans and it will be interesting to see how they perform relatively to one another. Both are designed by van Peteghem-Lauriot Prevost, who most recently have been key to the design of the BMW Oracle Racing trimaran. On paper the race looks quite unequal - Groupama 3 being 105ft long compared to Banque Populaire, substantially longer at 131ft (40m). However length does not represent the whole story, for Groupama 3 has a larger beam:length ratio than her rival. Also Groupama 3 was launched before Banque Populaire and Cammas and his crew have considerably more experience of driving their boat to the max.

The crew make-ups are slightly different too, both highly experienced but Groupama having a higher proportion of 'rock stars' including double Velux 5 Oceans winner Bernard Stamm, former Bayer and Gitana ORMA 60 skipper Fred le Peutrec and Route du Rhum ORMA winner Lionel Lemonchois. Interestingly both also have non-French navigators, American veteran and 2005-6 Volvo Ocean Race winner Stan Honey on Groupama 3 while another Volvo Ocean Race veteran Marcel van Triest is on Banque Populaire.

Our money is on the longer Banque Populaire, provided she doesn't blow up but the wily Cammas can never be discounted.




The crew lists:

Banque Populaire V: Pascal Bidégorry, Ronan Lucas, Kévin Escoffier, Yvan Ravussin, Ewen Le Clech, Sébastien Audigane, Florent Chastel, Jean-Baptiste Le Vaillant, Emmanuel Le Borgne, Marcel Van Triest, Pierre-Yves Moreau, Xavier Revil

Groupama 3: Franck Cammas, Stève Ravussin (CH), Frédéric Le Peutrec, Loïc Le Mignon, Lionel Lemonchois, Bernard Stamm, Ronan Le Goff, Bruno Jeanjean, Olivier Mainguy, Stan Honey (USA)

More photos on the following pages...

More on Groupama 3 here and video of our sailing on board her here
Read the works about Banque Populaire here, part 2 here and video here
Find out all about the giant offshore multihulls on our 'G Class' homepage