The Ultims at the dock in Brest, the day before the departure of the Arkéa Ultim Challenge-Brest, January 6, 2024. LOIC VENANCE / AFP
Charles Caudrelier (Maxi-Edmond de Rothschild), Thomas Coville (Sodebo-3), Tom Laperche (SVR-Lazartigue), Armel Le Cléac’h (Maxi-Banque-Populaire-XI), Anthony Marchand (Actual-3) and Eric Péron (Adagio). They are six pioneers determined to write a new chapter in ocean racing by lining up at the start of the Arkéa Ultim Challenge-Brest.
This first edition of the solo sailing world tour reserved for Ultims, giant trimarans measuring 32 meters long by 23 meters wide, set off from Brest, Sunday January 7, at 1:30 p.m., and the jump into the unknown that constitutes this unprecedented maritime adventure has not escaped the public.
Since December 29, 2023, 15,000 to 20,000 people have flocked every day to the race village, located in the commercial port of the city of Ponant, to marvel at these 15-ton behemoths, which are nonetheless capable – thanks to their foils – to gracefully fly over the waves at speeds of over 80 km/h.
These machines – the fastest on the planet – are expected to swallow 21,600 miles (40,000 kilometers) of ocean from west to east, via the Capes of Good Hope (South Africa), Leeuwin (Australia) and Horn (Chile). ), in forty to fifty days, almost a month less, on the same route, than the Vendée Globe record (single-handed world tour in an 18-meter monohull) established in 2017, in 74 days, by Armel Le Cléac’h. But the fact that they have never ventured, in a fleet, beyond Ascension Island, in the South Atlantic, will require them to solve new equations.
Read also: Sailing: the Cammas – Caudrelier tandem wins the Brest Atlantiques, the Ultim “test run”
Only Francis Joyon (in 2004 then in 2008), Ellen MacArthur (2005), Thomas Coville (2016) and François Gabart (2017) – author of reference time, on Ultim Macifin 42 days 16 hours 40 minutes and 35 seconds – have so far completed a solo round the world trip on a giant trimaran, but in a “record” configuration, with the choice of their weather window and the stopwatch as their only opponent.
One hundred days maximum, exclusion zones…
On the Arkéa Ultim Challenge, the six solo sailors have a maximum of one hundred days to complete their circumnavigation. After Tuesday April 16 at 1:30 p.m., competitors will no longer be classified, but their monitoring and reception upon arrival will be ensured.
Extreme, this oceanic challenge is nevertheless punctuated by safeguards. In addition to the exclusion zone defined to avoid the icebergs of the Great South, skippers will have to avoid zones of concentration of cetaceans around the Azores, the Canary archipelago, South Africa, the Kerguelen Islands and part of Antarctica. As much as protecting marine fauna, it is a question of preserving their multi-million euro trimarans from shocks to which their speeds make them particularly vulnerable.
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