Match racing around the world

There is a big deal race going on right now in the southern ocean. Two big trimarans, IDEC Sport (Francis Joyon) and Spindrift (Yann Guichard), are zooming around the planet at 30 knots chasing the Jules Verne trophy and the ghost of Banque Populaire V which set the record a few years back and is still very much in the race. They left Nov 22 and are halfway around the globe. Amazing! See all three tracks at http://volodiaja.net/Tracking/ and you can check out Spindrift sailing at http://www.spindrift-racing.com/jules-verne/drupal/en/media/drone-eng.

Wow! How do these compare to the America Cup boats- bigger we presume? The tracking website is a good one.

Spindrift 2 is a refit of Banque Populaire V - Loïck Peyron, the skipper who sailed Banque Populaire V to the Trophy (2012) was the "ambassador" for the 2015 edition of Les Voiles ... Franck Cammas, the 2013 Cata Cup winner, was the immediate prior Trophy holder (2010) on...

Franck Cammas set the record on Groupama 3 which is reborn as IDEC Sport. These boats have done this before in a previous life. Cammas is recovering from a partially severed right leg when it hit the T-foil of his foiling GC32 from which he fell overboard. It appears that surgery was successful and he is hoping to be skipper of the Team France effort in the next America's cup. Foils raise the danger level significantly as we've seen in the previous cup.

BTW, the AC foiling catamarans, while faster than the big trimarans currently circumnavigating, are far more fragile and would never survive in ocean racing.

Spindrift 2 was involved in an accident while sailing under reduced sail at the start of the Lorient-Gothenburg leg of the Volvo Ocean Race (Spindrift was not a race participant) back in June - one person on the marshall boat was not as lucky as Cammas, sustaining leg injuries that led to an amputation...



In the video below, the collision occurs at 1:32

They survived the southern ocean and are on record pace as they round Cape Horn. See http://volodiaja.net/Tracking/ for the tracks.