Armel Le Cléac’h and Sébastien Josse needed 14 days 10 hours 14 minutes and 50 seconds to achieve their victory. At the helm of the Maxi Banque Populaire, they crossed the finish line of the Transat Jacques-Vabre on Sunday evening as big winners, after several years of setbacks in multihulls.
Having left Le Havre, 14,000 km from the finish, Le Cléac’h and his co-skipper arrived at 6:19 p.m. (11:19 p.m. in mainland France) in Martinique. The Ultim de Banque Populaire (multihull 32 meters long) covered 9,263 miles at an average speed of 26.76 knots (50 km/h) to succeed the Maxi Edmond de Rothschild, winner in 2021.
An arrival greeted by cannon fire
The maxi-trimaran helmed by Le Cléac’h entered the bay of Fort-de-France during the night and its crossing of the line was reported to a dense crowd gathered on a pontoon of honor a few hundred meters away by several cannon fire. His first pursuer, the SVR Lazartigue of the François Gabart and Tom Laperche tandem, already second in 2021, was expected a few hours later. During these fifteen days of navigation, the two most recent ocean machines in the Ultim fleet were neck and neck for a long time.
First inserted in ambush along the Atlantic coast, the “Banque Pop” took the lead of the fleet passing Madeira, thanks to ideal weather conditions and a daring strategic choice: it was the only sailboat to go around the island from the north. Caught in the South Atlantic by François Gabart, then briefly overtaken near Ascension Island, Le Cléac’h and Josse then took advantage of the best performance of their sailboat downwind – when the wind came from the rear of the ship -.
Racing on the water at an average of more than 30 knots (55 km/h) for several days off the coast of Brazil, the Maxi Banque Populaire XI achieved a perfect end of the race to close and then widen its gap with SVR.
The Vendée Globe on the list of Le Cléac’h winners
Thanks to this vigorous 14-day journey, Le Cléac’h won his first major victory on a multihull in Martinique. Winner in a monohull of the Vendée Globe in 2017, this Breton has been one of the figures of offshore racing since the early 2000s, and his first coronation in the Solitaire du Figaro (2003).
Having become the main skipper of Banque Populaire multihulls in 2013, he had bad luck on this medium for a long time. In 2014, suffering a hand injury, he was replaced at the last minute by Loïck Peyron, who won the Route du Rhum. In 2018, still on the Rhum, he capsized after two days of racing and came close to death. “It will do him good if he wins. He is a very high level athlete and a great champion. But in a multihull, he never had the chance to show everyone what he could do. It will be a relief,” said Ronan Lucas, director of the Banque Populaire team. So it’s now done.