Overcoming less-than-ideal conditions, French maxi-tri Groupama 3 has shattered the sailing speed record for circumnavigation by 2 days, 8 hours, and 35 minutes.
From ISAF’s Sailing.org:
Setting out on 31 January 2010 whilst the weather ‘window’ was not particularly favourable, Franck Cammas and his men have alternated between some extremely fast sequences and some very slow ones. Indeed, the conditions were very varied on this round the world, and even the wind rarely exceeded 40 knots. It has to be said that the chosen trajectory sought to avoid the heavy seas and the overly strong breezes, which considerably increased the distance to travel: in fact Groupama 3 sailed 28,523 miles whilst the official optimum course amounts to 21,760 miles. As such, in terms of actual speed across the ground, the giant trimaran maintained an average speed of 24.6 knots!
