The Jules Verne Trophy is a prize for the fastest circumnavigation of the world by any type of sailing boat with no restrictions on the size of the crew.
It was created in 1990 by a college of competitors and then a committee was put in place to be sure that the rules are respected. This year, the rules are established as such: the sailing boat has to browse at least 40,300 km or 21,760 nautical miles powered by the strength of the wind only. The session of attempts is opened every year by the winter. It was first awarded to the first yacht sailing around the world in less than 80 days.
From 1990, there were 33 attempts but only 9 were successful. The current record holder is Francis Juyon’s on Idec Sport, in 40 days 23h 30minuts, in 2017. It is almost twice as fast as the first record!! And it will certainly be shorter by the years going on.
This year, there are two sailing boats, which are the SVR-Lazartigue and the Sodebo. Both of them are Utim’s. That means they are 32 meters long and 23 meters wide, plus they have foils. Foils are appendices which are under the boat hull, it permits to “fly” above the water. It allows to have less trail so the boat can go faster. The SVR-Lazartigue has already tried 3 times but they returned back to France because of bad weather and technical problems. As for Sodebo, they faced some damage after having passed the Kerguelens so they also abandoned due to a technical problem even if they were more than 1 day early on Idec Sport. It was their 2nd attempt.
