And the winners are ... Franck Cammas and Charles Caudrelier.
The two sailors crossed the finish line of the Transat Jacques Vabre this Tuesday at 3:16 p.m. (local time) on their Maxi Edmond de Rothschild boat.
The French duo won in the Ultimate category, that of the fastest racing boats in the world, the F1 of the oceans.
Cammas and Caudrelier crossed the line at 10:16 am local time to win in 16 days and 1 hour, accompanied by dozens of small boats in a bay bathed in sunshine.
Their boat cut the line at Fort-de-France, Martinique (French Antilles), the day after the arrival of three boats in the Ocean Fifty category. To put it simply, these are multihulls 15 meters long. They arrived before the fastest boats in the oceans, that's because they had a course a third shorter than the Ultimes. These flying maxitrimarans are 32 m long. They were fast but had a shorter trip which explains why the winners, Matthieu Souben and Sébastien Rogues arrived during the night from Monday to Tuesday, a few hours before Cammas and Caudrelier. But history will probably remember more the name of these two there, the real winners of the Transat which takes place in two with, one will have understood, different types of boats.
Franck Cammas, a sailor of many exploits and the first skipper to tour the world within 50 days (Jules Verne Trophy in 2010), signed his fourth victory in the Transat Jacques Vabre (2001, 2003, 2007, 2021).
Caudrelier, winner of the crewed round-the-world race (Volvo Ocean Race in 2017/2018), won him a third success in the Transat Jacques Vabre (2009, 2013, 2021).
The two skippers largely dominated the race, occupying the lead of the fleet fourteen days out of sixteen.