Sodeb'O sat at dock, but the two Maxi trimarans found favorable weather trends. Big winds that they could outrun with calm seas ahead. When the two boats left dock, Groupama 3 held the 24 hour sailing record at 794 miles, and beating this was referred to as the 800 mile barrier. Both Groupama 3 and Banque Populaire V were able to soundly stomp 800 miles in their drag race across the North Atlantic. A few hours later, that too fell, as Banque Populaire V travelled, with an average speed of 37.79 kts, an astounding 907.9 miles over a 24 hour period! Ultimately, Groupama 3, skippered by Franck Cammas, completed its 2,880 mile transatlantic run in 3 days 18 hours 12 minutes 56 seconds at the average speed of 31.92 knots (57 km/hr). However, the transatlantic record held by Groupama 3 since 2007 (4d 03h 57' 54'') was broken not by its 2009 crew, but by that of Banque Populaire V - who completed the course in 3d 15h 25' 48''. Groupama 3 was just three miles astern of Banque Populaire - skippered by Pascal Bidegorry - and completed the course twelve minutes after the new Transatlantic record holder. It was an incredible finish with the two rivals within sight of each other.
In other news: Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, Germany, predicted that in the next few years a natural cooling trend would dominate over warming caused by humans. The cooling would be due to cyclical changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, he said NAO cycles were probably responsible for some of the strong global warming seen in the past three decades. Transatlantic iceboat speed record?
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