“It’s a choice that is thought out for a long time,” argued François Gabart. On Wednesday April 12, during a press conference at the Maison de la Bretagne in Paris, he announced that he was “pausing” his career as a solo sailor on the SVR-Lazartigue trimaran.

François Gabart, 40, hands over the helm to Tom Laperche for the next round the world trip between Ultime, at the start of 2024. “I want to sail with a crew. I feel like passing on and handing over to a sailor; in this case, it’s Tom,” he argued.

“We did the Jacques Vabre in 2021 [2nd in Ultimate] and we discovered the boat together. It’s a fairly natural logic, added the founder of MerConcept, an offshore racing stable employing around seventy people in Concarneau (Finistère). Solitaire has been my core business for the past fifteen years, but I also happen to enjoy it in a different way. »

Nicknamed “the Little Prince of the oceans”, the blonde-haired sailor has long been the face of solo offshore racing in France. He won the prestigious Vendée Globe in 2013, twice finished second in the Route du rhum in Ultime (in 2018 and 2022) and has held the round the world record since 2017 (42 days, 16 hours and 40 minutes) .

After this round the world, he had already expressed on several occasions a certain fatigue vis-à-vis solo navigation. In February 2020, he had given up the Transat CIC with his former sponsor Macif and announced that he was handing over to navigator Pascal Bidégorry.

He then returned to center stage in 2021, launching his maxi-trimaran SVR-Lazartigue (32 meters long, 23 wide) with foils, designed by MerConcept.

“I really want to do this”

Trinitain Tom Laperche, 25, winner of the Solitaire du Figaro 2022, is the rising star of ocean racing. An engineering trainee at MerConcept when the ship was designed, he recently took part in The Ocean Race, a race around the world with a crew, and sailed his first Cape Horn on this occasion.

“It’s an incredible chance. The challenge is important and there is nothing obvious, but I really want to do this. It’s always been my dream to race around the world on these big boats,” he said.

The two men will start the next Transat Jacques Vabre together, departing from Le Havre in October 2023. Tom Laperche will then be the skipper of the SVR-Lazartigue for the Arkea Ultim Challenge, the first race around the world between giant multihulls.

The shipowner SVR-Lazartigue was recently reinstated in Ultime after agreeing to do work on the ship, to bring it into compliance with the measurement certificate imposed by the class, after two years of controversy.