Battered but still skimming the waves, French sailor Charles Caudrelier crossed the line in Brest in the west of France on Tuesday to win the Ultim Challenge, the first solo round-the-world race for multi-hull boats.

Caudrelier, in the trimaran Gitana-Edmond de Rothschild, outdistanced the other survivors from the six-boat fleet as he covered more than 28,000 miles (51,000 km) in 50 days. He became just the eighth sailor to sail round the world in a multi-hull.

The boat, launched in 2017, was the first Ultim designed to ‘fly’ by rising out of the water on her foils as the boats swept down the Atlantic and then circled the globe passing south of the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Leeuwin in Australia and finally Cape Horn. 

“I had the impression of becoming a machine, a robot connected to performance, a kind of killer who doesn’t give up a nautical mile,” Caudrelier told AFP during the race, saying he became “totally connected” to his boat.

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