The Full Story - Brest Atlantiques

Four 100ft trimarans sailed by just two crew each around a 14,000mile figure of eight course in the North and South Atlantic Oceans. Each boat regularly cruised at over 30 knots and hit top speeds well in excess of 40knots. These are incredible, awesome, overpowered, understaffed beasts and the world's fastest offshore machines.
If you're an early follower at PlanetSail you may have seen this story when we first put it out at the beginning of the year. But now we've blended the two parts together to make one full feature. We've polished it, tweaked it and re-edited it to create the full story of the Brest Atlantiques race.
The has to be one of the most extraordinary offshore races run in modern times.

[@seanogallchoir3237]

Great Race, Incredible boats and crews. Thank you, enjoy our beautiful Ocean Planet.

[@onpahanvaan]

Only thing that comes to mind is... God bless the crazy French sailors!

[@cesc1495]

Yeah love there passion for it. They keep pushing the limits. The sport won't be where it is now without them.

[@TB12710]

Never knew this kind of sailing existed, imagine the thrill of traversing across the surface of the worlds oceans at 40 knots, amazing! I subscribed. 😊

[@IWLDELJ]

I really like offshore racing, but I wish we could do something like the old tea races again. I've been thinking of a race where each boat has a full standard size inter-modal shipping container that they have to get from one port to another with product surviving. They could ship something like coffee or potatoes, something that doesn't get beat up toooo easily, but will be useful whenever it arrives. Green shipping as a sport. That's my idea. If the tech gets better, then maybe eventually the size of the boats and their cargo capacities could expand as well. It would be magnificent to see three to five masted dynariggged cargo ships zipping back and forth across the high seas, carrying products AND racing the clock, or each other.

[@luthlekstar6039]

Great idea, I had a similar thought make like a "Green Riband" (instead of Blue) for fastest Atlantic crossing, with a standard shipping container loaded with squeeze balls and marshmallows.

[@mpd20101]

Brilliant idea.

[@nigeldurant]

Looks like it might be a small shower here tomorrow....me going out to get the sunday papers. 3 layers of clothes including fleece and barbour. Wellington boots and golf umbrella...meanwhile the guys on these boats screaming along at 40knots plus in a hurricane with mountainous seas in their t shirts and shorts ".hmmm think we might tweak the genoa a tad" !!!! Unbelievably brave and seriously impressive sailing/racing.

[@johnmayer3433]

I noticed a difference in culture between France and Germany, finding a squid on the trampoline a German would have looked disgusted and dropped it immediately, the Frenchman rises his arms and runs for the garlic ! Those French off-shore sailors are really an incredible lot.

[@Mr7valentine7]

Great sailors. Hat off

[@id10tcertified]

No idea why, I’m as Aussie as they come but I love the French language: cheers for leaving it and adding subtitles.. btw, I have a little Farrier F9 extended to 32’ that does 30 knots, I love these big tri’s more than French.. Ave Gitana the formula 40 trimaran came up for sale last year, what a shit time to be asset rich and cash poor as I could just afford it if I sold my F9 but alas she’s gone.. maybe next time or if I live long enough for one of these to become affordable to the not so common man. Cheers for all the great video’s, I used to race +300 kph motorcycles now I get more excitement when my old F boat gets over 25 knots.

[@78779]

Love to see them do the Sydney Hobart race.

[@lester8403]

They would absolutely smash the record

[@gcm747]

How they sail these monsters over this distance with just 2 crew is truly incredible.

[@DmageCase]

These boats are supposed to be sailed in single-handed in the Route du Rhum and in the round the world race scheduled for 2023.

[@winterhawk1987]

Excellent video, I just wish there was video of them doing maneuvers like jybing and tacking, showing what is involved in these maneuvers, how they trim and hoist sails would bring us to what it feels like to be onboard

[@robinhodgkinson]

Love watching these big tri’s. I remember watching a low res KZbin video years ago - “ultimate sailing”, that totally blew me away. That video was shot just before they capsized the boat. And it’s easy to see why. They were sailing right up to the edge! Huge seas, big wind, flying two hulls, as the boat contorted and slammed over the wave crests on a bad day in the Bay of Biscay. They were pushing it for all it was worth and capsize comes as no surprise. Well worth the watch despite the low res. Cheers

[@markturner6942]

A 100 foot boat getting up to plane! Exciting to think about.

[@nicolasartheau822]

Une qualité des bateaux et des hommes et de préparation exceptionnelle .

[@dominicgibson8477]

They didn't take enough food, nothing exceptional about that part of the preparation!

[@artwestwood1334]

Absolutely brilliant, well done to all concerned, a regular series, maybe, how wonderful, so appreciated, cheers art

[@AndyUK-Corrival]

Cheers Matt, love hearing you talk about sailing. Used to see you around, I sailed JOG and RORC with Malc Thprpe and later with Bottomley on Decasol after the 3/4 ton worlds. Happy days but these machines are something else. Andy UK

[@curvs4me]

Brest Atlantiques is Boss! What a race!! They are going to have to allow dynamic stability control soon enough. People will be building t foil cats running DSS and cruising right alongside the 30 meter Tri’s taking pics before you know it. They will have no choice as a matter of safety. You can only crash off the foils so quickly. Anymore than that and you risk breaking up the boat. Dynamic stability control with gyroscope and pressure sensors making 1000 adjustments a second will foil a cruiser at double the weight and half the length in full flight right by a manual control foil system on a 100 ft TRI. The length allows them to fly partially without abrupt smashing due to the arm length from the pivot point in a 100 footer. A 50 footer controlled identically would pitch violently with the hulls diving under and popping up.

[@terrydunnett]

Yes please come to Sydney - Hobart.

[@CodeLeeCarter]

Awesome Episode,... thanks again.

[@jeremybentley820]

Most impressive!

[@MrBrewzr]

Does anyone else think of the Kevin Costner film “Water World” when you see these amazing boats?

[@michaelnice93]

Now that you say it YES!

[@bellenvideo5629]

AMAZING 🤩

[@robhead9162]

Great video, they really are exceptional boats and not for the faint hearted, thanks once again.

[@84gooba]

awesome video love your work

[@brianducharm3500]

Loved it.

[@NoelCockle]

I want a go on one

[@clidiere]

2nd place went to Macif, not Actual Leader as said at 27'15. It was a close call, though, Actual Leader being less than 5 hours behind.

[@scannorse]

Really good :-)

[@edgarjoffre8838]

Good summery of the race but I don't know who did the subtitles because they are not very accurate.

[@HasbaraBuster]

The ultimate trill :)

[@kurtelmar1353]

I Love to whatch this

[@michaelkeaton5394]

Brest is the best city in the world if you want to see the most race boat...

[@adampackard3561]

Greetings hope all are well

[@kurtelmar1353]

Wow

[@davidr9876]

Why don't they use reefable wing sails?

[@michaelnice93]

Seems unnecessary and dangerous to have only two to crew that boat, just curious why they limit the number, how many normally crew it?

[@GregoryVeizades]

Its a bost built around short handed sailing, single handed even. Just like the Imoca 60 boats. Any more than 4 aboard and things start to get very cramped without to much benefit to sailing.

[@user-uw3fi2zg4t]

cannot they make a boat that doesn't need to touch the water with the hull?

[@kakerake6018]

That's called a plane

[@whotknots]

Surely if a boat breaks it is their problem, to require other boats to handicap themselves is ridiculous!

[@johnmayer3433]

Wherefrom did you get this idea ?

[@rickyleeana7285]

Sign me up

[@sfitzers3706]

Can the media man cook?

[@curtisnettleship5513]

I wonder how many dolphins they chopped in half with these billionaire play toys. Any guesses?

[@ArthurMoore-ii8nn]

*No life vests?? Yikes!*

[@bitsurfer0101]

Please normalize your audio. It's a little hard to watch when I have to go up and down on volume.

[@isctony]

didn't have the same issue to be honest

[@michaels0510243]

and quite a few ads for me. every 5 minutes.

[@dominicgibson8477]

Those trimarans are ugly and too big. They weren't flying, they were slipping along, and in gales, chugging along in the rough swells. Monohulls on hydrofoils are far more entertaining to watch as are sailing dinghies on foils.

[@thomaselliott573]

Stop over EMPHASISING syllables that you THOUGHT gave you RELATIVITY. This will PROVIDE some sort of AUTHENITICTY, so you are not irrelevant and boring. It sounds DISGUSTING. NICE try. This did improve as the video went on though, and the sailors had the focus. There seems to be this strange attitude in sailing commentators now where they want to be hyper ballistic USA style, when it is just superfluous crap.

[@isctony]

well said! haha, this goes for a lot of commentary. like female commentators trying to break in to the mens football game.