Britain’s Sam Goodchild best non-French IMOCA result in the Transat Jacques Vabre Normandie Le Havre race since 2011.
Finishing just 9 mins 16 secs after French duo Yoann Richomme and Yann Eliès (Paprec Arkéa), Goodchild and his French co-skipper Antoine Koch on ‘For the Planet’ took third place in the IMOCA class.
Goodchild, on his 34th birthday, earns his third consecutive podium finish on this biennial two-handed race from Le Havre to Martinique.
And he scores the best IMOCA class result by an international skipper on this Coffee Route passage since Britain’s Alex Thomson and Spain’s Guillermo Altadill finished second in 2011.
Their elapsed time is 12 days 1 hour 50 minutes and 32 seconds for the 3750 nautical miles course averaging 12.97kts, actually sailing 5333.58 miles at an average of 18.40kts.
Goodchild said (in French) “It was beyond my hopes and the result is thanks to the team with Thomas. We’re going in the right direction. I feel I have so much support from the team.”
“Next up, the solo race back. I feel I have been well prepared to tackle that. It’s going to be nice to have ten days to rest. We learnt a lot about how to handle the boat.”
“We had a few small problems, so that taught us a lot too. It was nice to do the race with Antoine, because of his experience of IMOCAs.”
Paprec Arkéa crossed the finish line of the 16th Transat Jacques Vabre Normandie Le Havre race at 06:11:16hrs local time (10:11:16 hrs UTC) to take a narrow second place.
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