Leaving Marseille on July 9, 2018 with his son Mathis, aboard a Nacra F20, Yvan Bourgnon set himself the challenge of establishing a new reference time on the Mediterranean Record. After a departure in unfavourable winds, the two sailors were able to change their course and recover a weather system that put them back on track for the record. After 19 hours of sailing, they had already covered half of the way (a total of 460 miles) and were pointing off Sardinia with a slight lead.
The first night at sea was tiring with winds of 20 knots, making it almost impossible for them to rest. The boat also suffered with the breakage of the spinnaker halyard cleat, causing an accidental collapse of the headsail and forcing Yvan and Mathis to retrieve it directly from the water.
After a second night at sea, which saw the wind ease from 3 a.m. in the south of Sardinia, the two men struggled to cross the virtual finish line on a west-east cape from the lighthouse at Cape Carthage.
They finally reached Tunisia at around 9:31 am (French time) on Wednesday, July 11. For the moment, no communication is filtering and the following message can be read on the Facebook of the browser "It is still too early to formalize the time achieved during this crossing, more than a quarter of which was in light wind conditions, as it is close to 60 seconds above the current record. It will only be the data recorded on the WSSRC GPS beacon that will be able to make official the time performed by Yvan & Mathis."
The previous record set in August 2017 by Vittorio Malingri and Nico Malingri was set in 1 day 18 hours, 58 minutes and 19 seconds and serves as the current reference time. Yvan and Mathis are therefore one minute behind the record, the suspense remains high...
