Duo of shock
The Gitana team has just revealed sébastien Josse's successor at the helm of Maxi Edmond de Rothschild. While the interviews were conducted on an individual basis, the subject of the double came up quickly, in correlation with the sports program of the Ultim 32/23 Class for the years to come.
It is therefore quite natural that the team with the five arrows has opted for "a rather unprecedented organization to date in the landscape of French ocean racing Thus, it is not one skipper who will take the helm of the maxi trimaran, but two: Franck Cammas and Charles Caudrelier.
This powerful duo has been chosen to work together with the members of the Gitana Team, with each of them having solo highlights, but above all numerous crewed races, including the highlight of this program, the round-the-world race starting from the Mediterranean in 2021.
"I am very happy to welcome Franck and Charles to the Gitana Team and more broadly to our Group. This choice materializes the combination of two very fine talents and also expresses our will to always ensure successions in all the activities we undertake. For two years now, with the arrival of the Maxi Edmond de Rothschild in our family line, Gitana has entered another dimension, that of flying boats. The very complementary profiles of our two sailors will be a great strength in accompanying this fabulous unit in its development. On a day-to-day basis, I have a very deep conviction in the strength of the team and the announcement of this pair of skippers at the helm of Gitana 17 bears witness to this declared the owner of the Gitana.
If this choice may seem surprising, it turned out to be the right one for the Gitana Team since the two men have known each other for a long time and had talked about the desire to launch a common project.
"Following the end of our collaboration with Sébastien Josse, we were looking for a skipper to take the helm of Maxi Edmond de Rothschild. During the interviews, although individual, we very quickly talked about double-handed racing, as the major sporting event of this 2019 season is the Brest Atlantiques, a 14,000-mile double-handed transatlantic race, a half-circumnavigation of the world... The start of this new event specially designed for Ultimates will be given on November 3rd! It's tomorrow and quite a challenge for a sailor who will discover the support at the end of May, beginning of June. For this race, the Franck/Charles duo became obvious quite quickly, especially since both of them immediately showed their desire to work together. Then, as the exchanges went on, we saw another perspective taking shape. That of a long-term partnership" explains Cyril Dardashti, the director of the Gitana.
A synchronous pair
When asked about the reasons that pushed them to accept this rather special "format", the skippers invoked their friendship, but also the technological progress of the boat.
"The first reason is the pairing that was offered to me! I know Franck very well and I have always liked working with him, we did our first races together, we have a strong complicity and we are extremely complementary, he has always brought me a lot of energy, it is exciting to be at his side. The second reason is that with the Ultime, we are in a new era, we are starting to fly, we are discovering new things; these are heavy projects to carry so it is a dream to be two, when you have to make decisions it is always interesting to share your point of view with someone else. It's really a luxury to perform that didn't exist before, now we're in an ideal configuration to really bring the boat to its maximum potential explains Charles Caudrelier.
"I agreed to share this project with Charles for two essential reasons, the first is that the project is exciting with an accomplished boat with which we will be able to evolve, in an interesting class and with a high-performance team. And the second, of course, is that Charles and I know each other perfectly, we have sailed together a lot, and we have built some great victories together. I have great confidence in his intellectual honesty and in the reflections we can make together. We know that we will never hide things from each other and that we will try to help each other, to be united and to progress together. Both of us are quite humble about what we have to do and about our environment, we are quite curious, I like its state of mind and its functioning, so this organization suits me very well adds Franck Cammas.
