Compiled by Outside Online

May 6, 2002 Bruno Peyron, the French skipper who won the first Jules Verne Trophy in 1993, welcomed the prize back into his arms yesterday by setting a new round-the-world sailing record in 64 days, 8 hours, and 37 minutes. Peyron and the 13-man crew of the 110-foot catamaran Orange knocked more than the seven days off the time set by fellow Frenchman Olivier de Kersauson in 1997.

"Just to sail around the world is so magical," Australian Nick Moloney, the only non-Frenchman aboard Orange, told Australia's MX. "But to look at the globe afterwards and say, 'I sailed the whole way 'round that sucker faster than anyone else has done before,' to me is unbelievable."

The Jules Verne Trophy is awarded to the boat that completes history's fastest nonstop, unassisted global circumnavigation. The course begins and ends at Ushant, France, in the English Channel. Because it is an open challenge, crews race against each other's times individually rather than against others boats simultaneously.

Peyron, founder of the nonstop, round-the-world sailing sprint, The Race (see "Sailing Off the Edge," Outside Magazine, November 2000), first captured the Jules Verne in 1993 despite a debilitating collision with a whale and a man overboard. In 1994 Sir Peter Blake, the legendary Kiwi skipper murdered by pirates in the Amazon last December (see, "Incident in a Nowhere Place," Outside Magazine, May 2002), took the trophy in 74 days, 22 hours. Kersauson brought it back into French hands in 1997.

Skipper Grant Dalton sailed Club Med around the world in 62 days in 2001 while competing in The Race but the record did not qualify for the Jules Verne Trophy as the event began in Barcelona, Spain, and ended in Marseilles, France.

According to the BBC, earlier this year Orange was forced to abort an attempt at the record when the boat's mast snapped just 35 minutes after departing Ushant on February 14. And the successful attempt wasn't without drama—two weeks ago the ball supporting the mast cracked.

"I am absolutely stoked that we have pulled this off," Moloney told the BBC. "The guys were fantastic and even when we had major problems with the mast we never gave up."