Jules Verne Trophy: history costs money!

[Doug Lord]

from Scuttlebutt Europe today:

The Strange Story of the Jules Verne Trophy

Reading the French newspapers over the weekend, you would never think that the record for the fastest yacht to sail non-stop round the world had once gone to a US yacht and skipper.

American adventurer Steve Fossett has effectively been written out of history.

Indeed the outright record Fossett and his crew set in 2004 in the maxi catamaran Cheyenne (still better remembered as PlayStation) has not been mentioned in France. It has been supplanted by Frenchman Olivier de Kersauson's circumnavigation in the trimaran Geronimo the same year - even though de Kersauson was more than five days slower.

Outright sailing records are monitored and ratified by the World Speed Sailing Record Council (WSSRC). To be eligible you pay an administration fee to cover scrutineers' time.

The prize, on the other hand, is the Jules Verne Trophy, a clever media concept dreamt up some 20 years ago by a group including top French sailors Florence Arthaud, Olivier de Kersauson and Titouan Lamazou.

You had to pay to be eligible for that club as well. And back in 2004, Fossett objected to the sum asked.

"It was botched up when Ellen MacArthur came on the scene with big sponsorship money," Fossett told me at the time.

"The Jules Verne Trophy organisation set a new high fee to take advantage of this and they asked me to pay �30,000, whereas my competitors, Olivier de Kersauson and Bruno Peyron were only paying �11,000.

"I thought that was inequitable and I offered to pay the same as my competitors."

They refused to take the same amount, and I believe Fossett was also asked to pay upfront, whereas the others only needed to pay if they won the trophy. The rest is history...or, in the late Fossett's and Cheyenne's case, not history. -- from Elaine Bunting's Blog

Read the full post at www.yachtingworld.com/blogs/elaine-bunting/

[yipster]

Still bitching those french eh..
But thx didnt know that while saying gironimo go

[Corley]

Mixed feelings about this one. On one hand it doesn't seem right that they wanted to charge Fossett in advance and more on the other If you look at the vast cost of building Cheyenne/Playstation and running a round the world record campaign a relatively minor entry fee should not have been an obstacle.

It's a free world he chose not to pay the fee and therefore was not a holder of the Jules Verne Trophy but he did hold the WSSRC record for a while.