Vincent Riou and his team aboard PRB crossed the Calais Round Britain and Ireland finish line at 2318 hrs 51 seconds BST last night beating Roland Jourdain’s Sill by 1 hour, 1 minute and 41seconds. Riou and his crew comprising Jérémie Beyou, Jean Marc Failler, François Laurent and Nicolas de Castro took 9 days 9 hours 48 minutes and 51 seconds, covering the 1850 miles at an average speed of 8.19 kts.

A happy and contented Riou commented: “I’ve never done an offshore race with so much contact. We left without any pressure and without obligation. We sailed without any stress but it was still pretty aggressive… Today was the only day we haven’t seen a boat. The crew was fabulous. None of us really had any experience of large boats but we adapted to the abilities of each person. Jeremie and I helmed a lot, like Nicolas. As for Jean-Marc and Fanchig they did everything else like the manoeuvres and the day-to-day stuff. We didn’t really have an organised watch system. We handled our sleep patterns well; we’re tired but nothing extreme. We will take some rest now the race has finished as we had to work on the boat a lot. We’re really happy to have reached our objective. Now the next project is to learn how to make the best use of the boat and above all be able to sail it single-handed.”

Mike Golding and his team of Brian Thompson, Miranda Merron, Graham Tourell and Bruno Dubois aboard Ecover, the 60ft monohull, was unable to find the slot to overtake and had to settle for third overall.