Francis Joyon has, at 12:44:03 (UTC), broken the outright singlehanded transatlantic record beating Laurent Bourgnon’s record, which has stood for 11 years, by just over a day.

Joyon, sailing his 90ft trimaran IDEC set off from New York six days ago and, just three days into his voyage, broke the 24-hour world speed record when he clocked up 543 miles.

From here, with a good north-westerly providing perfect conditions, Joyon was able to put his giant maxi-multihull through her paces and record a time of 06 days, 04 hours, 01 minutes and 37 seconds from New York to the Lizard and put his name in the record books once again. But, as was mentioned in a previous result Joyon fails to knock Bourgnon from his perch because he’s been competing in a different category (yachts above 60ft loa). See news story here.

Crossing the Atlantic in just over six days is an incredible feat and one which will be a tough one to beat. Joyon has set a new benchmark and before he’s even had his first sip of Champagne to celebrate Ellen MacArthur’s making preparations for another attempt at the record, sailing in the same class – the Over 60ft category.

MacArthur commented: “To break this record by this much time is an amazing achievement – I am in awe of what he has done. I know how hard it is and I know how much effort this would have taken. Congratulations to him and his team – Francis has again raised the bar. There is no doubt about it, that a week ago this record stood at just over 7 days and that was my target for this autumn when we go on standby with B&Q in New York – Francis has just rewritten the script again!”