Having waited a month for a favourable weather window, Francis Joyon set sail at 0956 this morning on his 4,000 mile Route of Discovery record attempt aboard his trimaran IDEC.

The route is from Cadiz, Spain to Salvador, Bahamas and the time to beat is (9 days, 13 hours, 31 minutes 12 seconds) set by Steve Fossett and PlayStation in February last year.

Commenting this morning about his initial tactics Joyon said: “I will have to take into account the local conditions at the Bay of Cadiz, but after that either I will head north to benefit from a fairly strong winds from the north/north-east, or I will go south to catch the trade winds. I think I will opt for the northern route, which will help me for a fairly long time, for at least 4 days, with winds of 20 kts.”

During his voyage he also hopes to break the outright world solo speed record set by Laurent Bourgnon, twice winner of the Route du Rhum who made 540 miles at an average speed of 20.5 knots.

The conditions at the start this morning from the bay of Cadiz were fairly light with a 10kt northerly building throughout the morning.