French sailor, Armel Le Cléac’h, 39, won the 8th Vendée Globe singlehanded round the world race today at 15:37:46 UTC after 74 days 3 hours 35 minutes and 46 seconds at sea on his 60ft racing yacht Banque Populaire VIII.  He set a new record for the race, beating the previous record of 78 days 2 hours 16 minutes set by French sailor Francois Gabart in the 2012-13 edition by 3 days, 22 hours and 41 minutes.  This is Le Cléac’h’s third Vendee Globe Race, coming in second in both the 2008-09 and 2012-13 sailings of the race.  This time around, Le Cléac’h sailed 24,499.52 nm at an average speed of 13.77 knots in the race which began in Les Sables d’Olonne, France on November 6 and ended for Le Cléac’h today in the same harbor.

Alex Thomson on Hugo Boss is expected to finish second roughly twelve hours after Le Cléac’h’s.  After gaining on Le Cléac’h, the last leg of the race, to windward, was unkind to Thomson, whose boat lost one of its foiling dagger-boards  in a  collision with an unidentified floating object early in the race. The lack of the dagger-board severely impacted Thomson’s boat’s windward abilities on the last leg.

The other 16 boats still in the race behind Le Cléac’h and Thomson are spread out over a range of more than 9,000 nautical miles across the Atlantic and Southern Oceans.  

The Vendée Globe, which was founded in 1989, follows the ‘clipper route’ around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, Australia’s Cape Leeuwin and South America’s Cape Horn.