François Gabart has crossed the equator now and continues to stretch his lead over the single handed round the world record. He is the skipper of the 30m MACIF trimaran and has covered 633.7 NM in the past 24 hours and is just 2137.39 NM ahead of the record now.

Just a week after passing the Cape Horn longitude, once again Gabart has created up an extraordinary time at the equator. He has crossed it today at 11:35, 36 days, 1 hour and 30 minutes after the beginning in Ouessant. From the very beginning of this quest on 4^th November, Gabart has faced averaged 27.3 knots and has traveled 23826.04 NM.

Now he has a lead of 5 days, 13 hours and 23 minutes after the passage time of Thomas Coville, the present single handed round the world record holder, who entered in the northern hemisphere after 41 days, 14 hours and 53 minutes. Gabart performance here represents the best time second outright, with single handed and crew combined, in the course of Ouessant-Equator in the return direction. To date, only Francis Joyon and five of his crewmen on IDEC Sport have reached by this time

Though Gabart was stirred about after rounding Cape Horn in extreme weather conditions that happened because of the low off the coast of Argentina, his sail up to the South Atlantic has been extra-ordinary and exceptional, since now he has achieved the best time outright, singlehanded crewed combined, on the Cape Horn-Equator section, giving the 06 days, 22 hours and 15 minutes, enhancing the reference time that was held up until then by the crew of Banque Populaire V, during the Jules Verne Trophy in the year 2011-2012, in 7 days, 4 hours and 27 minutes.