Gitana 18: The Quest for Perfect Flight on the Oceans

"The ideal would be to fly very high without ever touching the waves." When Charles Caudrelier speaks these words in front of the black and gold hull of Gitana 18, he's not talking about a dream. He's describing a design brief. That of a 32-meter trimaran conceived, drawn, built to never come back down.

Launched on February 14, 2026 in Lorient, the new Maxi Edmond de Rothschild embodies a dizzying promise: permanent offshore flight. No more hybrid mode, no more alternating between displacement and lift. Here, everything is designed so the three hulls stay airborne — even in three-meter seas.

And the Route du Rhum is eight months away.

Permanent Offshore Flight: Promise or Technological Gamble?

Flying over water — multihulls have known how to do that since the 2013 America's Cup and its spectacular AC72s. But flying across the Atlantic, alone on board, for days, in built-up seas? That's an entirely different story. Gitana 17 had broken ground in 2017 as the first maxi-trimaran designed from the outset to fly offshore. Except that flight remained hybrid: the boat alternated between phases of foiling and conventional displacement sailing, with the hulls regularly returning to the surface.

Gitana 18 changes the paradigm. The stated goal: 100% flight time, even in degraded conditions. To achieve this, the team relies on a treasure: 200,000 nautical miles of data accumulated by its predecessor — and lessons learned from multiple Jules Verne Trophy attempts. Including the 2021 attempt where Gitana 17 had built a 740-mile lead before a technical failure that, frankly, says a lot about the fragility of these machines.

"With Gitana 18, we're moving into another dimension," Caudrelier summarizes. "Everything in the systems that have been designed is new."

From Groupama 3 to Gitana 18: The Evolution of Flying Sailboats

To measure how far we've come, a detour through history is in order.

2006. Groupama 3 leaves the yard. Fifteen tons, an ultra-light maxi-trimaran that proves a single person can tame such a machine offshore. Offshore multihull racing in giant boats enters a new era.

2013. San Francisco. The America's Cup AC72s literally take off in front of cameras from around the world. Foiling is no longer a lake curiosity — it's a devastating competitive advantage.

2017. Gitana 17 is launched, the first Ultim conceived natively for offshore flight. Pioneering, imperfect, fascinating. It takes off at 24-25 knots of wind, which considerably limits its flight window on a lap of the Atlantic.

2026. Gitana 18 takes off at 10-11 knots.

Read that number again.

Where its elder needed a solid Force 5 to leave the surface, the new generation takes flight in barely established breeze. It's quite simply a different world.

Anatomy of a Flying Trimaran: Y-Foils, U-Rudders and 500 Sensors

Appendages Inspired by the America's Cup

Gitana 18's foils adopt a Y-shaped geometry, retractable, with a total span of 10.4 meters — more than 5 meters per side. The inspiration comes directly from the AC75 monohulls of the America's Cup, adapted to the constraints of an ocean trimaran that must withstand impacts that inshore boats will never experience.

The rudders sport a U-shaped design 4 meters tall, specifically drawn to resist cavitation — that destructive phenomenon where vapor bubbles form at high speed and literally eat away at surfaces. Sébastien Sainson, head of the design office, explains the philosophy: "If G18's rudders are enormous, it's not to fly higher. The idea was above all to fly longer and gain stability. We could have made even bigger rudders, but we would have ended up with tree trunks in the water."

Everything is a matter of compromise. Always.

A Formula 1 Nervous System

The numbers are dizzying:

• 500 sensors onboard (+67% compared to Gitana 17)
• 8 kilometers of electrical wiring
• 44 hydraulic rams
• 73 m² of aerodynamic fairings
• 170 m² of trampolines

"These systems are reminiscent of those found in F1 or aerospace," confirms Pierre Tissier, engineer with the Gitana Team. The analogy isn't overused — we're dealing with a mechatronic architecture where each component communicates with the others in real time.

The Innovation That Changes Everything

And then there's this world first: dynamically adjustable shrouds that allow the mast to be bent — 38.4 meters tall, let's remember — while sailing. Modifying the rig shape to adjust mainsail power without touching conventional controls? No boat in the world has ever done that.

The Intelligent Autopilot: Taming Instability at 40 Knots

Here's the crux of the problem — and perhaps the key to the entire project.

The Ultim 32/23 class rules prohibit active foil control. In other words, no automated system to adjust the angle of attack of the lifting appendages in real time. All flight stabilization therefore relies on the rudders and the passively stable geometry of the foils. A massive constraint when sailing at 40 knots in the ocean.

To compensate, the Gitana Team developed a new kind of autopilot with WDS. Its training? A complete digital twin of the trimaran — a virtual replica on which engineers simulate thousands of scenarios before the real boat even touches the water. The pilot learns to anticipate disturbances, smooth trajectories, maintain flight in chaotic conditions.

Right. The team insists on one point: "The goal is not to replace the helmsman, but to make the trimaran's flight behavior more reliable and optimized." The skipper remains master on board. The pilot is their co-pilot — the one who never sleeps and reacts in milliseconds.

200,000 Hours of Construction for 19.5 Tons of Carbon

Behind the beauty of the lines, there are 26 months of construction. More than 200 people mobilized. 200,000 hours of construction and 50,000 hours of studies. All to produce a 19.5-ton platform — a contained weight for a trimaran of this size.

The secret? 80% of the structure was manufactured in an autoclave, that pressure-cooking technique that guarantees maximum density and rigidity of the carbon composite. Every superfluous gram was tracked down, every part optimized.

The launch on February 14 was something of a logistical miracle. "The weather window was almost unhoped for, but it allowed us to launch the platform and step the mast right after. Everything went perfectly!" recounts Caudrelier with the relief of someone who knows how much a single day's delay can cost.

Because the schedule is unforgiving. Cyril Dardashti, general manager of the Gitana Team, sets the context with clarity: "Gitana 18 is an incredible maxi-trimaran — with great system complexity. The work is only beginning."

Target 1,000 Miles in 24 Hours: Pushing the Limits of Ocean Speed

In raw numbers, Gitana 18 aims for a 10 to 15% gain over its predecessor. That sounds modest? It's not. At these performance levels, every percentage is paid for with radical innovations.

The target average speed approaches 40 knots in optimal conditions. With 450 m² of sail area upwind and 630 m² downwind, the power is there. But the real question, the one that haunts the engineers and skipper, is the ability to maintain this speed over duration.

The 24-hour solo record? 907.7 nautical miles. The objective, barely whispered in the team's corridors: break the symbolic barrier of 1,000 miles in 24 hours. More than 41 knots average for an entire day. Alone. In the middle of the ocean.

But — and this is all the tension that drives this project — pure speed means nothing if the boat doesn't finish the race. Fly fast, yes. Fly long and stable, especially. To follow Gitana 18's performance and compare its technical characteristics with the other giants of the Ultim class, visit Spencer.

Route du Rhum 2026: 8 Months to Seal the Deal

On November 1, 2026, the Ultim fleet will start from Saint-Malo for the Route du Rhum. Eight months after launch. Eight months to tame a boat of unprecedented complexity, validate systems never tested at sea, understand the limits of revolutionary appendages.

It's very short. Dangerously short, some will say.

Ariane de Rothschild, owner of the stable approaching its 150th anniversary and its 28th boat, fully embraces it: "It's about being disruptive, knowing how to take risks, evaluate them and manage them. It's totally in line with our philosophy."

The Ultim class itself could evolve in coming years, with a possible opening of the rules toward active foil control. If that day comes, a third — even fourth — generation of even more sophisticated machines will emerge. But for now, it's with the current constraints that Gitana 18 must prove itself. Find all the key dates for the Route du Rhum and other major Ultim races on the Spencer calendar.

The trimaran is in the water. The sensors are running. The digital twin continues learning. And somewhere between Lorient and Guadeloupe, the answer to a fundamental question awaits: can you really fly permanently over the ocean, alone, for days?

Technology says yes. The Atlantic will have the final word.