The most important news from this meeting is the confirmation by Groupama's Managerial staff that the adventure is continuing. Indeed, the damage suffered by the giant trimaran is considerable but reparable. Franck Cammas indicated that Groupama 3 was going to be loaded onto a cargo ship around 13th March with an arrival at the technical base in Lorient scheduled a month later.
The skipper also specified that the current assessment still hadn't revealed the reasons behind the breakage of the float between the forward crossbeam and the port foil casing: "We're going to discuss all this with the architects, the yard and the structural engineers. If this amounts to a design fault, then that means we were wrong but sailing remains a mechanical sport... We have a working base, which defines the stresses that the boat should be able to withstand and in the general project strategy, we never wanted to take risks: we didn't put any less carbon in it than for Geronimo! We may have to look at our calculations again but the concept isn't at fault. The way Groupama 3 handled, its sensations at the helm, its performance and its Atlantic records confirm that the project is viable: we want to head back out again next winter with a trimaran, which will handle in the same type of way, but without any doubts in the back of our minds about the reliability of the boat! ..."
