Martin Gavériaux completes first wingfoil Channel crossing in under seven hours

Martin Gavériaux turned the Plymouth-to-Roscoff line into a wingfoil endurance marker, covering about 120 miles, 196 kilometers, in 6 hours, 56 minutes. On May 24, the 41-year-old from Larmor-Plage in Brittany put his name on a route long associated with ferries and windsurfers, and the crossing is thought to be the first of its kind between those two points on a wing foil.

Gavériaux brings a deep offshore résumé to the feat. Born November 7, 1984, he won the French Youth Windsurfing Championship in 2002, earned an engineering degree from INSA Rennes in 2009 and spent three years as an R&D and performance engineer aboard racing trimarans. “The sea lies at the heart of the majority of my activities,” he said, and he added, “I love doing long distance.”

The new crossing also sharpens the comparison with his earlier work on a different board. Gavériaux had already made the same Plymouth-to-Roscoff passage on a windsurfer in 2014, when French coverage put the crossing at 7 hours, 58 minutes over 100 nautical miles, 185 kilometers. The wingfoil run was quicker in elapsed time and more significant as a performance marker, because it showed how fast the newer craft has moved into the same big-mile territory once dominated by windsurfing.

That shift matters because wingfoiling is no longer just a niche surf-break discipline. The setup uses a handheld inflatable wing to harness wind power while the board rides above the water on an underwater hydrofoil, and the sport now sits inside a formal records structure. The World Sailing Speed Record Council tracks wingfoil categories, including 500-meter and nautical-mile marks, while World Sailing’s 2022 partnership with the Global Wingsports Association and the International Wing Sports Association helped push the discipline toward a more organized competitive framework. The WingFoil Racing World Cup Series is also recognized as a World Sailing Special Event.

The Plymouth-Roscoff corridor underscores how serious the effort was. Brittany Ferries says the route can take as little as 5 hours, 15 minutes by ferry, which puts Gavériaux’s line across the Channel in sharp relief. For serious wingfoilers, the message is clear: the ceiling is rising, but it still depends on reading the weather, managing the water and sustaining speed over a long, punishing open-ocean course.