World-record breaking circumnavigator heads home to France

PARIS, Dec 26 ( Reuters) - Sailor Thomas Coville was due to arrive in the French port of Brest on Monday hours after smashing the world record for a single-handed non-stop sailing circumnavigation of the globe.

Frenchman Coville, aged 48, crossed a finish line off the Brittany coast on Sunday after a voyage of 49 days three hours seven minutes and 38 seconds, slashing more than eight days off the previous record in his 31-metre trimaran multihull, according to his sponsor Sodebo.

It was Coville's fifth attempt to beat a record set in 2008 by Francis Joyon, another Frenchman. His Sodebo Ultim yacht achieved an average speed of 24.1 knots.

"Mentally I had my highs and my lows but I knew where I wanted to get to," he told Le Parisien newspaper in an interview after a voyage in which he said he did not sleep more than three hours at a stretch. "Physically I could not have gone much further." (Reporting by Andrew Callus; editing by Amlan Chakraborty)