Our Zephir Project team of enthusiasts and modern time adventurers seeks to unveil the secrets of absolute glide. Our aim is to contribute to tomorrow’s World renewable energies and marine eco-mobility through our innovation. And to set new sailing speed records.
By unveiling the secrets of absolute glide when sailing, we will be able to « Zephirize » anything that glides in the water or in the air, by providing disruptive solutions and create innovative products that are Highly Performing / Accessible & Comfortable / Ecoresponsible.
To become at one with nature and its elements, we need to merge and combine the Best of Man and his know-how with the efficiency of the Bird and the Fish.
This is the ambitious challenge we have set ourselves with AntoineAlbeau and Marc Amerigo.
Antoine is the most successful sportsman in the history of French sport with 27 world windsurfing titles. Antoine won his 27th world title on May 6th, 2025, 31 years after his first title.
He is also the current world windsurfing speed record holder. On December 1, 2024, he set a new world record with 53.49 knots over 500m (99.06 km/h), improving on his 53.27 knots (98.65 km/h) of 2015.
The windsurf of champion Antoine Albeau is the ideal exploratory laboratory. A perfect demonstrator of high performance with low carbon footprint.
Together, we structure #ZephirProject around people and innovation.
Future innovations will naturally be transferable to anything that glides in the water or in the air or draws energy from it (wind power, marine energy, eco-mobility etc…).
They will open up an infinite field of applications with the greatest respect for our planet.
This new form of absolute energy efficiency will be the fruit of our collective intelligence combined with the hightest technology.
One consequence of these discoveries is to take back their record from the super-powerful boats (65.45 knots or more than 121 km/h).
If the human being is at the center of the watersports, it is also and above all the heart of the Zephir project.
At our side, an international team of 80 experts and 50 companies from the world of competitive sailing (America’s Cup, Volvo Ocean Race, Vendée Globe…) but also from F1, aeronautics and space as well as 3D modeling, design, research on materials, cinema or Artificial Intelligence.
The team’s headliners include Martin Fisher (ex co-designer of the Luna Rossa boat, 36th America’s Cup finalist) then in charge of INEOS’boat for the AC37, Eric Barone (extreme sports champion and world record holder in downhill mountain biking), or Robert Stroj (head designer of NeylPryde’s leading sails). Special recognition goes to our pillars, such as Olivier Ponrouch, Pierre Schmitz, Emmanuel Ferton or Hermès Garanger.
Fundamentally attached to passing-on knowledge, an undeniable factor of success, we also rely on the young generation as witnesses and actors of the project.
Antoine Albeau’s young protégé, Pierre Schmitz, a wingfoiling champion, and engineering students from ISAE-SUPAERO, EFREI, ENSTA Paris, Centrale Lyon, ESME-SUDRIA, University Of South Britanny and EM Lyon Business School have or are actively participating in the project.
At the heart of this technological and managerial breakthrough, the human being is driving a new balance between industry and elements of nature.
Zephir is an industrial project that promotes innovations and patents in many fields. Its strength lies in the synergy of multiple skills and know-how, and in bringing together people who would never have met without this common project. Through an innovative management model based on UltraPerformance, we generate unprecedented results and technological advances that we put at the service of high-level and leisure sports.
Domains explored: Navigation and flight simulators / Biomimetism & Architectured ecoresponsible materials / 3D calculation & On-board measurements / Windtunnel tests & measurements / Big Data & Artificial Intelligence / Augmented Reality & Motion capture / Physiology & Safety…
The dynamics of the Zephir Project are such that it is taking off without being held back by the multiple crisis and their difficulties.
On December 3, 2020, we experienced the official launch of #ZephirProject with 4 days of world premiere in the wind tunnel, first in Magny-Cours at ACE and then at IAT-CNAM in Saint-Cyr l’Ecole.
At the end of November 2021, we tested the first prototypes resulting from our studies and simulations in difficult weather conditions (see video above) before going on in 2022.
These amazing days allowed the team to explore further the flows on Antoine Albeau’s world record material, as well as a “motion capture” of the dynamic movement of his sails and body using animation film technologies. For analysis purposes, “conceptual designs” developed at Centrale Lyon 30 years ago and other prototypes have been the subject of new experiments.
2026-2027
2027: More performance and comfort with increasingly ecoresponsible equipment
