An age-old European contest for supremacy of the waves has tilted in France’s favour as a Breton seaman at the helm of a “flying yacht” attempts to shatter the world speed record for sailing held by an Irish windsurfer.

From afar it may look like an ordinary yacht, but French hopes of glory are pinned on an unusual design that allows the Hydroptère, as it is called, to rise up on “wings” so that instead of ploughing through the waves it glides over them.

“We’re on the border of two worlds, sailing and aeronautics,” said Alain Thébault, 45, the yachtsman leading the effort. “It’s more like piloting a glider than a yacht.”

As it flies along off the Brittany coast, the Hydroptère has seized the imagination of the country, becoming the latest symbol of Gallic genius or, said Le Figaro last week, of “a France that says no to decline and yes to the future”. The boat, it added, was “the incarnation of a certain form of French excellence”.

Ever eager to be first, the French were following the efforts of the hydrofoil yacht with the same excitement that surrounded the achievement of the high speed train, or TGV, when it notched up a speed of 357mph for the first time this year.

The 60ft Hydroptère has crossed the Channel in just over half an hour, not much more than it takes the Eurostar to go under it and faster than the 40 minutes that it took Louis Blériot, the French aviator and the first person to fly over it, from Calais to Dover, in 1909.

As they tried to break the 50-knot (58mph) barrier for a place in nautical history, Thébault and his five yellow-suited crew members seemed that much more worthy of the public’s faith than the riders in the recent Tour de France, an event that has been tainted to the point of being dubbed the “Tour de Farce” after a series of doping scandals.

Already the vessel that Thébault calls “half boat, half plane” has notched up two world records to the applause of the nation: 41.69 knots (48mph) over a distance of one mile, and 44.81 knots (51mph) over 500 metres.

It has hit a top speed of 47.2 knots in training, just short of the world record of 48.7 knots (54mph) set by Ireland’s 22-year-old Finian Maynard on a French canal in 2005.

After some slight modifications to the boat later this year, Thébault hopes to hit 50 knots off the Brittany coast this winter. “The 50-knot mark in sailing is a bit like the sound barrier in flying,” said Thébault. “After that, everything is possible.”

He has contemplated attempting the west to east transatlantic record of four days and eight hours, but it would take optimum weather and constant winds over the distance of nearly 3,000 miles to better that time.

The “flying yacht” has been his dream since childhood. Politicians, captains of industry and a dozen retired aeronautical engineers from Dassault and Airbus have helped him to make it a reality, along with the backing of an enthusiastic Swiss banker.

“They understand that this extraordinary boat helps to put France in a special technological sphere which is different from what is being done elsewhere,” Thébault said.

He has compared the acceleration of his Hydroptère to that of a Formula One race car and dreams of inviting François Fillon, the prime minister and racing car enthusiast, aboard for one of the trial runs.

A breeze of just 12 knots (14mph) suffices for “take-off” and the boat rises as much as 15ft out of the water on carbon fibre ailerons plunging down from the trimaran’s outer keels.

Only the tips of these “wings” are left in contact with the sea and the drag of the vessel is reduced to almost zero, allowing it to hover over the waves like a flying carpet.

One of the crewmen sits behind a steering wheel in the stern while the others cluster on one of the outriders, tightening or loosening the sail and occasionally whooping with joy when the Hydroptère accelerates past 40mph.

Just a few years ago the mast, ailerons or one of the stays would have snapped at that speed, such is the pressure exerted on them, and in the course of their experiments the crew have witnessed various calamitous malfunctions.

Adjustments, however, have made the ailerons as strong as an aircraft’s landing gear and a “panic button” will bring the vessel to a halt if too strong a gust risks capsizing or somersaulting it.

Thébault says his obsession with making a boat fly is linked to a difficult childhood: he was brought up by a grandmother - his father was often absent and his mother was mentally ill - who sent him to a boarding school just down the road from his home.

“I lived opposite home without being able to go there,” he wrote in Pilot of a Dream, his memoir. “Through the window I could see a patch of blue sky and, in the background, the roof of what should have been my home.”

He began dreaming of the impossible, he says, all the more so when pottering about in his dinghy. “A dinghy, it’s terrible, it sticks to the water,” he wrote. “So when you see a seagull drifting away with a beat of its wing, either it makes you mad . . . or you make your boat fly.”

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