Little America's Cup gallery - 1

Top French photographer Christian Fevrier gives us his insight on the high performance C-class

1991 French Challenger.
The French challenger OTIP in a gust. She was fitted with an assymetrical see-saw wing rig, but again the problem for her crew was to depower rapidly. Not only is this rig a beast to control , it carries much more weight aloft than the Cunningham-style symetyrical wingsail.

OTIP's beautifully designed training edge of the assymetrical rig from Remi Laval Jeantet. Today Jeantet is hydrodynamicist for the Alinghi Challenge.


The hulls from Philippe Pallu de la Barriere were similar to the Formula 40 cats of the day and did not have enough buoyancy forward. Very difficult to control in gusts, OTIP capsized, breaking the wing in two pieces, making way to the US challenger, Freedom Wing, to meet the Australian defender