60 feet of fun

In the first of this series James Boyd looks at why the 60ft trimaran class is currently so successful

There will be a bumper crop of 60ft trimarans in the Route de Rhum - the high point of the trimaran's four yearly program - but there seems no reason why it should all end there.

Philippe Facque's vision is for an international circuit and this is slowly coming to pass with the arrival of Italian Giovanni Soldini's Fila(above) and the Belgium-sponsored Belgacom.

Ellen MacArthur has been actively sailing this circuit on board Alain Gautier's Foncia and there are mutterings of her perhaps getting her own tri at some stage. I see it being hard for Ellen to resist the tempation of doing the Route de Rhum on three hulls. Mike Golding, Josh Hall, Brian Thompson and Irishman Damian Foxall (currently aboard a container ship en route to Sydney with Team Tyco) are other names known to be interested in getting 60ft trimaran projects together.

But the stumbling block for classes which have their origins so deeply rooted in France is that most of the sponsors involved are only interested in the French domestic market and have little interest in selling their wares overseas. Quite how Facque intends to address this problem remains to be seen.

There is also the thorny issue of money. To be truly world class, you need the involvement of the world's top crew and those taking part in a fully crewed offshore event like for example the Challenge Mondial Assistance, will not earn the same bucks as if they sign up for the same period for an America's Cup or Volvo campaign. And unfortunately this situation will remain until the day that the class does fulfil Monsieur Facque's dream by becoming truly international, with a circuit that is exactly the water-borne equivalent of Formula 1 motor racing.

TOMORROW WE LOOK AT THE RUNNERS AND RIDERS IN THE CLASS