Le Professeur takes to three hulls

James Boyd met up with Vendee Globe winner Michel Desjoyeaux to see his new tri

"Everybody thinks I will make something very different," says Desjoyeaux. "We just make what we did last time. We take some things we like and we try to put all of them on the same boat." He has sailed on many different trimarans - on Belgacom in the Transat Jacques Vabre last year and on Foncia (prior to their capsize) two years before that.

The overall concept of Geant, Desjoyeaux says, is to keep it simple and light. The mast for example, which during our visit was still in two halves sitting in their respective moulds, will rotate, cant athwartships and can be raked fore and aft by a few degrees, but does not have the system Alain Gautier's new Foncia 2 has where the foot of the forestay is on a traveller increasing the amount of rake that can be put into the mast. The only extra weight is in having the X-beam arrangement which requires a separate extra beam aft for the mainsheet traveller track.

The X-beam configuration Desjoyeaux likes because firstly it concentrates weight more centrally, therefore reducing the trimaran's tendency to pitch but also because it is safer. Many of the tris simply have a helmsman's seat perched half way along the aft beam to port and starboard with a large expanse of netting in front of them. With the X-beam configuration, the helmsman is protected by the beam in front of them.

Geant's cockpit area is larger than we have seen previously, elliptical in shape and contained between the aft beam that joins the centre hull further forward than the other tris and the mainsheet traveller beam. It has a flat deck with simply a hole in the deck to get down below to the extremely cramped accommodation.

In the cockpit there will be twin winch pedestals located further forward than the other tris, again to concentrate weight in the centre of the boat. Desjoyeaux says that there is the option of fitting a third grinder aft in the cockpit to drive the hydraulics if they find the present set up to be too slow. The configuration is primarily suited to fully crewed races in the Grand Prix, but, Desjoyeaux says, will also work well when sailing solo.

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