Le Professeur takes to three hulls

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

The reason for the large cockpit is that crews have been getting larger and larger for the 60ft tri Grand Prix in which Desjoyeaux thinks they will sail with 11. "The problem is the races are faster, so you need more human power," he explains.

Among Geant's crew will be Jean-Philippe Saliou and Vincent Riou, both of whom were with Desjoyeaux on the PRB Vendee Globe project, Herve Jan (most recently of Orange and Assa Abloy), Philippe Presti of Le Defi Areva and Jean-Francois Cuzon, a former 470 World Champion who is now campaigning a Tornado.

One potential area of development is the daggerboard located forward of the mast on the centre hull. At present this moves up and down and fore and aft, but Desjoyeaux says they are considering changing this next year for one which can also cant.

So will the new Geant be any faster than the previous generation of boats? "I don't know," admits Desjoyeaux, who has seen the VPPs but won't commit until Geant is out on the water. "For the moment everyone wants to make faster boats, but we have to improve the way of using them before we make them much faster. These boats are very powerful, but you have a lot of work to be able to use all the power of the boat. Even if you go fast if you don't know how to tack, you lose everything".

Costs in the 60ft trimaran class are currently on the increase. Materials and time to build a 60ft trimaran in France equate to around 12 million Francs. Geant, built from rented moulds and including design fees is around 15 million Francs. A completely new boat with its own set of moulds is likely to be in excess of 17 million.

Today this respects only a fraction of the cost as the budgets required to run these boats has soared. Back in the old days before the class ran Grand Prix campaigns could make do with a basic shore team and the skipper. Now shore teams have swelled and 10 or more crew are required for Grand Prix and must be kept on retainers. With this so campaigns costs have rocketed and the backlast has been the withdrawal of both Karine Fauconnier and Giovanni Soldini's tris this year from the Grand Prix circuit. Instead they will only take part in the long distance events such as the Route du Rhum.

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