Tracy Edwards

The former Maiden skipper spoke to James Boyd about her latest plans for the Jules Verne Trophy

So which boat would she take? Although very fond of her old boat (now Tony Bullimore's Team Legato) rightly or wrongly Tracy feels she is too long in the tooth. In her mind there are two options open to her:

The first is to buy Club Med. This is currently out of the water in La Ciotat in the south of France (next to where Nautor Challenge are building their second Volvo Ocean Race boat). A few weeks ago disaster nearly struck when Club Med was caught by a gust and blew off her cradle, badly damaging her topsides. She has now been repaired. "It is a great boat and is well designed and well built. It is nice and basic and there is nothing over the top about it."

The second option is to go with her original proposal for The Race: of building a new Nigel Irens design. "We so much enjoyed working with him on the ENZA refit," Tracy says. "The basic design of ENZA we loved."

Irens messed up with The Race. Laurent Bourgnon was originally building a giant catamaran to his design and when this was in full swing Irens was approached by Steve Fossett to design him a maxi-cat. Irens said he was tied up, only to find that sponsorship funds for Bourgnon never materialised. By this time Fossett had signed up with Gino Morrelli and Pete Melvin for what has become PlayStation.

Irens' design for the race was born of the experience with ENZA and was unusual in having huge freeboard forward in the hulls, to prevent the boat nosediving. Irens says that if he was commissioned to design a big racing cat now he would stick with the three beam layout (rather than go down the Team Philips route of having no forward beam), because it stands up so well structurally. "No one has had problems with that configuration." However he says that now he would be much bolder with the sail area. "Those cats (the generation in The Race) were very sticky in the light stuff. From our point of view the next group will be more ambitious in terms of power to weight ratio."

But if a client came to Irens looking for a new multihull for a Jules Verne attempt he says he would probably recommend a trimaran. This is not because trimarans have become dominant in the 60ft class (trimarans win because the class is governed by a maximum length rule) but because of their potential power to weight ratio. Irens feels that a boat's performance in the Jules Verne directly affects how well it can handle the Atlantic part of the course. However he maintains it is a very close run thing.

And who will be the sponsor? See page 3...