Three hulled monster

madforsailing talks to French sailing legend Olivier de Kersauson about his new globe trotting tri

The Race may not have been the greatest competition but it was highly successful in causing the creation of a new generation of sailing craft boats that represent a quantum leap in speed under sail. Steve Fossett's PlayStation and the three 110ft long Gilles Ollier cats cruise at 25 knots and are capable of maintaining speeds under sail in excess of 30 knots. But one significant Frenchman believe this is only two-thirds of the story.
"The fastest boat in the Jules Verne is a trimaran. There was no trimaran in The Race, so The Race was not completely significant," says legendary ocean racer Olivier de Kersauson. Several competitors or would-be competitors in The Race wanted to build trimarans, but failed to find the funding. Grant Dalton and Ross Field were independently talking to Nigel Irens about monster tris, while Loick Peyron wanted the world's largest foil-assisted trimaran and was touting an ambitious-looking design by Marc Lombard.

So the launch of Olivier de Kersauson's new trimaran, a 110ft (34m) long by 69ft (21m) wide beast, currently undergoing sea trials in Brittany, comes with a great deal of anticipation. How will de Kersauson's tri, codenamed K2000, perform against the similarly-sized Ollier cats like Club Med? Sometime soon we shall know...

Olivier de Kersauson

De Kersauson's opinion comes backed up with an incredible amount of experience. Aged 57, he has sailed more miles in trimarans than anyone alive and his lengthy CV includes three non-stop round the world voyages (one of them singlehanded), several part circumnavigations and numerous other ocean races.

In typical fashion, his introduction to a life on three hulls was not a trip round the bay, but the delivery in 1967 of Eric Tabarly's Pen Duick IV from France to New Caledonia with the great man and another French sailing legend, Alain Colas. "Since then I have been sailing trimarans all the time," says de Kersauson.

From being Tabarly's strong right arm in numerous races including the 1973 Whitbread on the maxi Pen Duick VI to the Clipper Race, from London to Sydney to London, he moved into sailing trimarans, competing in the first Route de Rhum in 1978 singlehanded on Kriter IV and the OSTAR on Kriter VI. He was responsible for one of the first composite trimarans, with the building of Jacques Ribourel which he raced in the La Rochelle-New Orleans race in 1982.

Over 1986/7 he had yet another new trimaran built. At 75ft LOA Poulain was a design by Marc van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot Prevost and de Kersauson has continued to race this boat, albeit lengthened to 90ft and considerably modified, until now. In 1989 he set a new record for sailing non-stop around the world singlehanded with a time of 125 days. But his most significant success came in 1997 when after numerous attempts he set a new non-stop round the world record of 71 days 14 hours 22 minutes and 8 seconds when the boat was sponsored by Sport Elec. He is still the proud holder of the Jules Verne Trophy.

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Below: K- 2000 - note the high arch of the beam, the 'bridge' and how small the people are!