Three hulled monster

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

K-2000 is specifically built for record breaking, in particular round the world events and so it is different from the present generation of 60ft trimarans in not having a square beam to length ratio. Having too much beam would make the boat too powerful. De Kersauson also maintains the wider you build a trimaran the harder (and heavier) it is to build and the higher the risk of structural failure.
However he reckons the greatest technological development with the new boat compared to his old one is in the construction, where new materials allow the boat to be built both stronger and lighter.

Interestingly the boat was built by Multiplast in Vannes, Gilles Ollier's boatyard who were responsible for the construction of Club Med and her sisterships. For the new tri Multiplast used the same technique for building her as they did in the construction of the maxi-cats last year: carbon fibre with a Nomex core. Structural engineering was again carried out by Herve Devaux while the yacht's hydro- and aerodynamics were calculated by Mick Kermarrec, who is now part of the huge design team working for Prada's next America's Cup challenger. K-2000 took one year to build and roughly 27,000 more man hours than the Ollier cats.

Knowing the 'new racing boat' game only too well, De Kersauson has been shrewd in building a simple boat to start with. Unlike the 60ft trimarans K-2000 will not start off with a canting rig or foils, but has been built to have these features fitted at a later date. "First we will sail 50,000 miles. Then we will adapt the foils, then the mobility of the mast. And we want to measure our progress."