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madforsailing Le Defi crewman Tim Kroger talks about life inside Le Defi Areva camp

The radical design of FRA-69 is the product of the YAKA Design Team, led by Philippe Pallu de la Barriere who has been central the R&D and design of French AC challenges since 1987. Also on the team are two old hands Daniel Andrieux and Bernard Nivelt, Dimitri Despierres, who was one of the minds who came up with the radical wingmasted IMS50 Krazy K-Yacht II, structural engineer Herve Devaux and his colleague Goulwen Lansonneur and hydrodynamicist Jerome Vedrenne.

On the sails there is Henrik Soderlund, a former 470 World Champion and Chief Designer for North Sails Europe. Last but by no means least is Dutch architect Peter van Oossanen, who was on the Australia I design team in 1980 and was the person who came up with Australia II's radical, but winning winged keel in 1983 and has subsequently worked on the One Australia and Fast 2000 campaigns.

One look at FRA-69 tells you it is the product of radical thought. It remains to see if this is fast radical thought relative to what the campaigns have come up with. "It is a very long boat, but these days apparently all these boats are long and the length is also determined by the enormous amount of tank testing we did, because the YAKA design Team continued to work on developing this boat after the Cup 2000," explains Kroger. "So the YAKA Design Team never stopped and the money we had left over from the last Challenge was basically used for all this design research they did - tank testing and all the rabbits you can pull out of the hat. The 2000 boat was analysed in comparison to the other boats and the result was this boat."

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This shot shows FRA-69's slab sides and long flat bottomed stern