America's Cup for Loick Peyron?

James Boyd caught up with the French trimaran ace to get the low down

Loick Peyron has come to a crossroads in his career. His 60ft trimaran Fujifilm broke up and was lost during the Route du Rhum (to hear Peyron's extraordinary - but fairly lengthy - account of the tri's loss - click here). At the time of our interview his sponsors Fuji France and Renault were not prepared to build another boat. He has just bought himself a new Figaro. And his prolonged time in Auckland suggests more than a passing interest in the America's Cup. The Daily Sail caught up with the charismatic Frenchman during one of the many interminable delays of cancelled racing.

Once we get over our mutual gripes about sitting out on the water twiddling our thumbs waiting for racing to start, Peyron says that he still wants to be in the 60ft trimaran class and is awaiting the outcome of his sponsorship negotiations. "At this time it is not working - it has not definitely stopped and it is not definitely yes," he admits - remarkable since Peyron is the class' most successful skipper ever and is still on song having won the Course des Phares and two of the Grand Prix last year. "It is not a nice situation because I would really like to be back as soon as possible in this marvellous area of the 60s."

If the situation remains unresolved Peyron says he has had two proposals to do the double-handed Transat Jacques Vabre this autumn and may even sign up with another team for the season - Jean-Luc Nelias and Alain Gautier have both crewed for him in the past. Now the tables may turn...

Fuji France who have sponsored Peyron since the early 1990s were looking to slowly extracate themselves from the trimaran class and this year Fujifilm - had she not broken up and eventually destroyed on a Portugese beach - was supposed to be renamed Renault. The French car manufacturer is already supplying cars to about half the 60ft trimaran teams and there was a possibility of them using their connections with Formula 1 to benefit the class.

After the lambasting and posturing in France following the trail of 60ft trimaran carnage left between St Malo and Guadeloupe during the Route du Rhum the only significant change that has been made to the class is to limit to modulus of the carbon fibre used in their boats' construction - in particular their masts. "Before we had no maximum limit and now it is 46 for the mast and less than that for the rest," says Peyron. "But the problem is that there are some boats still using high modulus in the mast. So they have one year to adjust that or reinforce the high modulus - which is a bizarre story! Or they can change their masts."

Remarkably since the Route du Rhum mayhem, only three of the 18 trimarans campaigns have noticably waivered - Peyron's, that of Yvan Bourgnon (whose trimaran capsized - but has been repaired) and Banque Covefi, whose skipper Bertrand de Broc has retired. Covefi want to continue, and Franck Proffit, who has crewed previously for Peyron and who was Grant Dalton's supposed 'co-skipper' on Club Med, is said to be in the running as de Broc's replacement.

According to Peyron his America's Cup ambition is mainly in his head at the moment, although it is rumoured that it is in fact much further progressed and that the French government might support him in some way if he were to get a campaign together. He says he likes the sailing side and the design side of the America's Cup, but the rest they can keep... "Absolutely it is not the summit of sailing, it is the summit of one type of sailing. But I don’t want to finance my retirement with this. Sometimes you see some guys like that..."

The vital ingredient for any potential AC campaign of his is Bertrand Pace. "For me a French syndicate needs to have Bertrand," maintains Peyron. "And Bertrand doesn’t want to do something on his own, so he is looking for somebody. It could be me or someone else." K-Yachting are also known to be gunning to get Team New Zealand's Frenchman, who won the support of this journalist at least by being the only person we noticed in the America's Cup to regularly light up a cigarette on the way out to and back from the race course.

Peyron says that there are many similarities between New Zealand and France, both being great sailing nations, albeit in different areas of the sport. Using the pitch that will probably win him government support, he says that if he were to do a campaign he would like to do it with the French 'spirit'. He criticises a majority of the America's Cup teams for all looking the same and having no individuality to them. "I think we don’t have to be embarrassed by our differencies. We don’t have to be shy and embarrassed about our way of sailing. We have to proud of our differences and use them."

He is adamant that if he starts a team then he will continue to campaign other boats - a 60ft trimaran campaign budget is about 10% that of a America's Cup one and will encourage his team to sail other boats (Le Defi Areva's squad, he says, were not allowed to do this). Aside from keeping the team fresh (and because he wants to sail 60ft trimarans) Peyron says the reason is a marketing one. In France the last Route du Rhum - no doubt thanks to the carnage - was measured to have got the highest amount of coverage in the French media second only to the World Cup Football and ahead of the Tour de France cycling and the Vendee Globe.

In terms of budget Peyron agrees that next time in Europe an AC campaign will cost more than it would in New Zealand and he estimates the necessary budget to be $/Euros 52 million. He certainly has the talent to sail an ACC boat and being possibly France's best known yachtsman, complete with his own fan club, he has the profile. But what our recent study of Alinghi has shown is that a successful AC campaign is about having the right management structure in place to get the best out of the best people: to encourage the sum to be more than the parts. Solo sailors and team approaches have often tended not to be a happy union, particularly in France where teams often are more groups of individuals rather than a cohesive unit.

While trimaran and America's Cup projects are up in the air, Peyron wants to get back to what he enjoys - sailing. He has one of the new Figaros on order and says he is 40-45th on the list to get one. The production of the new French singlehanded offshore one design has had some hiccups and aside from keel structure issues, several of the first boats have been returned with masts and prop shafts out of alignment. Because of this the entire Figaro calendar of the early part of this season has had to be rescheduled.

Ultimately he is heading for the Solitaire du Figaro, the fourth time he will have taken part (he has previously raced it in 1980, won the first leg in 1986 and raced again in 1990). Some of his old sparring partners from the multihull world will also be taking part including Michel Desjoyeaux, Alain Gautier and Halvard Mabire, all of whom have new Figaros on order.

Otherwise Peyron, like everyone, is concerned by the future of round the world races, now that there is not only the conflict between the Volvo Ocean Race and The Race Tour, but also with rumours of a third round the world event with stops originating in Scandinavia and said to be in one design 80ft trimarans.

Peyron finds solice in the fact that more and more of the sailing establishment are becoming very interested in sailing multihulls. Paul Cayard and Francesco d'Angelis are two names he mentions who are interested in either the 60ft trimaran circuit or the round the world races. "There is the option of the ORMA series, but there is the singlehanded problem. But they know that for one singlehanded race they can buy the talent of a French mercenary and get him to risk his life!"

He hopes that the obvious divides in the 60ft trimaran class between singlehanded/fully crewed and round the cans/offshore do not become an issue. In particular he feels that if 60ft trimarans head too far down the Grand Prix route, it will be the death of the class. "There is the adventure story and the sports story around the buoys. We have to keep that." He says that fortunately there are still a lot of people working their way up from a singlehanded background "and for the Grand Prix they can pass the tiller to a Tornado man who doesn’t want to spent one night offshore".

While Loick Peyron would be an interesting choice to head a French America's Cup campaign, we are left with no doubt that his heart still lies on three hulls.