To the wire for Fauconnier

Sergio Tacchini wins after nailbiting finish to Fecamp ORMA Grand Prix

After yesterday's light wind, the 60ft ORMA multihulls were blessed with more challenging 20-25 knot winds and a lumpy sea for the concludingday of the Fecamps Grand Prix. With these conditions the multihulls put on a display of blistering speed and competitive racing par excellence off the white cliffs of northern France.

Winning the last race yesterday Franck Cammas' new Groupama II, took two bullets in the first three races today putting her on 14 points to series leader Karine Fauconnier's Sergio Tacchini on 13 - an exceptional performance for a boat straight out of the box.

In the final race today Michel Desjoyeaux' Geant finally found her form, boat and skipper seeming to relish the heavier conditions. After nailing the start Desjoyeaux had pulled out a lead of 24 seconds by the top mark rounding ahead of Sergio Tacchini with Groupama in fourth.

With a course laid along the coast, throughout the day tacticians seem to be juggling going offshore on the beat where there was more breeze and going inshore to get out of the tide that was ripping east with particular vigour in the first race.

After bearing away towards the spreader mark and then onto the run, Groupama overtook Sergio Tacchini pulling up to third and her prospects were starting to look good for an overall win in the Grand Prix. However on the second beat as she was about to hit the starboard layline for the top mark the webbing at the top of her staysail parted company with the sail, causing the sail to fall to the deck. As her crew scrambled to find and hoist an alternative headsail so she was overtaken and any chance of her winning her first regatta went out of the window.

Sergio Tacchini crossed the finish line third behind Geant and Gitana XI and this was enough to secure them their first Grand Prix win since the Italian Grand Prix in Cagliari last year. With this and their recent win in the Quebec-St Malo race finally there exists a boat that has broken the Groupama strangehold on the class.

"I'm too old for this," commented leading French match racer and Sergio Tacchini tactician Luc Pillot on his arrival ashore. "The knives were out for this last race," added a jubilant Karine Fauconnier. "I tried hard not not to think too much about the result but concentrating me on the helm, but it was tough on the nerves."

Eventually finishing fourth in the final race, pulled Groupama up to 18 points, level with Fred le Peutrec's Gitana 11, another boat that has shown noticable improvement this season.

Aside from Fauconnier the biggest accolade from this Grand Prix must go to Franck Cammas and his team on Groupama who came very close to coming from behind to take the Grand Prix. This would have been an outstanding achievement as a new boat winning a Grand Prix fresh out of the box is unheard of in the ORMA class. To be fair the Groupama team is a special case. Not only has their crew been together for many years, but they have had the benefit of being able to use their old boat to tune up against.

As the results indicate, three boats at the Grand Prix - Sergio Tacchini, Groupama II and Gitana XI - showed consistent race-winning form with Geant joining this elite group following her performance today. Consistently mid-fleet are a group of boats including Foncia, Banque Populaire and Sodebo and it is hard to see exactly why they are mid-fleet. Sodebo's results were not improved when she had to pull out of the final race today when one of her primary winches cracked top to bottom.

"I think once you've got your sails sorted it is very much a crew thing. The boats are pretty close," sums up Sergio Tacchini's Damian Foxall.

At present this is some interesting sail development going on in the fleet, in particular involving the size of square tops on the boat's Grand Prix mainsails. The square top of Groupama's mainsail is around 4m long!

Mainly the issue is one of crew work - keeping the boat going fast, particularly through manoeuvres where it is easy for the lightweight multihulls to stop dead in the water and even to start going backwards if the timing of a tack is fluffed. A feature of the top boats seems to be not only having some heavy weight individuals in their afterguard, but also a crew that can carry out manoeuvres by second nature.

Consistently at the back of the fleet is Philippe Monnet's Sopra Group and dogging their way around the course (relatively) - Yves Parlier's Mediatis Region Aquitaine. Parlier gives the impression that he is going to be returning to the drawing board with his radical catamaran that makes for impressive photographs hidden behind plumbs of spray but that to date has failed to challenge the trimarans on any point of sail.

At present the future is uncertain for Marc Guillemot's Gitana X. Following her dramatic pitchpole on Friday the boat was finally righted in Fecamps harbour this morning and will be towed back to the team's base in Brittany tomorrow. It remains to be seen whether the boat will get a new rig. There is a strong possibility that the Gitana X program might get canned, given that the boat has to date failed to perform against the other trimarans, despite the best endeavours of her skipper and her being probably the most expensive trimaran in the fleet.

From here the ORMA fleet heads down to the Mediterannean for the Grand Prix in Calvi, Corsica on 23-26 September following by the final event of the season for the class in Marseilles over 3-5 October.