Decision time

Anne Hinton looks at how the new extreme Swiss lake one design cats have fared in their first season

The Decision 35s Challenge Ferrier Lullin series finished on Lake Geneva last weekend with the Grand Prix Beau-Rivage Palace. This was the last of six regattas over the summer months, comprising the Geneve-Rolle-Geneve race at the beginning of the summer, the Bol d’Or race around the lake in mid-June, the Open de la Reserve, the 100 miles race, the Open de Versoix and the Grand Prix Beau-Rivage Palace off Lausanne. At present the events for next year are still being confirmed, but the programme for this year is considered to have worked well (read our technical article about the Decision 35 here)

Jean-Marie de Charriere, President of Ferrier Lullin, donated a perpetual trophy from Ferrier Lullin at the end of this first annual series of regattas for the large cats on the lake. The trophy has a slot-in metal strip on which the name of the winners can be engraved. This can easily be changed for a new strip when full, allowing for many years of competition.

This year’s winner was decided by taking the points from all the events and discarding the worse result for each boat. Team Red-Zebra 7 was leading going into the last event. However, having alternated in successive events between first and fourth placings, she continued this trend to finish fourth in Lausanne. This enabled the more Team Red - Zebra 5 to take the winner’s slot with entirely first and second placings (having discarded her fourth place in the initial event of the season - Geneve-Rolle-Geneve). The final event, the Grand Prix Beau-Rivage Palace, had a heavier points weighting of x1.5.

During this season’s events there had been a number of teething issues with the boats concerning minor breakages - issues which have been pretty much resolved after six events. There were also three dismastings, two of which involved the same boat, Bedat & Co. Bedat & Co. also overturned completely during the Open de Versoix. Word on the grapevine is that Bedat & Co. is likely to have a new helmsman next year, her present steersman opting to return to crewing on the boat.

There are clear differences among the crewing of these essentially simple, but actually very technical, boats. The most practiced crews had the least issues during the season. One boat’s crew which lost a mast attributed the problem to katabatic gusts coming down on to the lake from the Jura. Some of these gusts are not visible on the water at lake level, as they only strike the boats high up on the mast; some of the crews are better at foreseeing these gusts, or dealing with them, than other crews.

In view of the issues of delamination in a section of Bedat & Co’s hull, which was forced 3 metres under water when she overturned, the builder, Bertrand Cardis, will be checking all the figures thoroughly. However, since this is only a small patch of delamination in a non-structural location, and no other boat has had the problem, it is hoped that this is just a localised incident.

In terms of future plans, builder Bertrand Cardis says, “We plan to build more [Decision 35s]. We need more clients to sign the contracts. It’s not done yet, but I hope it will be done very, very soon. For next year we have one or two boats more, I think. We have the capability to do more, but I think we should be not so much more than that.

Talking about the existing issues, Cardis said, “ Bedat capsized and the float sank quite deeply when it capsized, so we think there was quite a big pressure. We estimate 3 tonnes per square metre. It went three metres down very quickly. We have a breakage of the shear strength of the honeycomb and we need to analyse that and check this because the same day the other boat, Zen, capsized, and we were able to put it again upside down and there wasn’t any trouble in the structure, in the mast, nothing. We are checking the calculation to see if there is a weak point [where the damage occurred on Bedat].

“The boats are built very light. There is no bulkheads inside - only bulkheads below the beams, so it’s quite an empty tube. It failed [on Bedat] at the front over not a big area - less than a metre. It is this one damage and it will be repaired. I have to take the boat into the yard and check what is going on and so on.”

Looking ahead to what else the Decision yard will be doing, Cardis said, “At Decision next year we have to work for the America’s Cup - to build the new Alinghi. Now we are working more for industry and PCs and we work for telecom. We are working with an 8 metre. We have not a big product of construction now. Mainly we do boatbuilding.

“An America’s Cup boat takes about 3.5-4 months to build; a D35 is about 1.5 months.
For Ernesto Bertarelli we have built five boats now - two multihulls and two America’s Cup boats and modifying one America’s Cup boat. We will be modifying the existing America’s Cup boats [SUI 64 and SUI75 - to conform to version 5 of the America’s Cup Class rules] this winter. I don’t know how long that will take.”

For a Decision 35 the crews indicated that all up costs, including sails and a RIB to tow the boats around, amount to around CHF 500,000, or about CHF 370,000 for an ex-works boat.

So the message to potential Decision 35 owners is: get in quick before the America’s Cup boat works start. These boats are really GREAT fun to sail - and there is top class competition. The boats are kept in the water at Versoix, just outside Geneva; an easy base for an owner to fly in to for a top weekend of sailing…

Challenge Ferrier Lullin Series Results

Pos	Boat	Owner	Genève- Rolle- Genève	Bol d'Or	Open de La Réserve	100 miles	Open de Versoix	GP Beau-Rivage Palace	Total
1	Zebra 5	Frédéric Amar	5	10	8	8	8	15	49
2	Zebra 7	Frédéric Amar	10	5	10	5	10	7.5	42.5
3	Alinghi	Ernesto Bertarelli	6	6	5	10	6	12	40
4	Ferrier Lullin	Philippe Cardis, François Mordasini	8	8	6	4	5	9	36
5	Cadence	Jean-François Demole	3	1	4	3	3	6	19
6	BEDAT & Co	Nicolas Grange	2	2	3	6	2	4.5	17.5
7	Zen too	Guy de Picciotto	4	3	2	2	2	3	14
8	Gonet & Cie	Consortium	0	4	1	0	4	1.5	10.5