G-class movement

Bruno Peyron talks to The Daily Sail about his plans for The Race 2004, The Race Tour and a new 80ft one design maxi-cat

One design maxi-multihulls

Having sailed maxi-catamarans since the late 1970s, Peyron is a strong advocate of these boats and one gets the impression that he is on a mission to convert the rest of the sailing fraternity to this way of yacht racing.

Now he has achieved his ambition of getting a number of giant multihulls built (we first remember him touting plans for a 100ft catamaran as long ago as the late 1980s) he is now moving on to stage two with the proposal for a one design maxi-multihull of somewhere between 70-80ft. This is most likely to be a catamaran of around 80ft. Like The Race Tour Peyron says he is responding to a demand from the marketplace although he admits, a little like one of the apostles, that its introduction "is to accelerate the process of multihull culture around the world."

The new 80ft catamaran is a one design in order not to be confused as a poor man's G-class and Peyron says that it should be more appealing to those wanting to make the transition from monohull racing without having to enter the technological arms race.

While some potential skippers are more interested in using their imagination to go through the technologic hoops of developing a new G-class multihull, others are only interested in the fight out on the water, he maintains. "It would have been a mistake to make an 80 foot rule as a class two, because then you have a class one and a class two. People like Chris Dickson and Paul Cayard - they want to fight with equal arms."

More controversially he also thinks this class will be an alternative to the 60ft trimaran and Open 60 classes which he sees as being saturated with too many competitors.

The fact that the French are such old hands at racing 60ft trimarans with around 30 years of experience behind them he sees as also putting off some foreign competition entering the sport. So while those classes suffer to some degree from being predominantly French, his new 80ft catamaran class is designed from the outset to be international and the boats will be capable of round the world passages. This should hopefully enable it to be appealing to a wider range of more international sponsors.

"We succeeded a little bit in that matter with The Race with more than 13 countries taking part, mixed cultures on the boats and reaching more than 200 countries on TV, but we can use other tools to accelerate this process," Peyron explains. "There is The Race Tour – to bring the spectacle and the sports near the coast, near the public and near the TV and internet. And if possible we can help any talented sailors in any market of the world to come and play with us. But the only way that is going to be possible is that they have the guarantee that they are going to have the same tool as the others. So that is why a one design..."

Regarding the boat itself, it has gone little further than conceptual stage. Typical of Peyron's egalitarian nature is that he wants to involve all the G-class architects from Gilles Ollier and his team, to Nigel Irens, Marc Lombard, Gino Morrelli and Pete Melvin in the design of the new boat. The likelihood of this happening is slim but one gets the impression that Peyron already has a pretty good idea of what he wants.

"It is simple: what is the smallest, cheapest, most high technology possible, able to sail at the highest level of competition in any ocean of the world, including the Southern Ocean, at a controlled level of safety and reliability, power and speed altogether. And that is a 70-80ft cat." The boat should be able to reach speeds of over 35 knots, and be able to make considerable daily mileage.

"And 80 is a symbolic number - it has meant 'maxi' for some 30 years now," he continues. "By coincidence it is the same length as Explorer (the former Jet Services V and the boat in which he first won the Jules Verne Trophy), the first generation and on top of that I wrote the spec for the one design to get a product where the cost will be under $2 million, which is crazy. It will be 20% cheaper than a 60 footer [trimaran] today... And if we succeed to do this, it has to be an exceptional product built to last 15-20 years like the Tornado – the only oceanic Tornado in the world! This idea has been in my crazy mind for a couple of years now and I have started to talk with a few people and architects."

Timing-wise Peyron would like to see examples of the new one design in the water and thoroughly tested in time for The Race Tour. "We plan to spend all this coming year designing. Then as soon as we start the production we'll be able to launch a boat each 3-4 months."

Regarding how it will be built Peyron has two options in mind. One is to grant a license to builders in north and south Europe, the US and Australasia - like the Mumm 30 - while the other is to get different yards to build different parts of the boat. In this case he believes production time for each boat could be as short as three months.

"That is why I trust the design team to come up with the best solution," he continues. "We have the time to do it. Then in 2004-5 we have two years to build 7-8 boats for the first edition or maybe more."

Remarkably Peyron believes he has 4-5 boats already sold on just the concept of the boat alone. "And that is not considering what is going to happen, because very few people have been aware of it."

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