TJV preview - multihulls

We look at the form of the highly competitive fleet of 60ft trimarans setting sailing from Le Havre on Sunday

60ft trimaran form guide

Odds	Boat name	Crew	Nat	Designer	Built	ex
5:1	Groupama 2	Franck Cammas & Franck Proffit	FR/FR	VPLP/Fisher/Kermarec	2004
6:1	Géant	Michel Desjoyeaux & Hugues Destremau	FR/FR	VPLP	2002
8:1	Banque Populaire	Pascal Bidégorry & Lionel Lemonchois	FR/FR	Irens/Cabaret	2002	Bayer CropScience
9:1	Gitana XI	Fred Le Peutrec & Yann Guichard	FR/FR	VPLP	2001	Belgacom
10:1	Sodebo	Thomas Coville & Jacques Vincent	FR/FR	VPLP	2002
11:1	Foncia	Armel Le Cléac’h & Damian Foxall	FRA/IRE	VPLP/Foncia	2002
12:1	Brossard	Yvan Bourgnon & Charles Caudrelier	SWI/FR	Irens/Cabaret	2001	Sergio Tacchini
15:1	Orange Project	Steve Ravussin & Yvan Ravussin	SWI/SWI	VPLP	1997	Breceliande/Foncia1/Technomarine/Banque Covefi
25:1	Gitana X	Thierry Duprey du Vorsent & Erwan Le Roux	FR/FR	Ollier/Schmidt/Gitana	2002
30:1	TIM Progetto Italia	Giovanni Soldini & Vittorio Malingri	ITA/ITA	VPLP	2001

While one side of the aptly named Paul Vatine* basin here in Le Havre is lined with Open 60s and 50s, so opposite them is the long line of 60ft trimarans and class two multihulls. (*Paul Vatine was a 60ft trimaran skipper who won the 1995 TJV in the multihull division but was subsequently lost overboard in the 1999 race).

As with the Open 60 fleet so numbers are down for the 60ft trimaran division of the Transat Jacques Vabre with just 10 boats competing, compared to the 14 boats that raced two years ago and the bumper crop of 18 of these incredible boats which sailed the 2002 Route du Rhum, the highlight event in the ORMA 60 four yearly calendar.

While in the Transat Jacques Vabre the Open 60s sail a course directly from Le Havre down the Channel before hanging a left, passing Cape Finisterre, the Canaries, and through the Doldrums before ending up at the finish in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, the 60ft trimarans are obliged to take a longer course. They must round Ascension Island in the South Atlantic at 8degS 14deg43W before heading for the finish line - a distance of 5,190 miles in total, compared to 4,340 miles on the direct route for the monohulls and this course potentially takes them through a more active area of Doldrums than the monohulls. Even on this longer route and with more Doldrums, the leading 60ft trimarans still covered the course around three days faster than the first monohulls two years ago.
Favourite for trimaran line honours has to be Franck Cammas and his regular Grand Prix navigator Franck Proffit on Groupama II. Cammas won the last Transat Jacques Vabre in his old Groupama and is now campaigning the latest boat in the fleet. Where it not structural issues which caused her to pull out of the IB Group Challenge race from Brittany to the Med at the beginning of the year, Groupama II would be way ahead of her competitors in the 2005 ORMA championship, having won all the Grand Prix this year by a country mile. All the trimaran crews we have spoken to agree that Cammas' green streak is the fastest boat by some way in winds up to 15 knots, however above this her performance advantage is not so noticable and sailed two handed in the TJV the playing field will be levelled still further. For the TJV the Groupama team have moved the boat's foils forward slightly in the floats - a major piece of surgery.





Having won both the Route du Rhum and then the Transat, Michel Desjoyeaux and Géant are second in our form guide. Last winter the Geant team carved off the bottom of Géant's main hull and replaced it with a new more rounded under belly. They also replaced her rotating wingmast, added a centreboard with a trim tab to improve upwind performance and subjected the boat to a rigorous weight saving regime.

For the 2005 season it has been all change within the Banque Populaire team. They have a new skipper in talented Solitaire du Figaro winner Pascal Bidégorry and a new boat in the Nigel Irens/Benoit Cabaret-designed former Bayer CropScience, having dispensed with their previous Lombard design. The team got off to a good start this season winning the IB Group Challenge and have since been a regular podium placer at the Grand Prix. For the TJV Bidégorry has paired up with the rugged offshore sailor Lionel Lemonchois.

Another team to show great improvement this year has been Gitana. Baron Benjamin Rothschild's team has probably invested the most in the ORMA circuit in recent years having gone out on a limb to create the X-beamed banana-floated Gitana X, which despite much surgery still might be termed in French parlance "un cochon". Recognising this the team at the beginning of last season acquired Jean-Luc Nelias' former Belgacom trimaran which became Gitana XI, installing former Tornado sailor and Bayer CropScience helm Fred le Peutrec as skipper.

For this season Gitana XI has, like Geant, been fitted with a new, lighter mast and had a trim tab added to the daggerboard in her main hull to improve lift to windward. The chainplates for her shrouds have also been moved aft to allow bigger gennikers to be flown.

Alongside Banque Populaire, it has been le Peutrec and his team on Gitana XI, who have been making the greatest inroads into Groupama II's dominance this season.

While all the boats we have mentioned so far have been competing in the ORMA circuit this year, Thomas Coville's bright red Sodebo has not. Preferring offshore sailing Coville has gone about attempting singlehanded records this year and managed to break Francis Joyon's Route of Discovery time, despite sailing a boat two thirds the size of Joyon's IDEC.

As a result of this Sodebo and her skipper have spent more time offshore recently than any of the other trimarans competing. Recent modifications to the boat have included the fitting of new retractible foils in her floats to give greater lift and weight saving by removing the Solent sheet beams and replacing them by fixed point purchases on the main hull. Sailing with Coville in the TJV is the old hand and one of the world's most capped round the world racers Jacques Vincent.

While Alain Gautier and his Foncia 1 trimaran had many successful results, the second Foncia trimaran has not. At the end of last season Gautier stood down as skipper of the boat, although he is still the team's manager, passing the reigns over to former Solitaire du Figaro winner Armel le Cleac'h, who is racing in the TJV with Ireland's Damian Foxall.



Of all the trimarans Foncia went through the most radical surgery last winter when her main hull was replaced in its entirety by a new one taken from the female moulds of the all-conquering Groupama II. The cockpit layout has been modified to save weight and the chainplates for the shrouds have been moved aft in order to locate the large hydraulic cylinders used to cant the wingmast to weather (all the trimarans have this feature) behind the aft beam. Like Geant and Gitana XI, her daggerboard has been fitted with a trim tab.

Of the remainder of the fleet the Ravussins cannot be discounted on board their newly renamed Orange Project. Swiss sailor Steve Ravussin follows on from the tradition of the Bourgnon brothers in being one of the most talented 'pedal to the metal' sailors in the trimaran fleet and it should not be forgotten that it was he who was leading the 2002 Route du Rhum fleet, until his boat capsized as he was closing on the finish line. To read more about this campaign see our interview with Bruno Peyron - here. If this campaign has a downside it is in the age of their boats - the original Foncia.

Yvan Bourgnon returns to the ORMA fleet with new sponsor Brossard, who are setting a new trend in the French sailing world by sponsoring not only a 60ft race boat, but also Fréd Duthil's Figaro campaign and Adrien Hardy's Mini. Anne Liardet's sponsor Roxy have done a similar sponsorship spread backing their Open 60, the Figaro of Eric Tabarly's daughter Marie and Alexia Barrier's Mini. For his new campaign Bourgnon has acquired Karine Fauconnier's former Sergio Tacchini trimaran, a boat with great potential but Bourgnon may have been short on time getting the boat back up to speed. For the TJV he is sailing with yet another former Solitaire du Figaro winner Charles Caudrelier.

If the Open 60 fleet has four new generation boats that have a slight advantage in the form guide over the rest of the fleet, this is much less the case with the 60ft trimarans. In our opinion, literally any of the boats mentioned in this article have the ability to win the 2005 Transat Jacques Vabre.