Joyon back on the water

We speak to the French sailing legend and designer Nigel Irens

Gentle giant Francis Joyon is set to get back on the water after the terrible loss of his maxi-trimaran IDEC on the rocks off the Brittany coast last year.

The incident occurred when Joyon was delivering IDEC back from the end of a successful attempt on Laurent Bourgnon's singlehanded transatlantic record between New York and the Lizard in July 2005. While most teams would have had crew clambering all over the boat once their skipper had crossed the line, Joyon in typical style chose instead to deliver his 90ft trimaran back to his homeport of La Trinite singlehanded. Unfortunately while he slept the autopilot went off course, the boat ended up on the rocks and the French skipper only escaped with his life by jumping overboard.
Joyon, who is one of the world's most unflappable individuals, told us the incident had in no way put him off the desire to go solo sailing on giant multihulls. "In 20 years of navigation I just went once on the rocks..." Nuff said.

In Paris today Joyon and his sponsor IDEC announced the French skipper's latest project - a new maxi-trimaran designed for the job by Nigel Irens and Benoit Cabaret for Joyon to make a fresh attempt on the solo ound the world.

Back in February 2004 Joyon set an phenomenal new non-stop singlehanded round the world record of 72 days 22 hours 54 minutes and 22 seconds (read our interview with Joyon about this here). At the time the fastest solo time round the world record in a trimaran was 125 days, set by Olivier de Kersauson back in 1988 in an earlier 75ft long incarnation of Joyon's steed. In 2004 the outright record for sailing non-stop around the world was the 90+ day time Michel Desjoyeaux posted in the 2000-1 Vendee Globe. Last year Joyon's record was of course bettered by Ellen MacArthur and her B&Q Castorama trimaran with a time of 71 days 14 hours 18 minutes and 33 seconds.

Beating Ellen's time Joyon admits will be far from easy. "It was very hard for Ellen to win 30 hours on my record and I am afraid it will be very hard to win some hours on Ellen’s record. I had good conditions for my record but Ellen has good conditions too. So the first things will be to have one good boat and the second thing will be to have good conditions for the weather."

Joyon says that even when he returned from his voyage in 2004 he was contemplating how to better his own time.

Other than it will be a trimaran designed by Irens/Cabaret, who were responsible for B&Q Castorama and who are thus becoming the experts in this new genre of large multihull purpose-designed and built for singlehanded record attempts, little information is available at present about what the new IDEC will look like.

Nigel Irens says that they obviously started with the B&Q Castorama concept and developed it from there. "It hasn’t got any magic. It is not flying on foils or anything. It is just playing with the dimensions. Ellen’s boat was fairly basic on purpose, as it was our first attempt at something to take on that job and at that time only Francis had taken on that job."

Making an educated guess one needs to consider B&Q Castorama. While we have come to think that racing trimarans are the 60ft long by 60ft wide 100ft tall wingmast rig affairs the ORMA rule conjures up, Ellen's tri has a similar-sized rig to an ORMA 60 but on a 75 ft LOA. With no ORMA rule to conform to, the B&Q Castorama platform was also vastly different with comparitively huge freeboard in the floats, a longer main hull compared to the floats and substantially more buoyancy forward. The new IDEC is likely to be even further pushed in this direction - longer, because there is no length limitation and a little more powerful in terms of the rig and the overall beam because Joyon physically is an ox in comparison with house elf-sized Ellen.

Designing custom purpose-built boats for singlehanding these days is all about tailoring it to suit the individual and, Irens says, there is another fascinating aspect to Joyon's new project. "It is very interesting because Francis actually actively likes not having too much - the whole thing is about proving you can do it, like he did before, on very little money." With the first IDEC and also with his 60ft trimaran (another Irens design) in which against all odds he won the 2000 OSTAR, Joyon prefered to maintain the leanest of programs, carrying out all the work on board himself, to the extent that IDEC, prior to her departure on the round the world record, received a fresh lick of paint while in the water in La Trinite...



Above: the old IDEC , below: Ellen's B&Q Castorama



Thus we can expect the new IDEC to be a belt and braces affair. It will have a wingmast but not one which cants and it is unlikely to have foils in the floats. It will probably have the bare minimum of electronics and a suit of sails Joyon will keep for the duration he uses the boat. While the new IDEC will be a carbon construction built using female tooling it will be constructed using a resin infusion technique rather than pre-preg. Irens gives his view on this: "We are very interested in this intermediate technology because the fact is that boats have been getting more expensive, and inevitably it leads to a situation where there are less boats. So I think it is interesting to try and explore the idea that we know we can do a fast expensive boat, let’s see if we can do a pretty fast not so expensive boat...."

This will make an interesting contrast to another as yet unannounced project on the go for another similar solo round the world trimaran Irens and Cabaret are designing for another skipper, which will be a hi-tech pre-preg boat like B&Q Castorama. But while the latter should be the faster on paper it will lack the Joyon factor.

"Francis represents and always will represent the approach that comes from sheer experience and seamanship - the old fashioned mould really," Irens explains. "The fact that he has always pulled off good results with what appears to be simpler or less sophisticated equipment is a very interesting phenomenon in itself and he wants to have another go at that. So really Francis is putting down a marker saying ‘I'll stick to my ideas. I think it is the right way to go. I have saved some weight while I’m doing it because if you don’t have any money you don’t buy the gadgets.' And while the others are at the chart table he’s steering the boat. That has always been his approach and that does frighten people quite a lot because he is so resilient."

Compared to B&Q Castorama the performance of the new boat is also expected to be less optimised for downwind sailing and will have a better all-round performance.

The new IDEC is being built in Dominque Marsaudon's yard amid the submarine silos in Lorient while the rig is being built by Lorimar with a launch date during June 2007 - a similar time frame to the as-yet unannounced hi-tech version Irens and Cabaret are working on.

A round the world record attempt will take place over the northern hemisphere winter of 2007-8 and the program also includes winning back his solo Cadiz-San Salvador record from friend and neighbour Thomas Coville and an attempt at the solo 24 hour record in 2008 and a program of records in the Pacific basin in 2008.