Secret Polish mega-cat

Roman Paszke tells us about his new boat designed to beat Ellen's solo round the world record

Poland is well known for its Olympic sailors such as the former Finn Gold medallist Mateusz Kusznierewicz or Desafio Espanol helmsman and former Match Race World Champion Karol Jablonski, but a man hoping to put this country on the map when it comes to offshore sailing is Roman Paszke.

Paszke entered the racing world's collective conscience when his Judel-Vrolijk designed MK Cafe competed on the ILC 40 circuit in the late 1990s, and was part of the winning US Admiral's Cup team in 1997 with John Kolius. After this Paszke moved on to a more extreme end of yachting, when he befriended Bruno Peyron and ended up competing in The Race aboard Polpharma Warta, the Ollier designed and built maxi-catamaran which as Commodore Explorer had been the steed in which Peyron and his crew had famously been the first to establish a Jules Verne Trophy record time back in 1993.

By the time of The Race the boat was already 12 years old, although substantially modified and updated, and Paszke and his valiant Polish crew had to put up with being one of the back markers along with Tony Bullimore's Team Legato. Ironically five years on, the two of them still sailing oversized catamarans, Paszke may well find himself up against Tony Bullimore once again.

Since The Race Paszke has been involved in a number of other projects. He has campaigned a Polish 60ft trimaran in the Nokia Oops Cup and in 2004 set off on the Volvo Ocean 60 BPH Bank (the former Assa Abloy training boat) in an attempt to become the first monohulll to sail non-stop around the world with a full crew - unfortunately having to retire to South Africa.

With his latest project Paszke wants to attempt to break what is certainly the hardest sailing record available to an individual sailor - Ellen MacArthur's 71 day 14 hour record for sailing non-stop around the world singlehanded. In this endeavour Paszke is not alone. At present in Tasmania his old rival Tony Bullimore is under starters olders to make an attempt on his maxi-cat and the competition is soon to get a whole lot tougher as the new purpose built second generation Irens-Cabaret designed trimarans are launched this year for French solo round the world veterans Thomas Coville and Francis Joyon.

While on previous occasions his offshore exploits have been in secondhand gear, for this attempt Paszke has a brand new 90ft long catamaran. For this boat, called Bioton (after a Polish company that makes insulin) Paszke made the bold choice to get the boat not only built by Marstrom in Sweden, but designed by them too. While Marstrom remain builder of choice for Olympic Tornado sailors, in recent years the company based in southeast Sweden have begun moving into bigger multihulls as builder of the Extreme 40 catamarans and SeaCart 30 trimarans. The boat was designed in house at Marstrom by Kare Ljung, their head of design.

If Paszke's Bioton campaign has apparently come out of nowhere, the reason for this is that the catamaran has already set one record - for having the shortest construction time ever for a boat of this size - just two and a half months! As Marstom's President and CEO, Per Wärn explains with characteristic Swedish understatement: "We made the drawings here in September. The construction started at the end of October and in two and half months we made everything and it was put in the water. Everything was made extremely quickly."




Despite the rapid construction time, Bioton has been completely built in carbon/Nomex, and impressively all of this has been cured in Marstrom's autoclave. While Marstrom's autoclave may be long it doesn't have sufficient diameter to house a complete 90ft catamaran hull so each hull was assembled from pieces - the bottom and the bottom of the topsides form one piece, then there are three deck pieces and six topside pieces. "We have an autoclave that is 35m long. The bottom piece exactly fitted into it," says Wärn.

The Nomex core could be something of a worry, despite being autoclaved, as this has been found to create too rigid a structure on the 60ft trimarans, hence why all of the Irens-Cabaret trimarans for solo attempts have reverted to foam cores. There is no doubt that autoclaved pre-preg carbon/Nomex construction is the most advanced available to boat builders today and Paszke says that in initial sea trials the boat feels very stiff and strong, but one hopes her construction is also strong in terms of longevity and can withstand the constant cyclical battering she is likely to receive on the round the world race course. The only compromise with Bioton's build is that her forward beam is from Polpharma Warta as is her wingmast tube.

The result is a boat 90ft (27.56m) long and 14m wide. The rig coming from the old catamaran was built for The Race and at 32m was still relatively short by modern standards for the length of the original 85ft long Polpharma Warta. The foretriangle, particularly for the genniker, is also less extreme than it would be for a fully crewed cat, the bowsprit extending only a short distance beyond the forward beam.

"I use the same configuration with the bowsprit, but the idea is not to have too many forward sails, only the asymmetric, Solent, trinquette," says Paszke, who plans to only take five or six sails when he is sailing solo. "Like Ellen my idea is to make the boat as light as possible and any extra sails on board is additional weight. When the boat is lighter, the boat has very good acceleration."

The overall look of the boat from above seems similar to that of the first generation Ollier & Associates designed G-Class cats designed for The Race. However one of the reasons Paszke says he didn't get Bioton designed and built by Ollier's highly experienced team in Vannes is that he doesn't agree with their philosophy of having V-sectioned hulls. On Bioton the hulls are wider and more U-shaped with a very flat bottom dramatically reducing wetted surface area, maintains Paszke. Despite the boat being 4.2m longer on the waterline than his old boat, it draws 25cm less.

Bioton is obviously unique among the latest generation of large multihulls built solely for solo record breaking in being a catamaran rather than a trimaran. Part of this is perception - with the ORMA 60s all being trimarans these days there have been many more tris racing across oceans singlehanded in recent years than there have cats. Trimarans seem a little like a monohull with training wheels, a little more forgiving than a catamaran when a gust hits.

Paszke acknowledges the limitations of the catamaran format. "The boat is harder to sail than a tri-foiler and more dangerous because it is easier to capsize." Saying this, with a beam of 14m and a relatively short rig, the stability of Bioton is more than an ORMA 60 tri and should be comparible with the new IDEC and Sodebo tris both of which have a relatively narrow beam (by ORMA 60 standards) of 16.5m on their respective 29.7 and 32m LOAs and 32 and 33m mast heights.

Paszke adds that a majority of his multihull racing experience has been on catamaran and the build time and cost is substantially less than a trimaran - by 40% he reckons.

Key to Bioton's performance will be her light weight and this, says Paszke, is the principle why she is a catamaran rather than a tri. Her platform weighs in at under 8 tonnes and her sailing weight is expected to be around 11 tonnes. We would anticipate this being around 1-2 tonnes lighter than the new longer Irens-Cabaret trimarans.

Paszke, who has sailed on Bruno Peyron's Orange and on 60ft trimarans as well as much thousands of miles on Polpharma Warta says he is very happy with the strength and stiffness of Bioton relative too its speed. Launched three weeks ago the boat was quickly delivered to Gdansk for a christening ceremony with her sponsor and during this passage experience bad conditions and was making 18 knots under bear poles!

Bioton's acceleration, Paszke enthuses, is exceptional and already very early in her career she has comfortably clocked 32-33 knots in 25 knots of wind. "I don’t know how the boat will sail in very light winds. It should be very good becaue the boat is light and has a very nice shape. We will have more answers after we have been sailing more," he says.

Another significant development with boats of this sort, that we have also seen in the new Groupama III maxi-trimaran, is the attempt to prevent bow burying by increasing volume forward and moving the centre of effort of the sail plan aft. This also has been the case with the design of the new Bioton- the bows are fuller than the Ollier cats and the sail plan slightly further aft. Paszke harks back to the delivery: "We had 3m waves, downwind. On the old boat the leeward hull would have been under water the whole time, but with this boat we only got wet two or three times." Although it has not been fitted yet, there is also the possibility of improving this further by adding water ballast inside the transoms.

One potential performance weakness is in her transom-hung rudders. These have been fitted as they will make maintenance or replacement easier, but one wonders how well they will stand up at high speed.

Obviously the boat differs significantly from the G-Class cats in that it is a 90ft by 46ft boat to be sailed by one person. There is no central pod and cockpit as there is on Tony Bullimore's cat. Instead the two hulls are mirror images, with all lines being duplicated in each cockpit and the modest accommodation below identical on each side.

While Bioton was built in record time by a mixed Swedish and Polish team at Marstrom and assembled outside the factory in a purpose-built tent, in order to be ready to make an attempt on Ellen's record this season, sadly the chance of this occurring is getting less and less as the weather window for the season is closing. This is the advice Paszke has been given by his German weather router Meeno Schrader (who also has worked on Ellen's solo record attempts).

The boat is still not completely finished, but Paszke is keen to take her south as quickly as possible, either to the UK or to Spain or Portugal to complete her.

Speaking about taking on Ellen's record Paszke cannot speak highly enough of the Derbyshire Dame. "Ellen is a fantastic sailor and a lot of Polish sailors love her. Ellen has much more experience than me sailing around alone. When it comes to sailing singlehanded I am at school compared to Ellen."

More photos on the following pages....