Route du Rhum bravery award: Franck Cammas

ORMA 60 veteran turned Volvo skipper Franck Cammas is to singlehand Groupama 3 in the Route du Rhum

The man getting the prize for the largest cajones prior to the start of this year’s Route du Rhum is Franck Cammas. While the Route du Rhum’s new Ultimate class will gather together the likes of Francis Joyon’s IDEC and Thomas Coville’s Sodebo, giant boats but ones designed for singlehanded, Cammas will be on the start line on 31 October alone aboard his 105ft trimaran Groupama, the same boat he sailed around the world earlier this year to a new Jules Verne Trophy record time supported by nine crew.

Cammas is known to be one of the most level headed of the French trimaran skippers and this ambitious move, which race pundits are comparing to Eric Tabarly singlehanding his Whitbread maxi Pen Duick VI in the 1976 OSTAR (which he won), seems out of character.
“It is exciting for me to have this challenge to race alone with this boat,” says Cammas. “For me it is interesting. It is not the ideal boat for the Route du Rhum, because it is built for a crew and it is a little bit heavier.”

Beside this is the Route du Rhum, the key event that put multihull racing on the map in France. “For multihull guys it is important, you have to do it. But it is a good race – not the first three days, but after that,” Cammas says, referring to the cycle of depressions that head east across the north Atlantic in early November, one of which demolished the ORMA 60 fleet eight years ago.

In fact Cammas has detuned his mighty green monster especially for the Route du Rhum. Since the Jules Verne Trophy, Groupama 3 has been fitted with a new rig some 4m less than the 40m tall origin, which Cammas says is now the same height as where first reef used to be. They have also shed a genniker and since the Jules Verne have put the boat through an intense weight-saving regime. As a result Cammas reckons Groupama 3 will be on the Route du Rhum start line some 2 tonnes lighter (around 16-17 tonnes) than she was in Jules Verne Trophy trim. However one tonne of that he points out is having nine less crew...

Nonetheless Groupama 3, compared to her competition, remains the beast of the Route du Rhum. Compared to the 12-13 tonne IDEC and Sodebo, Groupama 3 is a similar length but she is heavier thanks to her larger beam of 74ft (22.5m), compared to 55ft (16.5m). As a result, even with her cut down rig her sail plan is still larger and this makes her slower to manoeuvre even though Cammas has fitted the cockpit with a novel pedestal arrangement to drive the winches – a bike! The reasons for this are obvious – ones legs can output more power than one’s arms and it will be interesting to see how long it is before the ‘Harken leg pedestal’ or similar is unveiled. Cammas is set to become one of the first people ever to come away from an ocean yacht race with developed leg muscles.

For the Route du Rhum, Cammas is hoping for stronger conditions and as few manoeuvres as possible. “Reaching in 25 knots with one gybe in the middle! Like before!” he says, referring to last year’s west to east transatlantic record attempt.

As to how he feels the boat will performance compared to when she is fully crewed, Cammas says that with her being two tonnes lighter there will be times – downwind in 25+ knots – that she could even be faster. “The sails are as before with the reef and the genniker and the boat is very fast with a lower centre of effort. It is very good, very stable.”

The length it takes to make manoeuvres Cammas says depends on the wind strength. “In light wind I can gybe very quickly because I stay downwind with the mainsail and I can grind the genniker by hand with the pedestal, so it is fast. The longest time is to furl the sails, like the genniker and even the staysail. For safety this is a problem – the time it takes to furl quickly if there is a gust. To take one reef is good but two reefs there are some problems with the sail getting heavy.”

Aside from the slow furling issue, Cammas believes the bigger boat should otherwise be safer than his previous ORMA 60s, singlehanded on this course. “I can leave the boat on the pilot for longer. At 30 knots it is fun and it is ‘almost safe’! Before above 25 knots it was very hard not to steer the boat. Now when there is a puff the boat just accelerates...”

Looking at the Route du Rhum competition in the Ultimate class, Cammas recognises that the favourites are probably Thomas Coville and Francis Joyon, whose boats are designed for singlehanding and for whom the Ultimate class has effectively been designed. “I think Thomas’ boat is better, a little bit faster because Joyon doesn’t have the same spirit on the boat but he is a very good seaman.” Coville, it should be pointed out, sailed with Cammas on the Jules Verne Trophy earlier this year and takes a similar technical approach to his sailing.

Whether Yann Guichard’s modified ORMA 60 Gitana 11, substantially shorter at 77ft, will keep up remains to be seen. Cammas views her as a threat particularly in lighter winds and no waves. “Reaching Gitana can be very fast if the sea is flat,” he says. While Guichard is known as being one of France’s leading Olympic Tornado sailors, he lacks the singlehanded offshore experience of his competition, even though as we found out recently, he was part of Lionel Lemonchois’ shore-based routing team when Gitana 11 won the Route du Rhum in 2006 in her original ORMA 60 configuration.

As to the prospects for the Ultimate class generally, Cammas isn’t that enthused by it, pointing out that the boat is too much part of the equation. “Before the [ORMA 60] fleet was very close, but it is interesting for the spirit.”

After the Route du Rhum, Groupama 3 will be up for sale as will Cammas' prized ORMA 60 Groupama 2, the last of the breed to be built. The latter he reckons would be good for an America’s Cup team to practice on, while Groupama 3 has potential if the Ultimate class continues. “It would be a good boat two handed. Alone it is a little bit too hard, but for a record it is good as well as well a singlehanded transatlantic record.”

Volvo Ocean Race

Meanwhile Cammas has other fish to fry. He is competing on the Extreme Sailing Series with his Groupama 40 catamaran, but this year he has been most occupied by his Volvo Ocean Race campaign. If past races have demonstrated that teams first out of the blocks usually end up the winners, then Groupama is looking in good shape. They purchased the winner of the last race, Ericsson 4, which in her new green livery Cammas and his crew sailed to victory against Telefonica in the SevenStar Round Britain and Ireland Race in August.

Prior to the lap of the British Isles Cammas and his crew had sailed perhaps 20 days on board their training boat and this included competed in races such as the Trophe SNSM and the Transmanche.

Aside from the new green colour scheme, Cammas says they haven’t made a huge amount of changes to the ex-Ericsson 4. They have worked on the rig to trial some gear for their new boat. To date on his trimarans Cammas has worked with Incidences sail makers, but has been forced to move to North as he says: “it is easier to work with the guy who knows all the shapes of all the boats.” This summer they have been trialling some 3Di sails with mixed results. “On paper it is good because we will only have two mainsails for the race and with the same weight in 3Di it is better than 3DL in terms of reliability and stiffness. So on paper it is good but for now it is a new technology, so it is important to start early with these sails to find out what the problems are.”

So how does he find the VO70? “It is new for me to sail on this boat. It is a powerful boat, not exactly like a multihull, but it is not bad. With the [canting] keel it is good. Downwind with big waves I think it is fun because you can play with the trajectory of the waves. On multihulls you cannot because it is faster than the waves and you have to go through the waves.”

Cammas has been racing multihulls almost exclusively since getting his first ORMA 60 in 1998. However he, like so many of his peers, cut his teeth in the Figaro, winning the Challenge Espoir Crédit Agricole in 1994 and getting a free campaign the following the year before winning the Solitaire du Figaro in 1997 aged 24.

“I did some races like Spi Ouest on the Open 7.50, but not a lot of monohull sailing,” says Cammas of the monohull sailing he has done since leaving the Figaro class 13 years ago. “The surprise is the difficulty of manoeuvring these boats [VO70s]. There are a lot of sails and the deck layout is complicated compared with a multihull. I think the multihull is superb because there are less sails as well. The range of the sails is very wide and on this [the VO70] the range is very small, so you have more sails and you have to change them more.”

Monohulls have become more interesting to Cammas since their speed has improved over recent years. The 24 hour record singlehanded in a multihull is still faster than that fully crewed in a monohull, but today the VO70s are capable of similar speeds the ORMA 60s were achieving about 12 years ago. “But I think we push these boats harder than we pushed the ORMA 60s 12 years ago,” says Cammas. Also the technologies have been merging – multiple rudders, twin daggerboards, furlers, the sail handling, etc.

Obviously the challenge of getting a new Volvo Open 70 into the water is rather different from the trimarans he has conceived in the past. For Groupama 3 there were no rules, while his Groupama 1 and 2 trimarans were built to the very much more open ORMA 60 rule. “There are differences. For example there is no heel on a trimaran so you don’t think in the same way. The canting keel and the rig is very different. The stacking, etc. For sure we cannot make big improvements with the boat so it is details and we have to work on all the details and have lots of small improvements.”

The new Groupama VO70 has been designed by Juan Kouyoumdjian who has been behind the last two Volvo Ocean Race winners, ABN AMRO One and Ericsson 4. This time Juan is also working with the Puma and Telefonica teams – so how will the Groupama VO70 end up different to the rest of the trio?

“If we propose to Juan to work this way or that way and if it is our proposal he only works on it for us and the results are ours," explains Cammas. "If the proposal is from Juan in that case it is for every boat. If we have a new idea we keep it for ourselves.”

Cammas says their new boat, built to the latest incarnation of the VO70 rule, will be of a similar performance or faster than Ericsson 4. “For example the hull in the theory is better than the previous generation. But the rule is not good for the new boats with the fin and the keel. Now there is a minimum weight of the fin so the fin on E4 is lighter than the new fin.”

The new boat is currently under construction at Multiplast in Vannes where Groupama 3 was built. The yard, the birth place of choice for maxi-multihulls, will build all of the new Groupama, while her mast is being made by Lorimar, close to the team'sbase among the Lorient WW2 ubmarine silos. The mast is being designed by a combination of Scott Ferguson and French engineer Herve Devaux, who also work together at BMW Oracle Racing.

A slight issue for the team is their going international. Groupama’s final crew line-up is a long way from being announced but for the Round Britain race Cammas was joined by former ORMA 60 skipper Jean-Luc Nelias, Solitaire du Figaro winner Charles Caudrelier, ex-Telefonica Blue crewman Laurent Pages, former Mini sailor Yann Riou and Figaro sailor Erwan Israel. Meanwhile from Sweden there were ex-Ericsson 3 crewmen Martin Stromberg and bowman Martin Krite, VOR veteran Magnus Woxen, from Australia ex-Green Dragon crewman Phil Harmer and South African ex-Telefonica Blue nipper Michael Pammenter. The experienced nearly French Irishman Damian Foxall did not compete in the round Britain due to the imminent arrival of a new child.

“Sometimes the language is difficult for us,” admits Cammas. “It is good but we have to spend more time together. And in the development of the boat there are sometimes some fights between our culture, the French IMOCA/multihull culture, and the Volvo culture – they are not exactly the same, in the details and in the risks we can take. In the IMOCA class they take a lot of risks compared to the Volvo technology. In IMOCA they are alone and they take more risks – it is strange.”

AC in multihulls, but no Cammas

With the America’s Cup going multihull, obviously this is of interest to Cammas, but the timescale for the 34th America’s Cup doesn’t work out with the Volvo Ocean Race. “For sure, we have more chance to do that in multihulls than in monohulls, because it is more exciting and also because we have some technological knowledge for that. Maybe it would be better to have a more open class than they propose because it is a little bit closed: a narrow catamaran. I think it will be interesting to be more open.”

Cammas helped BMW Oracle Racing get up to speed with their giant trimaran earlier on prior to the 33rd America’s Cup but says he never got to sail it with the solid wing. For the 34th he would have preferred the chosen boat were three hulled. “For the crew it is better because there is only one cockpit and the helmsman is close to the crew. With the catamaran there are two cockpits 20m apart.”

The issue with trimarans is that it is harder to make them demountable for shipipng, although in the ORMA 60 class there have been examples in the past such as Jean Maurel’s Elf Aquitaine III and before that Lionel Pean’s Hitachi.

The 35th America’s Cup maybe...

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