[brian eiland]

...courtesy Scuttlebutt

800 MILE DAYS
(Editor James Boyd takes a sail on board Franck Cammas' incredible new a
105ft state of the art trimaran Groupama III and gives his impressions
in a story just posted on thedailysail subscription website. Here are a
few excerpts.)

Standing with the massive concrete submarine silos behind us trying to
keep our tongues in when we first see Cammas' new weapon, our first
impression is that compared to Orange II the boat is more Ferrari than
hot rod pantechnican. This is born out when we are told the weight - in
Jules Verne Trophy trim (ie she is lighter now) the boat is expected to
be just 18 tonnes, whereas the larger Orange 2 is around the 32 tonne
mark. Aside from the way she floats evidence of the lengths the team has
gone to to shed weight is that little fairing work above the water line
has been carried out - the orientation of the laminate is clearly
visible through the 28kg of paint used on her 700sqm of topside and
deck.

It has been discovered with these large multihulls, is freeboard,
particularly at the bow. The main speed limitation of the first
generation Ollier cats is when the forward cross beam starts to bury in
waves. As a result on Orange II the freeboard at the bow was raised by
0.8m to 3.3m allowing both better safety, but also for the crew to drive
the boat harder in waves. This formula clearly works and is why Bruno
Peyron's big cat now holds the big three records in sailing and many of
her crew feel she has considerably more potential to show yet, with talk
of not just 800 mile days but 830, 840 ones being possible ..and just
when the monohull world thought they were catching up...

[WestAust]

Wow
I cant wait to see more of this!!!

[Yacht News]

800nm? in a day ? at that speed you could probably cover the Atlantic in 3.5 days?

[Kevin]

Orange II did it earlier this month in 4 days 8 hours 23 minutes 54 seconds, and that was after slowing down cause they hit a piece of ice (or something). Without the damage they estimated he could have made it in 3d20h.

[Yacht News]

oh, my...at this speed i think there might be a chance for passenger service crossings by trimaran. I mean if the modern Ocenliners like Queen Elizebeth 2 and Queen Mary 2 do the Atlantic route in about 5- 6 days running very close to 30knts, imagine if you could regulary cut that time frame in half with trimarans, it would probably run modern oceanliners out of business!

[CaptainSilva]

I figured this would be of interest to some of you fellow YachtForums members so enjoy!

Groupama Sets Record

[old.one]

Here is a link to the Yard that made Groupama III:
http://www.multiplast-yachts.com/index.cfm

Lots of great photos of her construction, etc.

Regards, Old One

[Castlerock]

Check out the video, she seems to move so effortlessly:

http://www.yachtingworld.com/yw/blog...e_bunting.html