Vincent
Lauriot Prevost has designed seven of the ORMA 60ft multihull competing
in this year's Transat. Sue Pelling chatted to this French designer
about his race predictions
With a total of seven of his designs on the startline at this year's
event Vincent Lauriot Prevost will, not surprisingly, be following
the race with great interest. One of the hot favourites in the race
is Franck Cammas sailing the 1998 van Peteghem/Lauriot Prevost-designed
Groupama I which has been modified for singlehanded sailing. Lauriot
Prevost explained: "Some of the boats competing in the race have
been in the yard during the winter being modified to improve their
performance. Cammas' boat hasn't been changed just checked and prepared
for singlehanded racing. Changing the mainsheet from a purchase into
a hydraulic system was the most significant change plus we've added
panic buttons to allow the skipper to be able to release the mainsheet
from different parts of the boats."
Sailing a proven boat at this event is something that Lauriot Prevost
believes is a key to success although he says that predicting a race
winner particularly in singlehanded sailing is very difficult. "It
is a very pragmatic choice which takes into account three factors:
singlehanded experience of the skipper on this North-atlantic programme
east to west, reliability of the boat and those who have already experienced
tandem trimaran and skippers together. On this race, the starting
line is very open because a lot of other boats/skippers have got two
of these factors.
"From a personal point of view one of the favourites from that
I would say are people like Franck Cammas, maybe Alain Gautier, Michel
Desjoyeaux on Geant because he has good experience in this boat singlehanded
including this race four years ago. The Transat is one of two most
important events in multihull racing every four years and it's a race
which always gives some surprises at the finish."
Asked about how he believes Yves Parlier's new hydroplane will perform
he added: "It's a fancy cat and I don't know how it will perform
because it will be the first time it has raced anything like this.
My point is that it's quite difficult today to able to win a race
when you have to discover everything on the boat. I will be very interested
to follow how Parlier sails this new design but there are lots of
things for him to discover. I think she has the capacity of being
very fast but in the right range and angle of wind."
For the last two years Lauriot Prevost has been working on Cammas'
new boat Groupama 2 which will be launched at the end of May and will
be one to watch when it hits the race circuit during the second part
of the season. Commenting on the design Lauriot Prevost said: "We've
made some important developments in hull shape and and weight distribution
concentrating the weight towards the centre of the boat. We've also
developed the rudders and centreboard we've some new designs of foil
profile. Basically we we've taken what we think is good from other
boats and tried to improve on certain points mostly on hydrodynamics
of the hull shape."
Lauriot Prevost will also be keeping his eye out in the Class 2 multihull
class to see how the five boats in this fleet are performing before
he starts work on the construction of the new Crepes Whaou 2 for Franck-Yves
Escoffier. According to Lauriot Prevost this boat should hit the water
early 2005.
Vincent
Lauriot Prevost has designed seven of the ORMA 60ft multihull competing
in this year's Transat. Sue Pelling chatted to this French designer
about his race predictions
