Oman Unveils Majan Tri

After four months of assembly in Oman's southern most port of Salalah, skipper Paul Standbridge has been stretching the legs of Oman Sail's new Arabian 100 (A100) trimaran during sea-trials off the Omani coast. Now named Majan, after the ancient name for Oman, Oman Sail's new flagship is now operational and is heading into the Gulf and a tour of neighbouring countries.Based on the proven design of another trimaran, Sodebo, which is the holder of the solo North Atlantic crossing record, the design has been tailored for the needs of Oman Sail and their objective of training and developing Omani sailors to compete on the international stage.The launch of Majan is an ambitious addition to the project's mission to inspire a new generation of young Omanis. The first chapter was started when Mohsin Al Busaidi returned to the shores of Oman after successfully circumnavigating the world non-stop on Majan's 75ft sister ship, Musandam. From there, success has followed success as the two Oman teams took 1st and 3rd in the 2009 European iShares Cup and two Omanis are currently also sailing around the world in the Clipper Race. At the heart of all this success lies the Oman Sail Academy where young Omanis are now taking part in try sailing courses and looking to emulate their peers. Oman Sail's aims are ambitious: by 2015, the project aims to have seven academies running across the country enabling over 30,000 Omanis to try sailing. Majan will sail with a crew of seven: 50% of the sailors will be Omani offshore trainees joined by three international professional crew and a cameraman providing the one-on-one training that the recruits require at this early stage of their career. The first chapter will be a 'Tour of Arabia' starting next week from Muscat, which will include stops in UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar before Majan joins the Dubai-Muscat race back to Muscat one month later. The name Majan is used with pride within Oman and is a fitting name for a futuristic racing yacht for a country with a long maritime history. As Majan's newest crew member, Mohsin Al Busaidi, commented "The acceleration of Majan is incredible: we moved from 20 - 30 knots in one gust of wind. We now look forward to showing the world what she can do!"

Groupama 3 Record Attempt

It was 20h12'16''UT Wednesday, when the maxi-trimaran Groupama passed the Ambrose Light on her way out of New York harbour. The race against the clock begins with 2,925 miles ahead of the trimaran. The time to beat - 4 days 3 hours 57 minutes 54 seconds - resounds in everyone's minds. To stand a chance of beating her own reference time set on 24th July 2007, Groupama 3 will have to cross the finish line off Lizard Point, the South-West tip of Britain, prior to Monday 3rd August at 00h 09' 10'' UT.

After three weeks on standby in Gateway Marina to the south of Brooklyn, Franck Cammas and his men have today snatched what is a great opportunity to attack the North Atlantic record. Sylvain Mondon from Mto France, onshore router has this to say: "A line of stormy squalls from the SW hit New York during the course of the afternoon and produced a considerable wind increase on its way through. This enabled us to take the start a little earlier than we initially planned."

The weather window opening ahead of Groupama 3 is forecast to see some stiff conditions and a steady rhythm, which will certainly appeal to Franck Cammas and his crew!

Alinghi Cat Unveiled

Alinghi, the Defender of the 33rd America's Cup, unveiled its 90ft catamaran this weekend in Villeneuve, Switzerland. This multihull represents a culmination of Swiss multihull heritage and is the first step in Alinghi's development process towards the 33rd America's Cup in February 2010. The boat will be launched by helicopter next week on Lake Geneva before the process of ‘debugging' begins and the boat goes sailing for the first time.

Grant Simmer, design team coordinator, comments on the achievement: “Firstly this boat only exists because of Ernesto Bertarelli's 100% commitment to the team and his support and enthusiasm for this project. The boat demonstrates the talent and creativity of the designers and the skill and dedication of the boatbuilding and technical teams in building a boat of this complexity, facing many different challenges along the way and solving them to pull the project together. Finally, and more recently, the sailing team has defined many of the systems; they have worked with the designers to define the simplest possible solutions for what is already a very complex boat.”

Rolf Vrolijk, chief designer: “People who see the boat for the first time seem surprised at how light and fragile it looks, that is really their first impression. Creating it has been a huge team effort, both in the design and the build groups; it has been a phenomenal team effort to come up with the concept and it really represents the depth of our group. For the moment we have pushed the envelope as much as we would like, this boat is really a base for further development and over the coming weeks we will collect as much information as we can and cross check it with the predictions, this will help us assess what level we are at and then to optimise from there. We have several opportunities and possibilities to change the concept but first we need a solid base to do our studies from.”

Murray Jones, strategist and design team responsible for mast and rig programme: “This multihull is nothing like you've ever seen before in a big boat. It's like a small boat but scaled up. It's a highly finely tuned and engineered boat that's light. It's a piece of art. Alinghi 5 has evolved from the Swiss sailing boats, like the 41ft ‘Le Black'. The basic engineering concept has come from ‘Le Black' but everything else has come from the Alinghi design team, starting from a completely blank sheet of paper, with no preconceived multihull ideas. We started designing it and building it and we've done a lot of sailing and testing on ‘Le Black' and the Décision 35s so we've incorporated some of the ideas we've picked up sailing these boats.

The focus of the concept and the design and build of the boat has been on what we need to sail a Deed of Gift Match: up/down racing of 20miles. We haven't focused on the other team at all, only concentrating on what makes our boat go the fastest. It's been a big job for quite a small design team and we'll see the results soon.”

Information about the boat
Boat type: Catamaran of carbon composite construction

Where built: Alinghi Villeneuve + Décision Corsier, Switzerland

Length waterline: 90ft

Hours to build: 100,000 manhours

Square metres of carbon fibre used: 30,000m2

Alinghi Starts Multihull Training

Alinghi, 33rd America's Cup Defender, has started its 2009-2010 multihull campaign in Switzerland launching the two Décision 35 catamarans that will be used as training platforms towards a multihull America's Cup in May 2010. The sailing team will be dedicated to multihull training, racing the Challenge Julius Baer on Lake Geneva for the rest of the season and withdrawing from other monohull commitments.

In addition to Ernesto Bertarelli's original SUI1, the team has chartered a second Décision 35 (SUI6) for the season and the two grand prix multihulls will race the eight events that span the summer, starting on 8 May with the Grand Prix Corum. Ed Baird will helm Alinghi SUI6 with Brad Butterworth as tactician while Ernesto Bertarelli, Alinghi president, will helm Alinghi SUI1. “Ernesto and his team have been strong in this class for years, we look forward to learning from and with them throughout the season,” said Baird. “We realise we have a lot to learn, and there will be a number of great crews to race against, so we're excited to have the opportunity to get back on the water in a competitive environment.”

The Alinghi multihulls will face a strong 10-boat fleet that includes some of the best offshore multihull sailors in the world, and while an Alinghi team has won the last two championships on the Lake, the group is candid in its expectations: “We are here to try to win, just as we did last year, but this season is going to be tough: the circuit has two new boats (Veltigroup and Banque Populaire) manned by highly professional multihull sailors with lots of experience, so the starts of the races will be more challenging. We will definitely be trying to keep the trophy in our hands though!” said Yves Detrey, Alinghi bow/mastman.

The first event, the Grand Prix Corum is from 8-10 May at the Société Nautique de Genève, so the Alinghi teams will start training from next Monday, “the D-35's represent a more sophisticated racing multihull than we have experienced before, and we need all the training opportunities we can get as we prepare for an America's Cup in multihulls,” Ed Baird concluded.

Oman Sail Flagship Multihull

Currently being built in Australia and destined to be the first ever modern ocean racing boat to be assembled in the Middle-East, the first Arabian 100' trimaran will, when she hits the water in the winter of 2009, become part of a select group of the longest sailing trimarans ever built! She will join the Oman Sail Racing Team fleet as the largest sailing boat to be based in Middle-East region and, along with Musandam (ex-B&Q), form the embryo of a fleet of ocean racing boats based in the Arabian Peninsula.

Thomas Coville with Sodeb'O New Record

Setting out from New York 5 days earlier, the French sailor Thomas Coville, the skipper of the trimaran Sodeb'O, beat the legendary solo North Atlantic record under sail on Tuesday 15th July at 07 hours, 17 minutes and 20 seconds; a record held since 2005 by Francis Joyon.
Francis Joyon's time on Idec in 2005: 6 days 4 hours, 1 minute and 37 secondsThomas Coville's time on Sodeb'O: 5 days, 19 hours, 29 minutes and 20 seconds (to be approved by the WSSRC)
Already the holder of the 24 hour distance record since January 2008, with 619.3 miles at an average of 25.8 knots, this latest victory of Coville is clearly not down to chance. At age of 40, this multihull specialist is a sailor with one of the largest number of miles single-handed under his belt, thanks to his racing background in the 60 foot class with a second place in The Transat 2004 and a fabulous podium finish in the Route du Rhum in 2006. Since 2005, the young sailor from La Trinité, father of two children, has been committed to his loyal sponsor Sodeb’O in a single-handed record programme, which enabled him to become successively the fastest man around the British Isles, between Spain and the Bahamas and between Miami and New York.
This single-handed North Atlantic crossing on a 32 metre multihull is an amazing achievement, particularly given that Thomas didn’t benefit from exceptional conditions as was the case for Play Station. The latter completed the crossing in crewed configuration in 2001 in a time of 4 days 17 hours along the direct route without ever performing a single change of tack. Favourable for the first three days, manageable and without surprises between the currents, fog and dense shipping, the weather conditions over the last 48 hours proved to be particularly testing and tactical for Thomas. In order to get the boat making as much headway as possible, the skipper spent hour after hour at the helm, constantly trimming the sails, without sleep!
Designed by Nigel Irens and Benoît Cabaret, also the architects of Francis Joyon’s IDEC, the maxi-Sodeb’O has already traversed a fair amount of the world’s oceans. Built and launched in Australia in June 2007, this 32 m long three hulled machine (105 feet) and 16.55 m wide (55 feet) craft is equipped with a 35 m mast and can carry up to 650 square metres of sail area.

Thomas Coville Atlantic record

Monday 15th July at 1400 hours UT, after 5 days and 2 hours of racing, the trimaran Sodeb'O skippered by Thomas Coville was just 258 miles from completing the North Atlantic crossing record and had a 313 mile lead over the record set by Francis Joyon in 2005. The trimaran was making good speed towards the finish this afternoon at an average of 20 knots pushed by 10 to 15 knots of wind. Thomas may well cross the line between 0800 and 1200 UT. The trimaran will then head for the port of Brest where she will be welcomed at the end of the day, between 1600 and 2000 hours UT. However, the weather situation is likely to make things very tense for the tired skipper and his team of routers onshore, as the wind will drop in the following hours. Currently due West the wind is right on his tail and had already forced Thomas to gybe several times Sunday night, taking him away from the direct course but enabling him to maintain a good speed. These exhausting tacks to reposition himself on the course have nevertheless enabled him to save time in relation to the initial routing. The skipper, who has only slept a few hours since last Wednesday, has been careful to focus on getting the boat to make good headway for the past five days. Aged 40, the sailor from La Trinité has some incredible resources and is in such exceptionally good physical shape, according to his team, that he can resist the lack of sleep and the superhuman physical effort which consists of single-handedly manoeuvring a 32 m long three-hulled machine for the past five days, equipped with a 35 m mast able to carry up to 650 square metres of sail area!