Gitana goes monohull

Loick Peyron talks us through his new Open 60 and why he wants to do the Vendee Globe

You are one of the most successful offshore sailors in France with a 30 year career behind you, including two OSTAR wins in 60ft trimarans and are now running one of France's most serious stable of racing boats. You are married to a beautiful wife and have many children. With all this - what on earth would possess you to do the Vendee Globe?

This is Loick Peyron's situation at the moment - running the impressive collection of Gitana race boats for Baron Benjamin Rothschild including at the present tally - one Figaro, two ORMA 60 trimarans, one maxi-cat (the former Innovations Explorer Peyron skippered in The Race in 2001) and now...an Open 60, Gitana Eighty, named in honour of the Baron's late father who would have been 80 this year.

For Loick Peyron the Vendee Globe represents unfinished business. In the first Vendee Globe in 1989/90 he finished second aboard his Lada Poch, behind Titouan Lamazon and this was including a few minutes - and one of the most impressive displays of sailing skill - where, under sail in his Open 60, he helped right Philippe Poupon's Fleury Michon ketch that had been knocked down on her side and had failed to right. In the second Vendee Globe Peyron had what appeared to be the kick-ass weapon of the race and was pre-start favourite, but sadly had to withdraw early on in the proceedings when the hull of his kick-ass weapon started delaminating.



Peyron says that his participation in next year's Vendee Globe should not come as a big surprise. "During the first Vendee Globe, I thought about doing a round the world trip with crew, and that was the case a few years after with The Race. And during the Race I was thinking about being back in this area alone again, but the major reason was when we won the TJV two years ago with JP Dick I discovered the new spirit of these monomarans! It was really interesting to see how they have made such big progress over the years. So that was the real beginning two years ago."

Having competed with JP Dick and won the Open 60 class of the TJV, so Peyron became part of Dick's design team working with Farr on the new Paprec-Virbac. At the time Peyron was looking for sponsorship himself, but then he got the job running the Gitana program and appears to have persuaded the Baron that an Open 60 was a necessary addition to his already well stocked arsenal of ocean racers.

Having last been deeply involved in the class in the early 1990s, Open 60s have come a long way in the intervening decade and a half. As Peyron puts it: "The problem is that these boats are not very easy to handle and they are worse than a few years ago - that is the major difference. They are more powerful, but that is not the big problem - they need a lot of different sails to be efficient and to carry all these sails all the time from the bottom to the top and from the front to the back…" Our Loick will have to spend more time in the gym...

We've seen many of the 18 or so newly built Open 60s now and sail wardrobes seem generally to be around 12-14 in number, but whereas several were duplicates for the last Vendee Globe, this time the sails are all expected to be different, albeit with larger overlaps.

"The choice of sails is very important and that is that is why I am very happy to be doing the TJV with Jean-Baptiste," says Peyron. Le Vaillant, who has sailed with Peyron for years and who runs the Incidences loft in La Rochelle. "We want to try and have as wide a spectrum as possible for each sail to try and carry the less sails, but it is not easy."

Gitana's involvement in the Open 60 class was kept very secret for a long time, but the boat is effectively a sistership of Jean-Pierre Dick's Farr designed Paprec-Virbac, built by Southern Ocean Marine in New Zealand. The hull and appendages are the same as are the deck and cabintop. Structurally it is the same inside, but the electronics are lighter and the chart table is smaller. The keel canting mechanism and water ballast arrangement are the same.





According to Peyron the main difference between the Virbac/Gitana and the other new generation Farr boats is that theirs has more rocker. "I pushed a lot to have that than previously, because that is the only way to justify the trim tabs. It is interesting to use them to have more rocker."

With all the new boats generally more powerful than the last generation, but still with a huge variation in sail plans and configurations and basic philosophies, it is going to be fascinating to see what makes the difference come the Vendee Globe.

It seems that with Gitana Eighty, reasonably late in the proceedings Peyron opted to go for the light-weight minimalist approach. Thus the rig is different - a decision Peyron made after sailing Paprec-Virbac in New Zealand. While Dick's boat has a rotating wingmast, Gitana Eighty now has a classic fixed rig, an odd choice for a reformed multihull sailor. While the Lorimar-built tube is lightweight, Peyron has also been tinkering with the standing rigging which is PBO but continuous, thereby simplifying (and lightening) the spreader end fittings.

"The main question is to know if a classic rig is efficient enough compared to the wingmast - I don’t know yet," says Peyron. "I think the Virbac rig is perfect on paper, but it is not easy to manage. I would like to have a small wingmast. I am not sure about a big wing on monohulls, I am not sure it is very efficient."

In terms of profile, the carbon spar is the same as that fitted to Yann Elies' Generali, but has less carbon in it. On Gitana Eighty the spreaders are straight, but angled back, while Generali has the unusual boomerang-shaped spreaders in order to allow some overlap for the Solent jib. Gitana Eighty has hook systems on pretty much all the halyards, including the main.

Also in the minimalist vein is that the only hydraulics on board Gitana Eighty are for the keel, thereby saving more weight still. According to Peyron, Dick is considering removing some of the hydraulic systems from Virbac.

Gitana Eighty also shares some of the interesting design features of Dick's boat such as the sliding overhead cover to the cockpit and the large trim tab beneath her transom.

Peyron says that the sliding cockpit cover was his idea. "I fought for a while to try to share my wish and hopefully now everyone is really happy with that." JP Dick has a substantial height advantage over Peyron however fortunately they didn't make the cabin top too high. "When the boat is heeling it is not a big problem, but it is a bit better for my size than JP!" admits Peyron.

And the trim tab works well? "It is very inteseting. The main goal - and that was what I saw on Virbac two years ago [during the TJV] - is to try to have the bow out of the water [downwind]. But in a lot of other conditions [upwind], you want it back in the water, so the tabs are interesting for that and that is their only objective."

Peyron says that compared to Virbac he has simplified the way the trim tabs work on his boat. "With a Mk2 version it is easier to see what is working and not! So we have a very simple system, looking like what we used on the flattener [the trim tab] on the daggerboards on the ORMA 60s. There is a small piston operated by rope (like a mini vang possibly) to lower it while it is naturally forced back into its up position with bungy."

On deck there are some minor differences. The pit area - the ropes running aft from the mast down through a central tunnel in the cabintop to a pit winch - is simpler on Gitana Eighty and instead of headsail tracks they have opted for a similar twin padeye arrangement as they had on ABN AMRO.

On Gitana Eighty, the mainsheet track is straight along the full width of the aft extremity of the deck and there is a classic vang. "I think we have more sail than Virbac because the boom is a little lower and because we have a hook system on the main - like the multis," says Peyron, who reckons that only Gitana Eighty and Safran, the new Open 60 of another former ORMA 60 skipper Marc Guillemot, are using hooks on the main halyard.

The new Gitana Eighty was shipped from New Zealand and arrived in her homeport of La Trinite-sur-Mer in July. Peyron and Le Vaillant have completed their TJV qualifier and Peyron says since then they have been working up the boat. Because she is part of the Gitana stable there are no shortage of extremely talented personnel to work on her and provide their input.

From here the schedule for the boat is obviously the TJV. That will be followed by the singlehanded race back from Brazil which many skippers will be using as a qualifier for the Vendee Globe. Next year there is The Transat, possibly the Quebec-St Malo if there is time, prior to the Vendee in November.

Aside from the Vendee Globe being unfinished business for Peyron, it is also lining up to be probably the best ocean race of all time given the amount of new hardware - 18 new boats! - and the calibre of the drivers. "Yes, it is utterly mad - so many new boats, a really impressive line up," says Peyron. "Even the TJV and Barcelona race and the Transat will be good. And these boats are very marvellous and a little less dangerous than multihulls - so that is good for my white hair!"

So will there be a big speed difference between the boats? "I don’t know. On a crew raced, the boat is very important, but if the only goal is the Vendee itself, the guy is making a big part of the difference. There is a big gap between the old boats and the new generation, but the 17 or 18 new boats are more or less working in the same area, even though they are quite different. We are going to do some training sessions against Saffran soon so it will be interesting. Safran appears to be really uncomfortable! Quite flat and very stiff."

And the multihulls?

No conversation with Loick Peyron is complete without a word on his first love, the ORMA 60 trimarans. Peyron seems resigned to the sorry fact that the ORMA 60 class is all but dead. For the next year or two they will go through a transition phase with the development of a new 70ft one design trimaran and the ORMA 60s will either do nothing, or he hopes they will compete in a series of events promoting the new class of one designs.

While the Groupama and Banque Populaire teams (and their sponsors) have confirmed their interest in the new class, at present Gitana haven't (it was Baron Rothschild who was promoting the MultiCup, that has been held over the last couple of years). Peyron for example is known to have had his own ideas about a one design offshore racing catamaran, but this seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

"I am following all the meetings. It is interesting. I am concerned that if it is made for the same players that is not very interesting. The only thing interesting is to have new sailors from everywhere and the way to do that is to have the one design. The concept is very good, but we need other people. So from the Gitana point of view, there no official position today."

Meanwhile Gitana XI, will once again be raced by Route du Rhum winner Lionel Lemonchois in the Transat Jacques Vabre with former Olympic Tornado sailor Yann Guichard.

After this, during 2008, Lemonchois will be taking the maxi-cat Gitana XIII, on a round the world 'tour', not non-stop but starting with the New York-San Francisco record attempt via Cape Horn, the San Francisco-Yokohama and then a tour through Asia following in the footsteps of Ellen MacArthur.