The end of an era

We bid farewell to the ORMA 60 and look at the rise of the new MOD 70 trimaran

One of the saddest stories we are having to write this year is that of the demise of our favourite race boat class, the ORMA 60 trimaran.

Over the last 30 or so years the class has brought us some amazing stories - the fight between Apricot and Paragon in the 1985 Round Britain Race. From a British perspective there was Apricot beating all the 75ft competition on one leg of the Round Europe Race, Lawrie Smith, Rodney Patisson and co showing the French competition around the race course aboard Paragon. In France there was Florence Arthaud's victory in the 1990 Route du Rhum (Ellen wasn’t the first female sailor to kick male butt singlehanded offshore...), Laurent Bourgnon’s incredible singlehanded transatlantic record during which he broke the fully crewed 24 hour record, the OSTAR wins of Philippe Poupon Loick Peyron and Francis Joyon, Yvan Bourgnon setting a 623 mile 24 hour record in the Quebec-St Malo race, the dominance this decade of Franck Cammas’ Groupamas…

The class has had its fair share of tragedy too. Olivier Moussy and Paul Vatine are two sailors who have lost their lives racing 60ft trimarans, Moussy in the 1988 Quebec-St Malo race, Vatine in the 1999 Transat Jacques Vabre. Both great people, great sailors and a great loss to our community.

While historic figures like Alain Colas and Eric Tabarly were sailing early versions in the 1970s, the ORMA 60 principally had its origins in the early 1980s in the UK with boats like Rob James' Colt Carsand Peter Phillips’ Travacrest Seaway , and subsequently Tony Bullimore’s Apricots and Mike Whipp's Paragonat a time when the French were mostly concentrating on larger 75-85ft catamarans, trimarans and foilers. At the end of the 1980s a number of factors ranging from Europe being mid-economic crisis, a disastrous 1986 Route du Rhum which saw the loss of Royale skipper Loick Caradec, one new maxi cat, Jet Servicesdominating the races (sounds familiar?), and also partly the impression made by Apricot and Paragon, the multihull racing community in France opted to consolidate in the 60ft class.

During the 1990s only a handful of boats regularly competed in what became the ORMA circuit and very rapidly the class became trimaran-only, the wider beam and extra righting moment provided by the three hull format, proving superior to that available from catamarans. Towards the end of the 1990s, the ORMA class went supernova, at its zenith having 18 boats on the start line of the 2002 Route du Rhum (see our preview to that race here). But since then, for reasons we'll go into, the bubble has well and truly burst with just four boats being regularly campaigned in 2007.

In the shorthanded offshore racing world there is a hierarchy of classes and while many assume the pinnacle to be competing in the Vendee Globe, a greater degree of skill, not to mention bravery, is required to race a 60ft trimaran successfully across an ocean singlehanded.

But it is the performance of the boats and their technology that has made the 60ft trimaran class so fascinating. A modern 60ft trimaran is capable of sailing at 18 knots upwind and this is not through some flabby tacking angles. Modern 60ft tris are fitted with trim tabs on their daggerboards for exactly the same reason as Cup boats have them on their keel foils. A curved retractible foil in their leeward float prevents the leeward bow from burying, while their rigs can be canted up to weather (as well as fore and aft) further alleviating the heeling moment of the boat. Apart from a C-Class catamaran, nothing goes upwind as efficiently as a 60ft trimaran.

And then of course there is the reaching ability with speeds into the mid-30s common place. Impressively some 25 years on, 60ft trimarans are still developing as is their performance and the skill of the sailors driving them. This was demonstrated in the recent Transat Jacques Vabre, where Pascal Bidegorry and Yvan Ravussin on Banque Populaire set a new class record for the most number of miles sailed in a day, with a passage of 667 miles, or an average of 27.8 knots...

But very sadly this year's Transat Jacques Vabre looks set to be the last competitive outing for the 60ft trimarans.

So why has the class gone to the dogs?

The reasons are numerous but equally very typical of practically all development classes from dinghies through to maxis. In the case of the ORMA 60s, where all apart from the Gitana team are fully sponsored, the reasons have been primarily escalating costs and not enough return on investment for their backers.

Over the last few years, ORMA 60s have become considerably more complex (and thus more expensive) than their predecessors with 30m tall wingmasts that not only cant laterally but fore and aft as well, with curved foils in their floats, trim tabs on their daggerboards, etc.

Boats typically have a competitive life span of around five years but within this period they are regularly transformed with floats or the underside of the main hull being chopped off and replaced, carbon fibre wingmasts replaced every one or two years, appendages almost every year, and this is before we get into sails...

For a fully professional class there has been comparitively little racing, sponsors largely relying on the major established events like the Transat, the Route du Rhum and the Transat Jacques Vabre to get media exposure. The class has always had a few round the cans Grand Prix, but in recent years much more emphasis was placed on these yet this failed to attain the media attention or TV time the class had hoped.

The emphasis on round the cans races led to a significant change in the design of the boats, particularly the cockpit layouts which were enlarged to include more and more coffee grinders with crews expanding to around 11. It is felt that this contributed to make the boats less safe offshore.

All the above came at a time when the class suffered extreme carnage in two terrible transatlantic races, none more so than the 2002 Route du Rhum where out of 18 starters only three boats finished and only one without stopping. This of course meant more cost to sponsors who, not surprisingly, began leaving in droves with the exception of just a hardcore few such as Groupama, Banque Populaire and Sopra Group.

Of course the writing was on the wall and ever since the 2002 fiasco, many have been predicting the demise of the class. Some changes were made to the rules to contain costs and increase safety after the 2002 Route du Rhum, but these were largely cosmetic, the main reason seeming to be an impressive lack of agreement within the overly democratic class.

For example Michel Desjoyeaux, who used to campaign Geant in the class winning the 2002 Route du Rhum and the 2004 Transat before stepping back into the IMOCA 60 class with his new Foncia reckons there is no problem with the present 60ft trimarans, only the media exploitation. "I hope it won't be the last race for these boats, because they are so fantastic," the 2000 Vendee Globe winner told thedailysail. "It will be difficult. Life, like the sea, has high water and low water and for the moment it is low water for those boats."

Desjoyeaux says he would like to return to the class after the Vendee Globe is over in 2009. "Even if you speak to someone like Franck Cammas who has one of the giant multihulls, he still says he has more sensation on the 60 than the 105ft boat. Those boats are the most fabulous boats I know, because they are fun even with a few knots of wind, they are able to cross the Atlantic, alone, double, fully crewed. You are able to sail 2X faster than the wind in all the conditions. For example is you went with such a boat in Valencia it would not be comparible."

So what is his solution? "I am not interested in one design, because to my mind if you want to be the highest in this cateogory of this mechanical sport, you have to stay in prototypes and not in one design. That is my view. Imagine if they said that Formula One was too expensive and they’d have to all race the same cars!

So modify the existing rule? "No, we have to change the way of thinking and making the spectacule," Desjoyeaux continues. "It is not a problem of rules. We have to find a solution to increase the media return instead of trying decrease price because each time you try to find a technical idea or a rule solution to decrease the cost, you end up increasing the cost!" He maintains that if you start increasing the number of rules people will increased just find newer and inevitably more expensive ways to increase performance. "So the guy with more money will have more performance. My opinion is that you don’t have to find a solution to lower the cost, but to increase the return. We have to increase the media return and regain the interest of the public."

Desjoyeaux gives a few examples such as the positioning of race courses closer to the shore and inviting more people on board to come out sailing.

Jean Maurel, who is Race Director of the Transat Jacques Vabre and also campaigned the Elf Aquitaine ORMA 60 a decade ago believes that the trimarans used for singlehanded races should be 50ft not 60ft long. This way they would be safer and their speed would be more comparible to the Open 60 monohulls (although the 50ft trimaran Crepes Whaou beat all the Open 60s in the recent TJV, finishing five hours ahead of Desjoyeaux's Foncia). Similarly Loick Peyron, one of the most successful skippers in the class until Franck Cammas came along, has for a long time advocated a one design catamaran.

Today the general consensus, if there is one within ORMA, is that since the present generation of boats are all virtually one design, they might as well go for a one design trimaran. And so it is that the Multihull One Design (MOD) 70, a design by Vincent Lauriot Prevost and Marc van Peteghem, is now being touted around (See the brochure and image below).

	ORMA 60	MOD 70
LOA	18.6m	21.4m
Beam	17.6-18.4m	16.91m
Draft	4.5-5m	4.5m
Mast height	30m	28.5m
Disp	5.3-6.1T	6.2T
Sail area upwind:	275-320sqm	267sqm
Sail area downwind	365-450sqm	397sqm

While our initial reaction to a one design was one of horror, the new MOD does seem to be a sensible choice. Overall the new MOD 75 is not a larger boat, merely a longer one. The principle cause of concern with the present 60s is that they are not long enough for the sail plan they carry and lack fore and aft stability.

On the 60s, to get more horsepower beam has been increased so that the boats are now virtually square compared to their length, while their sail plans have been getting ever larger. Boats have been forced in this direction by the ORMA rule which limits length and mast height (to 30m) but doesn't limit beam or displacement. Hence if you compare Ellen MacArthur's B&Q Castorama or even the new Irens-Cabaret 100footer Sodebo and IDEC to an ORMA 60, they appear slightly retro with a mainhull longer than the floats and a smaller beam:length ratio. These changes also feature in the MOD70.

What we are pleased to see is the MOD70 having most of the go-faster features that teams and designers have been working on for the last years in the 60s. Thus the boat has a rotating wingmast that can be canted to weather by 8°, but not fore and aft. Retractible curved foils with the usual-looking hooks at their lower end (to provide end plate effect) also feature but the trim tab on the daggerboard has been removed.

To prevent delamination issues the one design will be built with a foam sandwich rather than a Nomex core, while the mast will be monolithic (ie uncored). Generally the boat will have more structure in it than is typically found in an ORMA 60. Mast height and sail area are slightly reduced from the 60. A majority of these changes in the new 70 are increase the safety of the boats.

Apart from the narrower beam and longer mainhull, the boat will otherwise look similar to the 60s with a wide, elliptical-shaped cockpit with the helm position at the top of the arch each side of the aft beam, with a pit/trimming area in the middle and the mainsheet track mounted on an additional beam, forming the aft side of the cockpit.

According to ORMA's Franck David, who has been spearheading the development of the new one design, all the teams involved with the ORMA circuit have had input into the new boat through a series of meetings that have taken place throughout this year. The important thing for the class was the transition from the 60s to the new boat happening at the right time. The time is right now, maintains David, because with the exception of Franck Cammas' Groupama II, the present 60s are all more than five years old now.

David also says that with the emphasis of the circuit in recent years changing from offshore to inshore, while all the boats are similar some have been optimised more for inshore, some more for offshore (although this didn't stop Groupama II, the boat most optimised for inshore, from winning the TJV...)

Another reason to go with the one design is that it is hoped that this will entice more foreigners (other than just the French) into the class. It is felt, rightly or wrongly, that foreign teams have not been keen to get involved due to the high degree of technological skill and experience required to get an ORMA 60 up to speed and that a one design would be more attractive. (We feel in fact that it is more a case of it being nearly impossible to find a foreign sponsor who wants to target the French market to a degree that might fund such a campaign).

At present there are five orders for MOD 70s, but a builder hasn't been finally decided upon yet. As the class will be a strict one design - down to the sails and electronics even - there will be only one builder, but the builder will be able to sub-contract work.

One of the interesting aspects will be the performance of the boat. The speed of an ORMA 60 is largely limited by its length, skippers having to back off to prevent the boat 'going critical'. With a longer bow with more volume forward, it seems likely that the MOD70 will be a boat that can be pushed harder. Despite having a smaller sail plan and being slightly heavier, it is entirely possible it will have a performance similar to the 60s.

The MOD 70 is being designed principally for offshore use and this is reflected in the circuit for the next few years. This will include all of the usual top French shorthanded and fully crewed transoceanics events (assuming the class is allowed back into the Transat for 2011) plus two new return events (the MOD 70 equivalent of the Transat BtoB, and another back from the end of the Route du Rhum). These will be in addition to an annual European Tour, running over a five week period in June and July. This will be fully crewed - this means six in the case of the MOD70, so it will still be very shorthanded. A typical course for the Tour will for example start in Finland and visit key ports in Sweden, Norway, the UK, France, Portugal, Spain and Italy. There would be in-port races at each stopover, but David says these will be more for show and spectacular than points scoring. ORMA are not planning to be the race organiser of their European Tour, but at present have this out to tender. One imagines that Pierre Bojic's company Pen Duick, who today run the TJV and the Route du Rhum, but who cut their teeth organising the Round Europe Race back in the 1980s might be top of the list...

David hopes that this new format will see the ORMA class through the next 10 years.

We put it to several skippers involved with the class and to Franck David about why instead the rules for the 60 footer weren't changed to make it more like the MOD 70. For example considering the dramatic surgery which some teams carry out on their boats as a matter of course, why didn't they just enlongate the main hull of the existing boats? This might even offer the opportunity of grandfathering old boats? According to Franck David the teams firstly prefered the idea of a clean break from the 60s, but also key to going one design is that it eliminated the large part of teams budgets allocated for modifying and developing their boats.

But the biggest bonus the MOD 70 offers is of cost saving over the 60s. The boat is being specced so that it will cost 2 million Euros (compared to around 3 million for a new 60) while annual campaign costs should be 1.2-1.3 million Euros annually compared to 1.5-1.8 million Euros.

If all goes according to plan then the first five boats will be ready to race the TJV in 2009 and eight boats are expected to be on the start line of the Route du Rhum in 2010. David says the maximum they will allow on to the circuit at any one time is 12. More than this and sponsors gets disgruntled that they are not getting their share of the limelight.

Yvan Bourgnon who campaigns the 60ft trimaran Brossard says he welcomes the change. "The problem with the ORMA is that everyone is afraid of these boats. We break them, we have many problems and everyone is afraid. So it is not good news to keep them. The 70 is a fast boat - because it is longer you will have the same speed as these boats. It will be much safer, faster and it will still be spectacular. Plus you could keep these boats for 10 years so the cost will be less.

"I’m sure it will go up, so that is good for this class. I want to do it, but I don’t have the money now. The second good news is that it is only offshore, we don’t do grand prix and that will interest the media more. And the English people are more interested, they were stressed when it was in prototypes - you have to re-engineer them the whole time and some people didn’t know how to progress the boats. If they are all the same, we’ll have more foreign countries interested."

Bourgnon currently campaigns the former Sergio Tacchini, an Irens Cabaret design originally sailed by Karine Fauconnier. "For sure it is bad news for these boats, but we’ve had them for six years, it is not like they are new. For sure we have to find a future for these boats. Fortunately there are many good rich people who are interested to have these boats to have fun."

While we welcome the new MOD70 and hope it brings a fresh lease of life to the ORMA trimaran circuit, we will be very sad to see the end of a class capable of creating such great technical innovation. The great innovator and multihull pioneer Eric Tabarly would turn in his grave. One assumes that those such as Desjoyeaux who are looking to race a one-off multihulls will look closely at either the large G-Class multihulls or boats such as IDEC and Sodebo, purpose built for singlehanding. If they get enough of a following maybe it will be boats such as these that will be winning the Route du Rhum in years to come.

Click here to see the brochure for the new MOD70 - click here