 Big, Bigger, Biggest  Some
girls are bigger than others, that's what the song used to say back
in the 80's - well the assertion is also valid in the world of sailing
vessels, and one should point out that "bigger"
is generally THE way to go when it comes to ocean records (only generally,
because if you look at things carefully, you'll notice that the Groupama
team chose to go lighter… hence smaller. You've read about Groupama
3 here, I won't go through this again).
So
where was I? Yes, well this trimaran is bigger than
ALL the others, in fact, when it will be launched,
it should be the biggest racing multi ever built
(unless someone's secretly finishing up a beast nobody
heard about yet). Here's the deal: Banque Populaire
and Pascal Bidégorry recently revealed they're
in the process of designing, thanks to the famous
VPLP office, a new record-breaking trimaran… and
the first released figures are quite impressive:
40 metres in length (mind you, that's bigger than
Orange II) for 23 metres of width and a 45 m mast!
The aim is to keep a relatively low center of sailplan
for safety reasons, but the thing will be fitted
with ORMA-style curved foils. |
