Russell Brown
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2012
- Messages
- 297
- Reaction score
- 192
- Location
- washington state
I like your site, TrimaranMan.
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Poulain 901 tri started as Van Peteghen-Lauriot Prévost design in 1985 and was built at CDK. It was designed to be 75.4 x 53.4 foot displacing 19,000 lbs with a 97 foot mast. The original build tried to meet these numbers but ended up being 75.4 x 53.4 foot displacing 30,400 lbs with a 85 foot mast. So how did this tri after modification end up being an 88.5 x 53.4 foot displacing 36,500 lbs with a 105 foot mast. The modifications also lengthened to floats by from 70.8 to 87 foot. These are a lot of changes for an old design. Why? Because the base structure was good but when Charal wanted a tri for serious racing they provided a 15 million Euro budget to up grade the tri in 1994. The tri was now seriously fast but this is not the end of the story. Sports Electra was the next sponsor who took on the tri and Olivier de KERSAUZON sailed it around the world in 71 days. Next with new rudders and deck plan under a new sponsor IDEC, Francis JOYON sailed the tri solo around the world in under 73 days. After more record breaking the IDEC (Poulain 901) tri completed a transatlantic run in 2008 and ran aground and destroyed near its home point in France.
This boat succeeded because of 2 factors. It was well designed and built at the start. The initial structure was PVC foam with Kevlar and epoxy all round. And the second factor people recognized the basic structures potential and put some serious money into the upgrades and modification. The upgrade budget of $10 million US plus in 1994 was serious money but the sponsors were rewarded with many racing successes. Olivier de KERSAUZON and Francis JOYON were French national hero’s and provided sponsor with days of prime time news coverage etc.
In the final configuration IDEC was 88.5 x 53.4 foot displacing 36,500 lbs with a 105 foot rotating wing mast carrying 3,440 square foot upwind and 6,400 square foot down wind. Draft was 14 foot. The average speed around the world was 17.6 knots with peaks over 30 knots. This is one very large boat to single hand around the world at these speeds.
The jpegs give the idea of an excellent tri.