Taking a step back in his life, he skippered the ORMA 60 Brossard for years, most of the time singlehanded. See why I thought he was french now? Brossard is a little famous from the video of pulling wakeboarders. Sadly, it ended it’s life against the rocks in Oman stripped of metal like a rhino stripped of tusks.

With no big ship anymore, in 2010 Yvan sailed with Jeremie Larrangerique across the Med on a custom Hobie Fox setting a record for fastest trans-Med on a beachcat. I think there’s actually prize money up now for whoever can beat their time of a little under 53 hours.

In his last adventure this month he teamed up with Sebastien Roubinet, who actually saved him from the overturned Brossard some years ago. That’s probably the kind of guy you want to sail with. Their goal: To round the infamous Cape Horn on a 20′ Nacra F20c. I saw him in the Caribbean last November and asked him how he garnered financing for all of these projects. He looked back at me a little shocked and said, “It’s France, it’s easy for these things.” You see why I thought he was French? Yeah, here in the States it would be damn near impossible to find the funding, but they love their crazy multihull long distance racing in France. Then I asked why Ushaia around the Horn and back. He explained that the human body can stay awake for about 60 hours straight before mad hallucinations set in so 450 miles in one shot is about the maximum considering the surroundings and conditions. I guess he would know. The conditions of the Horn can be impressive with unfun coldness and unpredictable weather. During their rounding this time they actually dropped the main way down on the deck and went on mostly jib for a while. Prudence is probably the way since if they flipped and drifted into the Drake Passage, they’d be seeing iceburgs, and humans don’t generally last long floating in those waters.

Well, they made it and now he’s two for two in the beachcat long distance adventure chase. The next one he wants to do is a World Speed Sailing Record for distance sailed in a beachcat over a 24 hour period in Brazil. I told him when he sets that record I’ll try to break it. That would be a fun one.

Here’s a pretty nice teaser vid for the Horn rounding. The added weight and leverage of the wings makes the F20c a little unhappy I’d say.

Here is a vid of the rounding and small celebration.

A Note to Adventure Online: It’s supposed to be about speed, so don’t slow the video down!!!!

They came to Falcon Marine with foil drawings and sketches and Falcon Marine went to work. They had a basic length and width and where they wanted the beams and gave profile drawings for the foils and Falcon Marine had them machined. The rest was working with the client’s liaison, Tom Hammond. Tom would describe what he was looking for and they got together to make it work.

What they ended up with is a 20′ wide x 18′ long trimaran with three ‘T’ foils, similar to a moth. The carbon foils on the fiberglass outer hulls, or amas, are controlled by what’s called a wand. Depending on the ride height, the wand controls the pitch of the trim tab on the back of the horizontal foil, which provides the amount of lift the foil creates. All of the gearing of the wands were constructed by Falcon Marine as well.

The T foil rudder is basically just for stabilization. The fiberglass rudder was the first foil built in the project. Since it’s all one piece (the horizontal foil isn’t glued on after the build) and Falcon Marine uses an infusion process, it was imperative to use fiberglass because the builder can see the infusion process taking place through the fiberglass matt, which can’t be done with carbon. Before they dropped $1000.00 worth of carbon in the mold they had to make sure the flow was right. Once they knew they had full infusion with resin, they then built the carbon foils with the same process, so both amas have carbon foils.

The Osprey is a sloop rig with a sprit for the jib and about 240 ft/sq of Randy Smyth designed sail area. It weighs in at 475 lbs. The mast is one of the first carbon Marstrom built Tornado catamaran masts from when they tested the carbon rig for the Olympics. The crossbeams are also carbon, so all of the high load structural parts are carbon, and the lower load areas are fiberglass. This keeps costs down while testing.

Looking at the video, the crew weight should be further forward once foiling to reduce overall drag. The incidence of the foil is too high with the crew weight back. That’s one thing they drilled into me when I sailed the Moth for the first and only time, “Get your weight forward!” They kept yelling at me. The hulls could probably lift quicker as well if the transoms are squared off to let the water release instead of sucking the transoms in like an old square rigger of the 1600s. It’s actually a simple, stable design in flat water. They can run the jib further in on the track and generally increase mainsheet tension as well. Yep, i’d have that thing boned in!

Here is a pic of it on the trailer:

I know, it looks like a mess, but it give you an idea of the profile view of the foils that are underwater in the video. On the left is the fiberglass rudder and on the right is a carbon foil. The hulls are on the right and on the left are the ‘D’ shaped crossbars.