The tightrope-walking years
Vendée Globe, Rhum, Jacques Vabre, Europe Race, Figaro and Spi Ouest, everywhere you look you’ll find various incarnations of Marc Guillemot. Strolling along memory quay with him amounts to going back to the roots of France’s multihull scene, no less. A journey that has spawned dramatic stories and many feats of innovation, but remains quite recent by sporting standards. Recent enough that its creators are still active – and able to give unfiltered accounts of its genesis, starting from an era characterised by the quasi-absence of big professional teams and of big racing boats. Well, almost… So finds out Jocelyn Blériot
‘It started when I met Patrick Morvan,’ says Marc. Having won the 1981 Two Star in class 5 with his cousin Bertrand de Broc, the pair got friendly with Morvan who roped them into a project he was about to start, with support from logistics firm Jet Services. A rather big deal – and the opportunity
to jump from glorified amateur status to contracted members of an actual structure. ‘All of the guys Patrick had assembled – and that group included Le Cam, Hubert
56 SEAHORSE
Desjoyeaux – got busy building the boat, Jet Services II, at Gilles Ollier’s Multiplast yard which was then located in Carquefou.’ (ed – see Seahorse issue 531 for a detailed story of the yard). At the time Jet Services and Fleury
Michon were the only two brand names the French public associated with sailing, yet running their operations was down to a small handful of versatile individuals, moving seamlessly from laminating to routeing to helming (and back). Jet II did not last long, hitting a tree trunk casually floating in the St Laurence River, ‘and that led to another boat, Jet III, being cam- paigned’ while construction of the 26m Jet IV was underway (now in Vannes). ‘Too big too soon’ drops Marc before
elaborating on this laconic thought. ‘Char- ente, Roger & Gallet, William Saurin, Royale… all of these were interesting boats and it was amazing to race them. But we have to be honest, the loads were way too challenging compared with the materi- als and technology we had available. We just kept on breaking stuff, structures would be bendy and the weight of some of the components was simply ridiculous.’ Jet Services IV was a giant with an
equally giant wingmast. Sadly in winter 1985 she would capsize in the North Atlantic on a delivery from the Azores to
Brittany when one of her bows snapped off. Tragically crewman Jean Castenet was lost in the incident, and others were injured including a serious pelvic fracture for Marc. The surviving crew were eventu- ally picked up four days after the capsize. Yet this defining transition period
would do two things: a) capture the public imagination and allow visionaries like the Jules Verne gang to turn multihull sailing into a planetary exercise, b) push materials research to deal with the many identified weaknesses – thereby generating an unprecedented wave of progress. Following the failure of Jet Services IV,
successor Jet V was built in carbon as opposed to glass. Her structural rigidity was something that no other big multi before her could come close to. ‘We broke many records with that boat, the Atlantic being the most famous,’ says Marc. But a new 60ft limit for offshore multi-
hulls introduced ahead of the 1990 Route du Rhum would bring the construction of these giant craft to an end (until later find- ing new life with the Trophée Jules Verne). The enforced move to 60-footers for the
1990 Rhum took its toll among the French fleet of larger designs, ‘but it also allowed some non-French individuals to shine… I’m thinking Nigel Irens, Tony Bullimore with Apricot, Phil Stegall and Sebago.’
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