Yannick Eudelline’s Mini 6.50 in build at Duqueine Atlantique. Sicomin’s Erwan Spiral provided on-site technical support


plywood panels,’ he says. ‘So I designed an arrow bow tomaximise the width up front without creating a bow transom that would be a real wall facing the sea. ‘The second concept concerns the


bottom strakes. I wanted to minimise the chines to reduce the drag they induce. To do this, I designed narrow strakes and multiplied them across the width of the boat. This brings us closer to a classic hull shape, well rounded and with a lot of volume where it’s needed.’ The Greenscow initiative took off


when Eudeline and Plessis teamed up with Kaori Concept, a shipyard in south Brittany that specialises in epoxy-plywood composite construction. Led by Flavien Gaulard, a respected boatbuilder with a strong focus on sustainable innovation, Kaori has a reputation for exceptional build quality. The yard has one previous grand prix offshore project under its belt: Armel Tripon’s Imoca Les P’tits Doudous, built in partnership with the aerospace composite fabricator Duqueine Group. Gaulard and Plessis were already


working together on various projects and a deal wasmade. Eudeline built his prototype Mini 6.50 at Kaori Concept with support from Gaulard’s team, and Kaori is now putting the design into small-series production, offering both raceboats and cruisers. The full-on racing versions of the Greenscow boats are designed and engineered to be easily converted into cruisers at the end of their racing career, giving them a second lease of life. Eudeline’s Mini 6.50 hull was exhibited


last month at the Grand Pavois boat show in La Rochelle. Parts of that boat were laminated under vacuum by Duqueine, though not infused. The Greenscow Imoca 60 will be vacuum-infused by Duqueine from plywood parts produced by Kaori Concept, with Gaulard overseeing the build. However, all other Greenscows will be built entirely by hand lamination. The issue with using vacuum infusion,


The Greenscow Mini 6.50 has some interesting design features. Narrow bottom strakes create a well-rounded bottom with prodigious rocker, while minimising the drag of hard chines. The arrow bow is a very efficient shape to build in plywood


Gaulard explains, is excessive waste. ‘Before I started Kaori Concept I was building big multihulls in the Philippines and I was disgusted by the amount of trash we generated,’ he says. Boats built at Kaori Concept are proof


that a highly skilled hand laminator working with optimised resins can produce a hull just as strong and stiff as an infused one – and only slightly heavier. ‘When you see how much product you’re throwing away after infusion it’s obvious that hand lamination is the best way to reduce trash and pollution,’ he explains. ‘Combining this traditional process with new materials and technology is very efficient.’ To hand-laminate a modern raceboat


with tight weight tolerances, the properties of the resin are extremely important. ‘The key benefits of GP550 are its viscosity and reactivity,’ Sicomin’s Marc Denjean says. ‘They make the product easy to use and ideal for hand laminating. Mechanical performance at room temperature and excellent surface quality in the finished product are other advantages. Finally, adhesion to different types of wood – we've worked on this a lot.’ The product that GP550 replaces,


SR5550, had all those excellent properties too. Like most resin systems it contained carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic (CMR) chemicals which the industry is now obliged to reduce. Sicomin went one better and phased them out completely. ‘We believe GP550 is the only bio-


based non-CMR epoxy system for wood that's available today,’ Denjean says. ‘Product development and innovative chemistry is a huge part of what makes Sicomin special. Our work on bio-based systems and replacing historic raw materials with non-CMR alternatives is a careful balance between guaranteeing exceptional performance and meeting the environmental and HSE targets. The challenge is that the old materials often perform really well. For the new GP550


we've done more than 10 iterations, working with the formulation team, testing laminating parameters and checking the mechanical performance, before feeding back to the chemists in our lab. It took a long time but the complex new formulation offers our customers a clean material safety data sheet with uncompromising resin performance.’ Gaulard was understandably keen to


start using GP550 and his contact at Sicomin, Erwan Spiral, played a key role as the interface between the Greenscow project and Sicomin’s R&D lab, providing onsite technical support. ‘I was asking Erwan to give me the new generation product to test, even before it was ready,’ Gaulard says. ‘I had a supply of leftover recycled carbon fibre and we used that to test the new resin in a direct comparison with both GP33 and the old SR5550. ‘With these three resins we made


composite parts – about 500 test samples in total – using all the different types of fibre, in all of the structural applications, in all the different ways of lamination. We weighed everything and sent it to be tested on a machine for bending and tensile strength. Then we sent samples to a university in St-Nazaire, Yannick asked another university to run some tests, so we’ll have three sets of data to compare. I may one day share all that data but we’ll keep it to ourselves until we build the first Greenscow Imoca. ‘In my experience, plywood with basalt


fibre and bioresin is the best compromise between performance, longevity, easy repairability and carbon footprint,’ Gaulard says. ‘A wooden boat with a bit of composite on it is a really good boat. You keep a bit of carbon fibre on it, you save a bit of carbon footprint with a good resin, the wood is well protected like a standard composite boat, and the weight is almost as light as full carbon sandwich. It’s a very good balance.’ www.sicomin.com


❑ SEAHORSE 67


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