Planes, trains and automobiles ... and some very special boats
Now a part of the Carboman Group, pioneering composites company Décision started out building a Philippe Briand One Tonner that won the 1984 One Ton Cup just a few weeks after launch. A lot has happened since then…
In the autumn of 2016 and now aged 60 Bertrand Cardis stepped down from his position as CEO of the composites com- pany that he founded outside Lausanne in late 1983. His move away from day-to- day control of the company coincided nicely with the landmark completion of a 16-month circumnavigation by the Décision-built aircraft Solar Impulse – the first ever such voyage using solar power alone. A fitting moment to move on. But let’s wind back the clock to those heady days in the mid-1980s when custom
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IOR racers were regularly leaving the numerous artisan boatyards scattered around the world at the time – sometimes on a weekly basis. For Décision, their One Tonner Passion 2was followed by a stream of interesting and successful raceboats. The lake racer DF Design marked the begin- nings of the company’s long relationship with Bruce Farr, soon followed by the same designer’s Whitbread Maxi UBS Switzer- land, which took line honours in the 1985- 86 round-the-world race (UBSwas also the last maxi sloop to win the race). In the 30 years since UBS went afloat
Décision have turned out an extraordinar- ily diverse range of composite ‘products’. There have been powerboats, foilers, air- craft parts – and latterly complete aircraft – architectural structures and train compo- nents. There have been America’s Cup winners and oceanic record breakers. And that’s just the tip of a remarkably
broad pyramid. The company’s most recent yacht was the AC50 for Franck Cammas’s 2017 Cup challenge. The team were under- funded, out of time and with little Cup experience but there was no trouble with their boat, which was light, stiff, widely regarded as the best-looking boat in Bermuda and experienced zero structural
issues throughout a testing regatta. Multihulls have played a big part in the
Décision story, the company’s first being the famous lake racer Happycalopsewhich Cardis skippered himself over a period of nearly 10 years. There were also those legendary championship-winning cats built for Alinghi’s Ernesto Bertarelli, the most ambitious being Le Black, which carried all before her for several years, but the most famous being the giant 2010 America’s Cup defender Alinghi V. In between there was of course that unbroken string of monohull Cup winners, again for Alinghi. ‘When I look back over the past 30
years,’ says Cardis, ‘even I am amazed by the variety of things we have worked on. For the London Olympics, for example, we created GRP open water gates for the kayak competitions. Since the timing is by Omega, another Swiss company, this seemed to make sense to someone! ‘We also built many large architectural
pieces, including an “intriguing” com- bined sculpture/staircase in the entrance to the Nestlé headquarters in Geneva. The staircase is so fine that to the naked eye it is almost invisible.’ But talk to Cardis and you keep coming
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