Time to revisit
Cat or tri… designer Marc Lombard has teamed up with multihull expert Eric Bruneel in an informative new attempt to have it all
To reconcile ‘boat sensitivity’ and comfort Eric Bruneel has more than 30 years of experience in the design and construction of multihulls, of which 26 (1983-2009) were devoted to the development of Foun- taine-Pajot SA, a world leader in cruising catamarans whose 2,000th unit was deliv- ered in August 2009, two years after the company was listed on the Euronext-New York Stock Exchange. Meanwhile, in 2003 Bruneel built his own 50ft Joubert Nivelt-designed trimaran Trilogic, with which he won his class in the 2004 OSTAR solo transatlantic race as well as the 2005 Fastnet. He also placed second in the 2006 Route du Rhum.
50 SEAHORSE When Eric came to us, soon after the
death of my greatly mourned confrère Michel Joubert, we were very interested in taking on his ideas for the design and development of a new range of fast cruising trimarans under the umbrella of the recently created Neel Company. Eric, Michel and Bernard (Nivelt) had
already successfully taken steps with the concept of the cruising trimaran with the development and production of their 45, 65 and, most recently, 51-footer. I had known Eric a long time, since the
Little America’s Cup in Melbourne in 1989; he was competing while we were involved in the design of his C-Class cat. By now I was also immersed in offshore trimaran design. I started my career with Walter Greene
in 1980 when I had the chance to meet all the other special figures of trimaran design and sailing of the ti me: Dick Newick, Mike Birch, Eric Tabarly and the Gougeon brothers – legendary creators of the West System of epoxy construction. From then on I became addicted to
multihull design. I have now spent 25 years designing racing multihulls, mainly in the open classes and also the Formula 40, later on designing Orma 60 tris where we were among the earliest adopters of the retractable curved C-foil. Over time we have evolved into a small
design studio with particular competence in fluid dynamic analysis (numerical simu- lation), structural calculation (FEM/FEA) and of course naval architecture. Our company is now a partnership with
Eric Levet (longtime partner), HP Shipman (naval architect), Paul Cougnaud (struc- tural engineer) and Lionnel Huetz (fluid dynamics). Today the Marc Lombard Design Group is involved with most of the major actors in the boat industry, among them Groupe Bénéteau, Bavaria Nauti - tech, the Hanse Group (Privilège-Marine) and many other builders in France (JFA in Concarneau, Fora Marine in La Rochelle, Alubat in Les Sables) designing both sail and powerboats. However, racing design remains our passionate ‘hobby’, with successful IRC
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