Update
Yvan Bourgnon solo training in Biscay before the 2002 Route du Rhum on the family Orma 60 Rexona. First as RMO and then later renamed Primagaz, this VPLP design engineered by Hervé Devaux had already won the Rhum twice, in 1994 and 1998, skippered by Yvan Bourgnon’s brother Laurent, who subsequently lost his life in a diving accident while cruising in Polynesia. The first Orma deliberately designed to sail on her leeward float, Rexona was one of the most successful of all the 60s, providing her creators with an impressively long-lived test bed for these tricky, cutting-edge and often fragile boats. Devaux engineered most of the best-known Orma 60 designs, and the lessons learnt were subsequently directly applied by the HDS studio to bigger Jules Verne challengers. Sadly the 2002 Route du Rhum also spelled the end of the Ormas as a class, a devastating Atlantic storm wiping out much of the fleet
ONE OF THE GREATS Hervé Devaux was a passionate engineer with a vision. He successfully gained his PhD at Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA), in Lyon, France’s leading postgraduate engi- neering school – which is appropriately located on Avenue Albert Einstein. He began his career as a university assistant, then moved to the Marechal mast-building company in La Rochelle where he pioneered some of the first composite rigs in the early 1980s. In parallel he collaborated closely with the Centre de Recherche
Pour l’Architecture et l’Industrie Nautiques (CRAIN) and with his friend, and another brilliant engineer, Philippe Pallu de la Barrière. Then in 1993 he founded his own Brest-based structural engineering company: HDS (always a lover of the ocean, Hervé located his company as close as possible to the commercial harbour!). At Marechal, and later with HDS, Hervé played a big role in the
first days of the modern offshore multihull racing movement in France, including introducing the first carbon masts for Orma 60 trimarans and later on for the first modern Imoca monohulls. Indeed HDS expanded quickly alongside the development of
professional offshore sailing in France and elsewhere, where bigger and faster multihulls engineered by HDS broke record after record around the world: Club Med, Geronimo, Groupama 3, Banque Populaire VII, to name just a few – famous boats that paved the way for today’s Ultim generation. His legacy passes to us through this work and through other events
like the Volvo Ocean Race (winning twice, with ABN Amro and Groupama 70), also working on no fewer than 10 America’s Cup cam- paigns. Hervé and HDS were the engineering foundation of the winning BMW Oracle Deed of Gift monster trimaran in 2010 with its incredible 68m-tall wing – which was designed and built in well under a year. Ocean-racing yachts held no secrets for Hervé Devaux, but his true passion was for the America’s Cup… ‘la Cup’, as he liked to say.
He trained dozens of young engineers in his methods: always
starting with clear concepts and hand sketches as a starting point, then loads of hard work and complex calculations and testing where necessary. A result from a complex piece of FEA software that could not be verified from first principles using Herve’s trusted HP32 scientific calculator had no value for him. Later on he grew increas- ingly proud that the young people he trained were so widely courted by the marine industry and particularly by the best racing teams. Shy behind his famous moustache, generous, self-deprecating
and full of humour, he was a giant of his kind. Hervé Devaux passed away on Sunday 1 May at the age of 68. Steven Robert, Paul Bieker, Guillaume Verdier, Vincent Lauriot Prévost… and other friends
FIRST LOOK – Jack Griffin We should start seeing some America’s Cup sailing this summer. While it doesn’t feel like much is happening now, the two years until the October 2024 Cup Match in Barcelona will go by quickly. Alinghi Red Bull Racing bought Emirates Team New Zealand’s
first AC75 and plan to sail it this summer. They are the only new challenger and the only team allowed to sail an AC75 before mid- September 2022. All teams must choose an eight-week non-sailing period in spring 2023; and from June to September 2023 they are only allowed to sail an AC75 or AC40 in Barcelona, the match venue. The rules for AC37 restrict the number of sailing days as part
of the cost containment measures. These measures also include a shared recon programme that will begin in mid-November 2022. Each competitor will be followed, photographed and filmed by a two-person recon team and the photos and videos will be uploaded to a shared file store for access by all competitors. Some of these images will also be available to the media, so America’s Cup geeks
SEAHORSE 13
CHRISTIAN FEVRIER/BLUEGREEN
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