The beams, dear boy, the beams. If not all that matters in the structure of a big multihull, the beams and their hull connections are the jewel in the engineer’s crown – which is why it is not so odd to hear of a big multihull being ‘modified’ with new hulls… Put it another way, the beams are the really expensive bits that you don’t leave to the work-experience lads at the yard. Mike Birch (above) holds a model of his new Nigel Irens cat in 1983 – those same beams are still doing their job nearly 40 years later on Energy Observer – seen here (left) passing through the Corinth Canal. The original hulls are still in there somewhere too, but long since expanded, reinforced, lengthened and modified in any number of other ways. But beams that have now circled the globe many times over, they are original
VI and the giant 236ft Club Med. He did even better in the inaugural Route du Rhum in 1978 on the 37ft Olympus Photo, beating the 69ft monohull Kriter V to the finish line by 98 seconds. Four years later Mike returned to the
Route du Rhum with a 50ft catamaran called Vital, designed by an up-and-coming designer called Nigel Irens. He finished third in that race, but significantly the two boats in front of him were bigger multi- hulls: the 69ft Elf Aquitaine and the 55ft Jaz. Multihulls dominated the podium at that year’s race, just as they had the Ostar two years earlier, and as they would in most sailing races thereafter. When it came to designing a boat to
compete in the 1984 Quebec to St Malo transatlantic race, Mike and Nigel knew there was only one way to go: as big as possible. ‘The new fashion was for giant catamarans,’ Mike later wrote. ‘In France projects were multiplying. There were at least four boats being built of 24m or more. It was unthinkable not to join that bandwagon.’ Although Nigel casually says the boat
was ‘designed on the spot’, she was in many ways a development of Vital ‘extrap- olated’ to 80ft. And while Nigel would go on to make his name as an ‘intuitive’ designer – just as likely to carve models of his designs out of wood as to draw a set of lines – from the outset he had a firm foun- dation in science, working closely with an equally adventurous engineer who did
much of the structural work, in this case Martyn Smith back in Bristol. Before turning his attention to boats
Smith was the chief engineer at British Aerospace, where he designed Concorde’s nose cone, among other key elements. Such was the calibre of the team Mike and Nigel gathered to work on the project. Aircraft technology also came into play
when it came to building the two giant hulls, a job entrusted to the aircraft manu- facturer Canadair, then owned by the boat’s sponsor, Techniques d’Avant Garde (TAG). The 80ft hulls were at that time the second largest structures in the world built out of pre-impregnated Kevlar – the largest being the doors of the Space Shuttle. In fact, the two halves of the hulls were
too big to fit into Canadair’s usual auto- clave and a special oven had to be built to bring them up to the temperature needed for curing. Subsequent events in the life of this great boat have proved over and over again the incredible build quality achieved at Canadair – it is claimed the two huge hulls came out of the factory weighing within just 25kg of each other… Once all the main structures (hulls, beams, daggerboards and rudders) had
These big multihulls are not monuments…
– Nigel Irens is asked about longevity
Or perhaps the best of them are – editor
been built in Montreal, they were trans- ported to Quebec where they were assem- bled in a large shed which was opened up to the public as part of the 400th anniver- sary celebrations of Jacques Cartier’s discovery of Canada. ‘It was like assem- bling a giant jigsaw,’ remembers Nigel. ‘It was a bit surreal as there was an orchestra playing as part of the Cartier cel- ebration, so we sometimes found ourselves working late into the night accompanied by wonderful classical recitals!’ None other than Canada’s president
Pierre Trudeau came along for the boat’s christening, watched by a crowd of 3,000 people, and was treated to an impromptu ride down the St Lawrence River. Despite her excellent pedigree Formule
TAG didn’t win the inaugural Quebec to St Malo race, finishing a disappointing fifth. Along the way, however, she did show her potential by sailing 512.5 miles in 24 hours, becoming the first sailing boat to crack the 500-mile barrier. The general consensus was that she was under-canvassed and, after arriving in France, Mike took the boat out of the water at Trinité-sur-Mer and built a bigger rig. He also cut open the forward bottom sections of both hulls and opened them out by about 4in (10cm) to counteract a ten- dency to bury the nose in big waves. There was no shortage of new races to
test the boat’s mettle and later that year Formule TAG took part in the first Route de la Découverte, from Cadiz to St
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