Seen today it is hard to imagine Energy Observer (above) is a platform that has somehow survived intact for 40 years of the most demanding offshore use that any modern multihull has ever been through. Another Jules Verne winner, Steve Fossett’s Playstation also now enjoys a glamorous life without the burden of towering sailplans – today operating as a successful Hollywood camera boat
increased to 3,550ft2
increase on the original 80ft hull fitted with an 89ft mast and 3,090ft2
– a substantial of sail.
Bullimore had limited success in his revamped yacht. By now nearly 20 years old and weighing 60 per cent more than when she was first launched, she had been superceded by even bigger boats. Relaunched in 2000 as Team Legato, she was late for the start of The Race and never made up the deficit, finishing the round-the-world course in 104 days – a full 42 days behind the leader, the 110ft Club Medskippered by Grant Dalton. The catamaran fared slightly better in
the Oryx Quest, a round-the-world race organised by Tracy Edwards herself which started and finished in the Middle East, in 2005. Now renamed Daedalus, she was one of only four entries in the race and fin- ished in second place, after two boats pulled out due to collision and equipment failure. The winner was none other than the boat’s old rival Club Med, now renamed Doha 2006 and skippered by Brian Thompson, which finished in 62 days, 12 days ahead of Daedalus… Yet it was Daedalus that claimed the only record of the race, crossing the South Atlantic in 11d 10h 22m, a record that still stands. Bullimore made two attempts on the round-the-world record on the boat, in 2006 and 2007 under the name Doha, before finally giving up. By February 2008 the boat was being advertised for sale in New Zealand, described as ‘a legend of the seas’, asking price £585,000. By 2009 she was back in the UK and the price had fallen to £385,000. Her final humiliation came in 2010 when, renamed Spirit of Antigua, she capsized in the Bay of Biscay during a routine delivery trip from La Coruna to Bristol. The seven crew had to be airlifted to safety and the boat was
towed back to port by a salvage team. Bullimore wasn’t onboard at the time. It was one of Bullimore’s former crew
who had the idea of converting the boat to show the potential of sustainable energy. Fred Dahirel was another French sailor with an impressive ocean racing CV – including finishing first, third and second in the Transat Jacques Vabre in 1995, 1997 and 2007 – who joined Legato for The Race in 2000. By 2012 Dahirel had decided he wanted to ‘leave the world of competi- tion, to enter the world of co-operation’. He bought his old boss’s boat, lifted her
out in Lorient and started turning it into a floating laboratory. After struggling to find backing he was joined by his old crewmate Victorien Erussard in 2016. And so the Energy Observer project was born. Over five years the boat’s volume was increased yet further by adding an outer skin to each hull – reminiscent of the work done to Enza in the 1990s – increasing her load capacity from 15 to 35 tonnes. Then a new much larger central pod was fitted over the middle of the boat, replacing the old ‘god pod’ and providing six cabins for the crew. Two large electric motors were
TWELVE LIVES 1983 Formule TAG 1986 TAG Heuer
1993 Enza New Zealand 1996 Lady Endeavour 1997 Royal & SunAlliance 1999 Millennium Challenge 2000 Team Legato 2005 Daedalus 2006 Doha
2009 Spirit of Antigua 2013 Néocit Observer 2016 Energy Observer
fitted, one in each hull, each with a large bank of batteries. The whole hydrogen ‘chain’, including the complex elec- trolysing system and multiple storage can- isters, was also split between the two hulls. ‘Victorien preferred to reuse, recycle a
former boat rather than build a new one,’ explains Energy Observer chief executive Louis-Noël Viviès. ‘The idea was to invest in the technologies, not in the hulls. But at the end of the day it would probably have been cheaper to build a new boat around the system, rather than the other way round. Still the carbon footprint is very low because the boat is quite old, and in any project we now have to find the best balance to minimise the global impact.’ Since the boat was launched in 2017
Energy Observer has ‘sailed’ more than 41,000 miles, starting on the west coast of France then touring the Mediterranean in 2018, northern Europe in 2019 (going as far as Spitsbergen, well above the Arctic Circle in Norway), across the Atlantic in 2020 and into the Pacific in 2021. After visiting San Francisco in May 2021 she headed west across to Hawaii, where she was based as this article went to press. It’s an extraordinary transformation for
this most extraordinary of boats. And one that her designer Nigel Irens, who spotted her while she was on show at the 2018 Route du Rhum, fully supports. ‘It’s a great idea, and I am pleased she still has a role to play,’ he said. ‘When they asked me if I thought there was any danger using such an old boat to do the job, I said, don’t worry, after what’s she’s been through she must think she’s in a retirement home, going around the world at 4.5kt. So don’t worry about the boat!’ And what a fabulous retirement it is, for q
this cat of many lives. SEAHORSE 47
ANTOINE DRANCEY
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