Conference unifix::sailing

2190.0. "Round-the-world in one design" by GVPROD::WENGER (Max Wenger @GEO) Wed Jan 18 1995 02:22

Pierre Fehlmann, swiss skipper of Merit Cup in the last Whitbread announced 
today that he will build 16 identical Maxis of 75 feet in the old ship yard
of La Ciota, near Marseille, France. The ship yard, which closed about 5
years ago was plagued with several survival projects, none of which 
materialized. Most of the facilities still exist and there is plenty of
skilled and cheap manpower available ... except that they will have to learn
working with composits, rather than steel.

The boats are designed by Bruce Farr (like Merit, NZE, etc.) and will be 
entered in a Round-the-world race in 96/97. At this point it is not quite
clear whether this is a competition to the Whitbread or whether the Whit-
bread will use these 75 footers. 

In any case, running a round-the-world race with 16 boats, each with a crew
of 10-12 people could be quite interesting. Building 16 boats at a time 
will certainly lower the costs and should get it into the area of the highly
successful 60 footers, used in the last Whitbread.

It turns out that the boats are planned for a new event, i.e. not  related to
the Whitbread, which will start in September '96 from Marseille.

Pierre Fehlmann, interviewed on swiss TV tonight, is also the organizer of the 
race and he is confident that the boats will find charter owners for his
event.