Dimitri Nicolopoulos of Areva Challenge talks about FRA-93

Areva Challenge, the French America's Cup challenger, finished their 2006 training period on Thursday afternoon. They had been sailing with their brand new boat FRA-93 for a couple of weeks and the holiday break is a very good opportunity to assess her performance. Dimitri NicolopoulosDesign Coordinator of Areva Challenge

Click for more info, design team coordinator for the French syndicate, gives us his first impressions after 8 days of testing:

When we did set up for our maiden sail last week, it was one of those moments everyone is looking for in these campaigns. A blend of plain happiness and high stress about the ‘baby’ behaviour at sea. In our case, things went really well and on the first day we could exceed slightly the heel targets we did set ourselves, sailing upwind under main and genoa. After this first shake down, we really got into testing mode on the second day. The first thing you want to achieve with an ACC yacht is to make sure the structure is up to the expectations and you can sail fully heeled without breaking anything. The loads are huge, exceeding 50T on the mast step and 100T on the keel root and they travel through tiny (this is how you perceive them under load…) carbon bulkheads. This is one of the keys to the yacht performance as all teams are looking for light internal structure without compromising the stiffness of the hull. Light structure in order to have a heavier bulb and achieve the same stability with a narrower (less drag) hull. Stiffness to be able to tension the head stay without bending the boat too much which would reduce the sailing waterlength thus decreasing performance. Those two objectives being antagonist, we did spend quite some time developing numerical simulations and scratching our head to achieve the targets. Thanks to the creativity of Guillaume Verdier, Benjamin Muyl and Hervé Penfornis (and many many many work hours…), we have reached those targets we did set ourselves 2 years ago.

FRA-93 of Areva Challenge sailing for the last time in 2006, just before the holiday break. Wind conditions in December turned out to be better than expected, allowing the French team to test their boat. Valencia, 20 December 2006. Photo copyright Frank Socha / Areva Challenge

So after theorizing for two years, building for 6 months, setting her up here in Valencia for 4 weeks here we were scrutinizing all noises inside the hull and monitoring the stresses and loads. It goes like that: ‘OK guys, lets load up to 20° of heel and stay there for 5’. Then everyone goes quiet and we listen to noises and look at the computer screens. If nothing happens we climb to 25° and so on. From time to time you ear an unusual noise and you perform immediately a big ease of the sails to check everything before restarting the sequence again. On board 93 we have a couple of people to monitor the boat. Designers, Yannick Le Morvan the shore and construction manager, the boat captain ‘Billy’ P. Merrington and a few other sailors. My task for these days being on board was to coordinate the efforts of everyone and make sure we don’t lose valuable time but also do not push 93 beyond limits. When wind is lighter, we switch to system testing (hoist a spinnaker for example). This less stress than structural testing but fills the ‘to do’ lists with many small modifications and improvements. Meanwhile Bernard Nivelt has been spending quite some time looking at 93 motion through the sea from our Mother Boat with André Jacques and Cyrille Douillet developing their ‘curve rider’ attitude behind the computers screens to be able to feed us with real time data on 93. After the day sailing, everyone involved comes to the day debrief, the ‘work list’ is defined as well as the testing program of the following day.

So far, we have been happy with the results and able to achieve pretty much all the targets of the session. The first reward was coming from inside the team with many people coming to see us designers and boat builders with a smile and encouraging words. FRA-93 appears to be well balanced and sailors start to become accustomed with their new ‘office’. Of course being narrower and with a lower freeboard than the old 60, there are quite a few adjustments that need to take place but sailors were involved continuously on the deck layout design therefore they are quickly adapting and seem happy right now with FRA-93. The year sailing ended yesterday with a pretty rough ride under the rain and with big waves. It is good to be able to log hours in tough conditions and sort out the problems, when they occur, as early as possible. Today the boat although not 100% tested (we need once again to Log more hours) is deemed good for service and we will resume sailing in January with the race crew fully on command most of the time. We (the design team) have succeeded in keeping a little bit of time every week for our special projects. January and February will be dedicated to fine tuning of the balance, installation of new hardware to come and continuously work on the sail development with Andrew Lechte and Bruno Dubois. This period is very short and we will really have to work as a team to make sure information is carried from the sailors to the designers and appropriate development decisions taken altogether. All the efforts of our performance group under the leadership of Olivier Douillard until now will then hopefully help us move in the right direction most of the time.