l’Hydroptère Beside Ferry (Photo bourtesy of l’Hydroptère)
The first part of the European programme ended this weekend when l’Hydroptère came back to Lorient after a trip of a little more than one month. Our main objectives in 2010 were to make people discover the trimaran and to sail in the open sea. Missions accomplished during this first step!
l’Hydroptère left Brittany at the end of May to head to Cowes on the Isle of Wight. During ten days, under a wonderful British sun, l’Hydroptère took off and showed her speed potential to the British experts. Always looking for speed, the flying acrobats of Alain Thébault sailed several times alongside the Red Jet, the high-speed ferry connecting Cowes to Southampton. Stabilized at 40 knots, both crafts offered a unique show with the power of the turbines on the one hand and the delicacy of the foils on the other hand.
l’Hydroptère’s European programme continued with a stopover in the north of Germany at Kiel, during the greatest world nautical event entitled the “Kieler Woche”. During two weeks, numerous journalists, guests or visitors came to visit the boat. Between Olympic Regattas and old gaffers’ parades, l’Hydroptère amazed and left her triple wake in the 128th edition of the Kieler Woche.
l’Hydroptère (Photo courtesy of l’Hydroptère)
The Hydroptère Project Boats (Image courtesy of The Hydroptère Project)
The Hydroptère project is not limited to the performance of the 60-feet trimaran which has beaten two world speed records at an average speed of over 50 knots in 2009 in the Mediterranean. Alain Thébault and his team decided to extend the limits of the project and planned to develop two new boats, with the ultimate objective of sailing around the world in approximately 40 days on l’Hydroptère maxi.
To reach this objective, the team with the help of the ”papés” (retired engineers) and of their scientific adviser, The Swiss Technological Institute in Lausanne, decided to follow the same experimental process as that employed by Alain Thébault in the development of l’Hydroptère and to consider an intermediate step, that being to build on a reduced scale a test model i.e. l’Hydroptère.ch.
At the same time in Lorient, l’Hydroptère is in a shipyard and she should be back in the water in spring.
l’Hydroptère.ch will serve as a lab boat whose main purpose is to test geometries and behaviours in varied real conditions for the development of l’Hydroptère maxi.
As a Swiss-French project l’Hydroptère.ch is being built in two shipyards, one in Brittany and one in Switzerland. She should be launched beginning of summer 2010.
