Trophée des Multicoques: The Trophée revival

Created in 1980 by ESIEA, in co-operation with the Société Nautique de La Trinité sur Mer (SNT) and France’s National Multihull Union (UNM), the Trophée des Multicoques represented a key moment of international offshore sail racing, and now the Trohée is back, thanks to French offshore veterans Marc Guillemot and Dominic Bourgeois. Scheduled for August 2018, that is a little over two months before the start of the Route du Rhum single-handed transatlantic race, he event is intended to become a unique gathering of  multihulls.

From the very first edition, held in May 1980, the Trophée des Multicoques brought together  as many as twenty-two boats: ten racing multihulls, including the future OSTAR winner, American Phil Weld on his trimaran Moxie; the event’s winner Éric Loizeau on Gauloises IV and Éric Tabarly on the foiler Paul Ricard, who that same year would be the first to break the historic  overall transatlantic speed record. For three days, the Bay of Quiberon in south-west Brittany, was under the spotlight.

The festival of multihulls

As a consequence, the Trophée des Multicoques triggered the interest around multihulls, particularly in France, involving more naval architects from the USA like Dick Newick and Walter Greene, and from Europe like UK’s Derek Kelsall, Nigel Irens, Phil Morrison and John Shuttleworth and France’s Sylvestre Langevin, Xavier Joubert, Gilles Ollier, the Groupe Graal, Gilles Gahinet, Michel Joubert, Marc Lombard, Philippe Briand, Vincent Lauriot-Prévost & Marc van Peteghem (VPLP) just to name a few. 
This resulted in a development of multihull design, especially as large ones were concerned, to the likes of likes of William Saurin skippered by Eugène Riguidel (27.10 metres) or Charente Maritime II, Royale II and Formule Tag.  The event kept on growing and in 1983, the fourth edition of the Trophée des Multicoques gathered no less than thirty-three offshore racing boats and twenty-five racer-cruisers! 

Defined by the organizers as the “festival of multihulls”, the event will come back next summer, from Tuesday 28 to Friday 31 August 2018, visiting  several locations in and around Brittany’s Morbihan region. The Trophée will run some two months before the start of the Route du Rhum, scheduled for November 4, 2018, and is intended to be both competitive racing and a social get-together for the skippers having their final training in the run-up of the singlehanded transatlantic race. 

An unmissable meeting

Organizers expect to have a huge line-up, with no less than seven big trimarans -thirty metres  and over-  like IDEC-Sport, Sodebo Ultim, Spindrift, Actual, MACIF, Gitana 17 and Banque Populaire IX;, at least seven Multi50s FenétreA-Mix Buffet, French Tech Rennes-Saint Malo, Réauté Chocolat, Arkema, Celia Village, Drékan Group and Solidaires en Peloton-ARSEP, plus the maxi-trimaran Prince de Bretagne, and the MOD-70s Concise, Maserati, Phaedo, and boats from the former ORMA class. 
Entrants to Route du Rhum like Acapella, Friends & Lovers and Happy and some and the ‘golden oldies’ Hydrofolie, PIR2, Moxie, Gordano Goose, Nova, Région de Picardie, VSD, may also take part. 

Supported by ports and clubs from the Morbihan area, the Trophée des Multicoques 2018 will visit  stopovers between Lorient and Vannes, including Quiberon, La Trinité sur Mer, and the Gulf of Morbihan and will be made up of offshore and coastal courses for larger and smaller boats respectively. Rendez-vous is set from Tuesday 28 to Friday 31 August 2018, for a celebration of multihulls sailing, offshore and ashore.

Potential skippers/teams:

Francis Joyon (IDEC Sport), Sébastien Josse (Gitana 17), Yann Guichard (Spindrift), Yves Le Blévec (Actual), Armel Le Cléac’h (Banque Populaire IX), Thomas Coville (Sodebo), Lionel Lemonchois (Prince de Bretagne), Armel Tripon (Réauté Chocolat), Charlie Capelle (Acapella), Loïck Peyron (Happy)…