Groupama III on a steady keel
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Construction of Franck Cammas's new maxi-trimaran Groupama III is well underway at the Maultiplast shipyard. Two and a half months into the project, Yann Pennfornis in charge of the construction, talks about how things are going. Secretary of State for the Sea, François Goulard was visiting the yard along with the CEO of Groupama, Jean-Luc Beaucherel.
Yann Penfornis : "...Since work started in the build shed last December, we have installed the surface plates to make the central hull preforms, crossbeams and floats. Then we added the ribs and wooden plating of the preforms, which were then laminated, coated and painted. The preforms are used to make the moulds except for the central hull which is moulded directly.

This mould is then post-cured at 100°C to homogenise the whole and then vacuum tested to ensure that the mould is perfectly watertight. Everything has gone according to plan. More than 35 people are currently working on Groupama III. All of the toolings will be complete one month from now. Then we will be able to get down to the construction of the multihull itself, which requires a team of 50 people ".

Thinking process

A full-scale model of the aft part of the trimaran (from the mast to the aft cross beam) was built so that Groupama's shore team could get a true idea of the trimaran's nerve centre. Franck Cammas : "...This is an essential step. It enables us to validate our choices in the distribution of volumes and work on living space ergonomics. An identical approach is adopted for the manoeuvring cockpits to determine precisely where the winches and deck hardware will go." Thanks to the model, the yard will be able to think ahead on how they might go about making the cockpit components and the accommodation.
Next major step is the actual start of the construction scheduled for the end of the month of March.

Photo : From left to right. François Goulard, Secretary of State for the Sea, Gilles Ollier/Multiplast, Franck Cammas/Skipper Groupama, Vincent Lauriot-Prévost/Architect of the trimaran, Yann Penfornis/Multiplast and Jean-Luc Beaucherel/CEO of Groupama.