GRETA GRETA LOA
26ft 2in (8m) beAm
6ft 6in (2m) DrAught
1ft 8in (0.6m)
DispLAcement
1,764lb (0.8 tonnes) engine
Beta 14 buiLDer
Rodney Hallam, Baltic Wharf, Totnes
Left: proud as punch – Nigel Irens watches as Greta is named. Below: out on the river with the family
Apricot represented a new kind of trimaran, and its composite construction had an enormous impact on the growth of ocean racing. Times were changing. Sailing had become professional, attracting big sponsorship and yards were dedicated to the highly sophisticated technology needed to realise designs. The day of the sailor-builder was over and Irens became a consultant designer; the focal point of a team embracing all aspects of concept realisation. Working between the UK and France, he developed a series of world-beating multihulls for the stars of grand prix ocean racing: the 72ft (22m) Fleury Michon VIII; the 60ft (18.3m) Fujicolour and Fujicolour II, Laiterie Mont St-Michel, Region Haute Normandie, Biscuits La Trinitaine and Banque Populaire; the 75ft (23m) B&Q/ Castorama for Ellen MacArthur and the 97ft (29.6m) IDEC for Francis Joyon. Irens tells of an experience in Senegal when, in 1988, he took a trip in a pirogue with a 15hp outboard and was struck by the fact that this simple canoe could hit 14 knots. That turn of speed inspired the creation of iLan Voyager (iLan is shorthand for incredible long and narrow), a 70ft (21.3m) powered trimaran that was quick, circumnavigating the British Isles in 72 hours. That aforementioned “proof of concept” theory came to the fore on iLan Voyager through the use of low displacement to length ratio, or LDL. As Irens says of his work with LDL, he is “improving displacement hulls and making them slender enough to minimise wave-making drag.” His work with sailing monohulls like Fararer, Roxane and Romilly is related, involving narrow waterlines, but it is different from LDL, which applies only to displacement power vessels. iLan Voyager proved the LDL concept for a powered trimaran, and this was further developed in the 1998 113ft (34.4m) Cable and Wireless Adventurer, which circumnavigated the world in 74 days, including 15 stops. Irens’ first LDL-powered monohull was the Range Boat 39, built in 2003 of wood-epoxy construction with classic looks reminiscent of pre-war racing motor launches and New England lobster boats. This led to the 62ft (18.9m) Molly Bán (pronounced ‘Bawn’), a motor yacht that will cruise at 17 knots on her single 300hp
Their trimarans were stiffer, beams and floats became discrete structures and they went faster, consistently beating conventional yachts, though also gaining a reputation for instability. In 1978 Nigel Irens and Mark Pridie had won their class in the Round Britain Race in Jan of Santa Cruz. She’d been capsized in the Atlantic by her original owner then rebuilt by Irens and Mike Birch, a project typical of a period when many racing sailors were also boatbuilders – and in Irens’ case, designers too. Based outside Bristol, he developed three innovative projects, starting with the 40ft (12.2m) trimaran Gordano Goose, in which he won a 24-hour singlehanded race; the 60ft (18.3m) trimaran Apricot in 1985, in which he won the Round Britain and Ireland race with Tony Bullimore; and finally the 70ft (21.3m) powered trimaran iLan Voyager. Irens believed that Gordano Goose had taken one set of ideas as far as they would go in the pursuit of speed. CLASSIC BOAT FEBRUARY 2014
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