One of the designers of choice for Jeanneau is the highly acclaimed Philip Briand, a native of France who nowadays has his head office in London. A recent article in Seahorse magazine highlights his astonishing career going back to the early 80’s when he was already well established having won several World titles helming his own designed one tonners, and had designed the first all-carbon 72 foot wing-masted catamaran for Marc Pajot in 1983, and the 12 metre “French Kiss” in 1986!
One of his most recent creations is the beautiful 67m (220ft) ketch “Vertigo” and the statistics are jaw-dropping. This 700 ton yacht (that’s not a misprint) soaked up 800,000 man hours of labour at Alloy Yachts in New Zealand, motors at 18 knots and sails at 20 knots + in 20 knots of wind speed. It has 16 captive winches hidden beneath a false deck that are each the size of a car engine and it draws 5.05m (9.1m with the daggerboard down). It accommodates 12 guests and 11 crew.
“We remain a performance-orientated studio. In my opinion it is the task of the architect to use his expertise and all of the available tools to create the best performing sailing boat”. That is very evident in his designs for Jeanneau!