Lorient - Launch of a giant of the seas, the Maxi Banque Populaire IX

by CDK Technologies on 31 Oct 2017 After over 135,000 man-hours, numerous meetings between Team Banque Populaire, the designers (naval architects VPLP), the number crunchers (HDS/Gsea Design), and the design office and teams from CDK and Keroman Technologies, the Maxi Banque Populaire IX was launched on 30 October in front of the Keroman Technologies yard in Lorient. The 32-metre Ultimate trimaran (a new generation of maxi multihulls designed for singlehanded racing) is making for her port of registry, Lorient La Base, before beginning a series of sea trials.

Flying across all the seas of the globe...

Designed to be helmed singlehanded around the globe by her skipper Armel Le Cleac’h, this extraordinary boat joins the first Ultimate multihull to be issued by CDK Technologies back in 2015, Francois Gabart’s trimaran MACIF. Perhaps her most striking feature is the installation of foils and rudders with lifting surfaces (fins enabling the adjustment of the boat’s longitudinal trim). These appendages should translate as speeds never before achieved by boats of this size by aiming for extensive ‘flight’ situations.

A build process spanning nearly two years

It has taken 20 months, 135,000 man-hours and 100 people to successfully complete this construction (of which 100,000 hours solely involved the CDK Technologies yard). The finesse of the forms is outstanding and she features a highly innovative helming station. Every detail has been studied at length by the designers, Team Banque Populaire and the CDK Technologies design office, so as to optimise the craft and make her reliable, with the focus on saving weight and enhancing performance. The target cruising speed: 50 knots or nearly 90km/hr.

A latest generation mast and boom: CDK Technologies at the cutting edge

CDK Technologies successfully launched into the manufacture of large-scale carbon masts in 2015, with the delivery of an innovative 42m mast.

Sticking to this approach and taking advantage of the supreme performance of its 50m autoclave, which is the only one of its kind in Europe capable of creating wing masts, CDK Technologies has devised for this boat a particularly innovative technique for manufacturing large masts, enabling the design of the profile to be optimised, whilst making the spar more lightweight. This 100% CDK technology has also been applied to the manufacture of the Banque Populaire IX’s boom.

CDK and Banque Populaire, an historic collaboration

A genuine synergy has been created between the CDK Technologies yard and Team Banque Populaire. Indeed, the yard has built the majority of the Team’s boats, including the Maxi Trimaran Banque Populaire V in 2008, to date the largest racing multihull ever built.

Providing so much more than just a service, there is a true collaboration between the teams from CDK Technologies and Banque Populaire. The permanent exchanges between the Team’s design office and that of CDK Technologies, under Stéphane Digard, with assistance from Matthieu Kloek and Romain Cachia, have enabled Armel Le Cleac’h to have an optimised boat, which is ready to take her debut flight.

A foiling solution in the vanguard of innovation

A derivative of the solutions fine-tuned in the America’s Cup, a unique system for manoeuvring the foils (these huge aileron-style appendages added to the floats) lies at the heart of the successful, innovative approach by Team Banque Populaire in collaboration with the teams at CDK Technologies.

Objective Round the World 2019

Upon her launch on 30 October, the Maxi Banque Populaire IX will begin a long period of fine-tuning. Inevitably, this will be an intense time for the teams at CDK Technologies, whose greatest reward will be to see this jewel of technology, which has required all the yard’s energy for the past 20 months, take flight for the very first time.

VERBATIM

Frederic Chenot, Head of Development at Banque Populaire : “It’s always an extremely moving moment seeing a new boat hit the water for the first time. I’m particularly happy to be sharing it today with all those who have contributed to her design with such ingenuity and worked on her construction for so many months. This is the reward for a collaboration of unfailing quality.”

Ronan Lucas, Director of the Banque Populaire team: “CDK Keroman Technologies is a long love story, indeed we’ve been working together for over ten years. The result is high quality every time, despite the growing complexity. I’m proud to launch such an accomplished boat. She is the fruit of this collaboration, where the exceptional quality of the human relationship is always constructive with the aim of producing the most perfect product possible.”