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What do you do
to become a firm
of naval architects?
Well first of all
I think you need
a huge amount of passion
and a lot of luck too.
I think
I was very lucky
at the start of my career.
Above all though
you need a huge amount of the subconscious.
I think the subconscious
is involved as regards the risk taking too
- knowing or being able to go
beyond the norms
or the rules of the moment.
This time we have indeed worked
for three teams.
We managed to do that
my virtually compartmentalising
three divisions inside the office.
Within the context of
the research and development,
the same people
that did the research and development
did it for the three teams
At a given moment we arrived at the point
where we had to start building things
so at that stage
the three-way split went into operation,
which means we made the switch
from the theory to the practice
and that’s where the compartmentalisation began.
I think you can see evidence
of that in the deck layouts,
the interior fit-out
and the way in which each crew
uses the boat,
which are all completely different.
The different nationalities
of the three different clients
can be seen straightaway
in the different projects.
The Anglo-Saxons just get down
to things without asking questions
and let us get on with our jobs to some extent,
while the more Latin projects
and the Groupama project in particular,
is the reverse of that.
By this I mean that,
though they of course let us get on with things too,
you have to provide explanations for everything
the whole time.
A vast amount of energy goes
into the presentation
and the explanation,
and in my view this energy
could or should go into other things.
It’s certainly very, very different.
Franck in particular is highly involved
in the project.
He wants to know everything
and understand everything.
That would seem to me to be a good thing
and something very natural.
Some new ideas come out of these exchanges.
We’ve always been used to managing
a certain number of responsibilities
for the teams which aren’t that big,
but with Groupama,
there are people who are already in place
to manage that,
so sometimes
we have to work together on that
and there are exchanges to be made.
At times that was difficult because,
essentially,we aren’t used to doing that,
but we accept that
it’s a different way of working and,
though it wasn’t easy all the time,
it’s previously been successful
for Groupama team
so there’s no reason
why they should change
their way of working.
In France there’s a culture for the absolute
and in some way the theory is more important
than the result.
It’s obvious to me that whoever ultimately wins a race
it’s a symbiosis between the design
and the crew.
That means that without a crew
who knows how to use the boat
or uses the boat correctly,
victory will never be achieved.
As such there’s no point having
the best theoretical design on the one hand
and the best theoretical crew on the other because
if there is no symbiosis between the two
it’ll go nowhere.