Phaedo3

The need for sailing at extreme speed under sail has apparently taken a powerful hold on Lloyd Thornburg, Yesterday Team Phaedo introduced a new addition to their stable, the MOD70 Phaedo3, for Monday’s start of the RORC Caribbean 600. Thornburg told the press he’d secretly been trying to put together a MOD70 project for the last two years.

Phaedo3 will be joined at the Antigua starting line of the Caribbean 600 by San Franciscan Peter Aschenbrenner’s Nigel Irens 63-ft trimaran, Paradox. Both trimarans have a chance to break the course record of 40 hours, 11 minutes set by the ORMA 60 Region Guadeloupe in the inaugural race. AsParadox is a half racer, half cruiser, and Phaedo3 is an all-out racer, the latter has the much better shot at the record.

Both trimarans were built as tamed-down versions of the wildly fast and fragile ORMA 60 trimarans. But it certainly hasn’t seemed to limit their performance much. We sailed aboard Thomas Siebel’s Orion, the only MOD70 on the West Coast, one afternoon on Banderas Bay. In winds of about 20 knots, the trimaran was screaming along at up to 34 knots. We couldn’t believe it.

That’s nothing compared to what Orion crewmembers tell us the MOD70 has done on San Francisco Bay, namely hitting 44 knots! If we’re not mistaken, that’s just a tad faster than was achieved by any of the 72-ft America’s Cup 34 catamarans. And unlike the America’s Cup cats, MOD70 tris aren’t foilers. Then, too, one of the MOD70s flipped in a moderate breeze during a race off Ireland. The video for that is all over the Internet.

Phaedo3 is MOD70 #3, previously known as Fonica when it was campaigned by the great Michel Desjoyeaux. He will be along for the Caribbean 600. The rest of the all-star crew will consist of Brian Thompson, Sam Goodchild, Pete Cumming, Sam Wooga Bason, Warren Fitzgerald and Romain Attanasio.