feather. Matthew Salomon vs. Frank Camas in ETF26 season! – feather

ETF26: First races on Spi April 7-10

Third last year with Valentin Pillet and Jorvin Bontemps Mathieu Salomon, who bought the boat Jean-Pierre Dec, returns to the season with new ambitions: “We already won the ETF26 tournament with Valentin when we were sailing with Billy Besson. Last year we lacked a small budget: from The technology side of the chips, there’s maintenance and monitoring, there’s a budget to put it in. We did what we could…we had two-year-old sails already.”

To be able to fight with the best, Vannetais exchanged his raincoat for a suit in order to look for partners: “This year the project is a little better organized even if we are still less than 30.000 euros (out of 120.000 euros) tax-free for a whole season, Including the depreciation of the boat) to fill the envelope. But we have managed to create a wonderful dynamic, especially locally. The boat is called Entreprises du Morbihan and we have been able to find partners almost in the Vannes basin and a historical partner for this boat that continues to follow us (Ultimate Fishing, based in Belle- Île).

“Spooky and cool boat”

In this growing series – “There are nine of us, we’ve had orders from foreign teams running Sail GP. We could find ourselves sold out at the end of the season, ie 12 boats sail” -, places are expensive: “There’s intensity: this year, It is Frank (Camas) who will steer the boat but among others we find John Jameson and Anna Burnet, world champions and vice-Olympic champions in Nacra 17; Olivia Mackay, who is on the New Zealand Cell GB team and England captained by Hannah Mills, double Olympic champion in the 470 (2016 and 2020).

Level and races that follow one another. Over four or five days of racing per event – the first will be Spi Ouest France at La Trinité-sur-Mer next week – crews run five races a day. You have to keep the pace, but if it’s extreme it’s even more exciting: “This boat is well thought out, it’s between a small Flying Phantom catamaran and a GC32 where a lot of people have complex assembly/disassembly, with containers, budgets Which is starting to explode. We are sailing with three on board, and it remains a fairly light boat as it weighs 350 kg. They are very nervous, very good boats. For racing, it’s a great series: we do five races.”

“We can navigate in all conditions”

Simple boat in terms of logistics but a foil catamaran where the sensations are incredible: “we take off very early 8-10 knots of wind but above all we can sail in almost all conditions. Even if there is no air the boat moves forward , Even with a reef in the wind, it’s still safe…”. This is how they can introduce their partners to the people who are sailing on the ship: “SKnowing that the boat flies well and fast enough and that there is little chance of getting such a flying cat: to work internally in companies or in business, sponsors find it to their advantage to make people fly at more than 35 knots! »

If the season resumes in Morbihan next week, four meetings will follow

. Trying to do better than last season, Mathieu Salomon, who has already won the circuit twice, faced Franck Camas, who led the flying cat in the last two events of last season. “He didn’t hesitate long when I proposed to him. Frank also has an interesting insight into the development of boating thwarts.” And he managed to find a place in his already busy schedule.

“Frank will take helm, Valentine (Bilt) trim the sails, especially the mainsail, and I am more in trim for the flight. There must necessarily be a tremendous complementarity between the three of us: if I don’t do what Frank does at the helm or if he’s out of sync with what I do On the level of tin and Valentin was not in the same sense, the boat does not fly. And winning in ETF26, that’s still the goal!