Guillaume Verdier, Yacht Designer

 
Guillaume Verdier was the first speaker for 'The Yacht' section of the 1st International Congress of Ocean Sailing and the Marine Environment, held in Barcelona between the 28th and 30th December 2010. He is, without doubt, currently one of the world's most important offshore sailing yacht designers. He graduated in Naval Architecture at the School of Higher Mathematics and Naval Architecture in 1996 and went on to join the Groupe Finot studio, where he specialised in offshore regattas until setting up his own design studio in 2001.

Among his first significant designs were the catamaran "Mediatis Región Aquitania" alongside Yves Parlier, as well as the remodelling of the IMOCA Open 60s VMI and PRB in collaboration with the Finot studio. Later on, along with the VPLP studio he designed the IMOCA Open 60s Safran and Groupe Bel and then Foncia and Virbac Paprec 3 more recently. In terms of sports yachts for short-handed racing, he has also been involved in the America's Cup. Back in 2004 he worked with the Areva Challenge campaign which took part in the 32nd edition of the regatta, held in 2007 in Valencia.

Verdier focussed his delegate speech on correct safety procedures and the possibility of breakage on an IMOCA Open 60 build project.  "The designer must work towards finding the optimum performance/ reliability ratio. A project is made up of many different experts and each of those must have an idea of the level of risk involved in the project and where to draw the line when it comes to an acceptable level of risk. Beyond a mere calculation, it is becoming more and more evident that the design process behind an IMOCA Open 60 must be an interactive process, where all of the parts involved in the 'life' of a yacht must contribute to the design process. Everyone can bring their experience and knowledge to the table to achieve the best design". Verdier also referred to some of the programmes designed to analyse structure and finite elements, which can help carry out a correct risk analysis to see "what will break first, and what will break sooner or later". With the participants pressing for a decision on how to set a value for risk in one part of the project or another, he responded: "I also trust my own experience".

If you would like to see all of the presentations at the Congress click here and apply to the congress.