Team Name: Phocoena
Team Members: Bruno FROIDEVAL, Régis LAMARCHE
Hometown: Paris, France
Race vessel: Tricat
LOA: 23.5′
Human propulsion: Sliding Seat
What’s the difference between dolphins and porpoise? Unless you are a marine biologist your answer probably runs somewhere between a shaky “Not much” and an unplaced favoritism to dolphins. Chalk that classism up to mid 70’s reruns that made an aquatic bid for the Lassie/Benji franchises, trading the everyman common ground of a man’s best friend with nichey rockstar vibe of Florida/Cousteau/Seaworld/Aquaman. Flipper’s toothy-smiled chirp-laughs paved the way for “Dolphin safe Tuna” and a rejected look from the 10-year-olds on the whale watching boats “Is it a dolphin?” Nope, it’s a porpoise. Sad face and tears; this camp sucks.
Porpoises? Lost the marketing battle decades ago and play the part of red shirt and get eaten by the Orca whales that people pay to see. Underwater gladiators in a death match– are you not entertained? Are you not entertained?
Team Phocoena may take their name for these under-publicized porpoise megafauna, but the similarities seem to end there. Rather than sticking to home base, our one team hailing from France sent their boat half way across the globe to race their porpoise up the Orca infested coast. Brilliant.
Ditching the sea creature metaphors for superheroes, if France has an equivalent to Batman (L’homme du bat…or whatever), Bruno and Regis might as well live at Le Stately Wayne Manor: mild mannered investment fund managers by day but when they see Le Signal du Bat these two shun their day jobs for adventure pursuits of the highest order: rowing across the Atlantic (51 days), Skiing to the Magnetic North Pole (30 days), 4,000 meter + peaks of Europe, and filling in their downtime with around the buoy races and small boat raids across Europe; from the land that birthed baguettes to the venues where Vikings have a hometown advantage.
Their boat is a contradiction at the name: Tricat. A french designed and built three hulled multi that packs as much speed and discomfort as it can into 24ft and a 2 square meter cabin. It’s a European up and comer that no one has heard of west of Quebec. We are thrilled to welcome the second French boatbuilder to use the R2AK, and the second one to use us as debutante ball for their designs.
Is the R2AK the Flipper of French mutlihull sailing that will make future cans of tuna safe from Tricats? Will the investor adventure duo triumph up the inside of a new coast? Tune in June 8th- Même temps de chauve-souris, même channel de chauve-souris.
Welcome to the R2AK Team Phocoena, thanks for not naming yourself after the French word for seal. This is a family show.