Energy Observer

Following its launch,[3] the boat left in the Spring 2017[4] for a world tour lasting 6 years in order to optimize its technologies and lead an expedition that will serve durable solutions for energy transition.

The goal is to test and optimize these technological bricks, in order to have them working in harmony, and aim towards total energy autonomy.

Victorien Erussard, offshore racer and merchant naval officer, will lead the expedition, along with Jérôme Delafosse, professional diver and producer of wildlife documentaries.

By their side, a team of over 30 people, architects, designers, and engineers, spreading from Saint-Malo to Paris to Grenoble, have been working since 2015 on refurbishing the catamaran.

Energy Observer is a former race boat that has been reconditioned: Built in Canada in 1983 by naval architect Nigel Irens, under the supervision of sailor Mike Birch, the maxi-multihull marked the evolution of its successors.

[10] The boat has since been lengthened four times and now displays the following dimensions: According to Victorien Erussard "Energy Observer is a conversion that has a double meaning: to recycle a reliable and lightweight catamaran which is an around the world record holder and to invest in research and development, instead of in composites".

Designed in partnership with a naval architect team and the CEA-LITEN [fr] of Grenoble, this experimental vessel is going to be the first with autonomous means of producing hydrogen on board and without emitting greenhouse gas emissions using renewable energies.