Nick Keig's Three Legs of Mann Trimarans

Nick Keig is a sailor from the Isle of Mann situated in the stormy waters of the Irish Sea. After racing an Iroquois Mk I called "Tom Tom" he gained a love of fast multihulls. However he pushed his cat too fast in rough seas and capsized her. From the account published it appears to have been a wave assisted capsize but it drove Nick to look at Derek Kelsall's designs and to build his K37 racer/cruiser trimaran which he called Three Legs of Mann. He enjoyed great success with this boat in the Crystal Trophy and Round the Island races; then the Round Britain Race and the AZAB race. He achieved a World record for a 24 hour run as well. The boat was sold to a new French owner and Nick built a new K53 racer cruiser trimaran Three Legs of Mann II. With Derek's new box girder connecting beams in grp foam sandwich following the development programme of the 35 foot FT trimaran  where  Derek decided to abandon metal beams, she was sensational boat. Second in the 1978 Round Britain Race and lots of race wins to her credit TLM II was again quickly sold to a French owner and skippered by veteran French yachtsman Alain Glicksman. He was totally in love with her renamed Seiko/RTL  after his watch making sponsor. He thought she was the fastest yacht in the World although he appears to have made some alterations to her.  After sailing her to America he decided to sail her back attempting a West to East record across the North Atlantic with a crew onboard. The story was told in Nicholas Angel's book "Capsize". Sadly they encountered a typhoon in the Gulf Stream and desperate to crack on Alain drove the trimaran extremely hard. Many experienced sailors of the time (eg Rob James) were firmly of the opinion (as was I think Derek) that the capsize was a major skipper error and poor seamanship. Trimaran sailing and how best to handle a lightly built trimaran with low buoyancy floats in extreme weather was in its infancy. The inherent stability seems to have caused a feeling of invincibility until it was too late. Rather like Apache Sundancer the 41  foot catamaran that capsized in the 1970 Round Britain driving to windward in this case in 50 knot plus winds caused a capsize and as TLMII drove up a huge breaking wave, she stalled head to wind, stopped and then the breaking wave meant that she broached causing the effect to be that the wave just tossed her over "like a pancake" in Alain's words.  He spent a lot of the time that he and his crew spent in their life raft blaming Derek's design and thought that if the floats had been a metre longer the boat would not have gone over.  Analysis suggests that she cartwheeled backwards over the lee float so maybe if she had 150 % plus buoyancy in the floats and they were therefore bigger and longer she may have slid away from the wave. Certainly in the replacement for her that Derek designed for Nick Keig Three Legs of Mann III, the floats were full buoyancy at 150% and that magnificent tri not only took Nick to second place in the 1980 OSTAR but still sails under French ownership today with many ocean crossings to her credit. Subsequent Kelsall trimarans had bigger and longer floats than TLM II as Triple Jack and Trilogy III demonstrate. They reverted to the well tested Toria/Trifle proportions.   As for Nick he went on to build two more Kelsall yachts, one Legs of Mann IV (aka VSD) was revolutionary designed pure racing catamaran  that I will describe separately. His last Legs of Mann V was a superb cruising racing catamaran that is pictured in the Kelsall catamarans section and the drawings of TLM II and III also feature in the trimaran drawings  while LOM V drawings are in the catamaran drawings section too. Nick's career was interesting as he went on to develop a revolutionary very fast motor boat as a prototype fast Naval vessel and i am sure very many other things too. I know that he is now approaching his tenth decade and although I have approached to his son and grandson to ask them to help me with this project and my hope that Nick would share the story of his adventures with building and sailing Kelsall designs with me, Nick has it seems chosen not to do so which is his privilege but he is clearly an incredible character who deserves to have his achievements more widely shared somewhere I hope.