profession: pilot career: actor - Jet Aviation

Innovation | Decision
Making boats faster with carbon composites
32 Outlook 02/2008
The Decision company uses carbon
composites to build things that
need to be light and strong. It
built the Alinghi boats that won
the America’s Cup twice and will
make large parts of the first
airplane to fly around the world
powered only by solar energy.
Bertrand Cardis sailed around the world
from September 1981 until May 1982 as
part of Pierre Fehlmann’s crew on the
Disque d’Or 3. As participants in the
Whitbread Race, they went from Portsmouth
to Cape Town, Cape Town to
Auckland, Auckland to Mar de Plata in
Argentina, and then back to Portsmouth.
The team spent 136 days on the water,
braved 50-knot winds and 15-meter
waves, and finished in fourth place.
Cardis went home to Switzerland and
took a job at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology in Lausanne, where he had
written a master’s thesis on hydraulics. He
also started a small business making
surfboards. A year later Fehlmann suggested
they build a boat that could win the
1985/1986 Whitbread Race. Together
with the Swiss Ocean Racing Club, the
two men founded the company Decision,
with Fehlmann in charge and Cardis as
the main engineer. They began to build
the 25-meter UBS Switzerland.