A couple of years ago when Russell Coutts sailed aboard Franck Cammas’s ORMA 60 trimaran Groupama 2 he said teasingly that the experience “gives me some ideas for the future”.

Coutts has since been sharpening up his skills by racing Decision 35 catamarans and I daresay that in the meantime those ideas for the future have been crystallising.

Now he’s come back to Franck Cammas, one of world’s most talented multihull sailors, and his highly successful and now record-breaking partnership with trimaran designers Van Peteghem/Lauriot Prévost (VPLP). French journalist Philippe Elies reports this week that Coutts has been in Paris at the VPLP office to discuss the design of a 90ft trimaran for the America’s Cup, and that Cammas was at that meeting.

Do you get the feeling that there’s a long-term plan at work here?