From the America’s Cup to power trimarans
The name Nivelt will forever be associated with his accomplice Michel Joubert, who passed away in 2016. However, the path taken by this naval architect is quite singular. It was pretty unusual to be discovering sailing on a multihull back in the 1960s. All this in a family context that was as instrumental as it was crazy!
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Publié le
18/05/2021
Par
François Trégouët
Numéro :
178
Parution :
Jul.
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Aug.
2021
When his father decided to build a GRP catamaran in the family’s living room in Courbevoie, near Paris, Bernard Nivelt was still in elementary school. Alerted by the smell of styrene that the young boy gave off, the school’s management summoned his parents... An anecdote that did not prevent Bernard from taking to the water for his first sail aboard that Exocet, which had been “home-designed and built”. His studies? A bit «chaotic»: although kicked out of the INSA Lyon engineering school, «which is still an achievement», Bernard completed a DEA (now known as a master’s degree) on methods of dr…
