Daedalus (yacht)
a maxi-catamaran, built Canada 1983
Daedalus is a maxi-catamaran, that participated in numerous open-ocean races under various owners and names.
History
Originally named Formule Tag, this maxi-catamaran was built by Canadair in Québec, Canada in 1983, under the supervision of Canadian skipper Mike Birch and British designer Nigel Irens. The yacht was built to compete in the inaugural Transat Québec-Saint-Malo—a trans-North Atlantic sailing race celebrating Jacques Cartier's 1534 voyage from Saint-Malo, France, to present day Québec City.
It was the largest sailing catamaran of its time, with a length of 85 feet, and participated in a number of races. In 1984 Birch and crew sailed her to a new record for a Day's run, sailing 512 nautical miles in 24 hours.
In 1993, Formule Tag was purchased by Robin Knox-Johnston and future two-time America's Cup winner Peter Blake. The two skippers renamed her ENZA New Zealand (ENZA an acronym for Eat New Zealand Apples). The two launched a 1993 attempt (thwarted by damage) on the Jules Verne Trophy for the fastest sail circumnavigation of the world. They captured the Jules Verne Trophy in 1994, circling the globe in 74 days 22 hours 17 minutes and 22 seconds.
By 1998, British skipper Tracy Edwards had bought the yacht and renamed her Royal & SunAlliance.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Daedalus (yacht)” is a maxi-catamaran, built Canada 1983. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Daedalus, yacht and maxi-catamaran, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3077590. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1983, 1534, 1984 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Daedalus (yacht)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.