PETE GOSS, the West Country sailor who built and then lost the ill-fated experimental maxi-cat Team Philips, is back.

Just over five years after he and his crew abandoned that extraordinary boat in a ferocious mid-Atlantic storm during her first significant voyage, the 43-year-old former Royal Marine from Torpoint in Cornwall launched a new multihull campaign in Plymouth yesterday. This time, however, the boat is an altogether more modest proposition.

The Seacart 30 is a new production design trimaran from Sweden. It is 90ft shorter than Team Philips and has a single mast that is also nearly 90ft shorter than the twin wingmasts on the maxi-cat.

Together with Paul Larsen, the Australian sailor, Goss has entered one of the first models to emerge from the factory in this year’s two-handed Shetland Round Britain and Ireland race that sets sail from Plymouth in early June.

The Seacart is extremely light and powerful and can reach speeds of up to 30 knots. Goss, who first made his name when he rescued Raphaël Dinelli, the French sailor, in the Southern Ocean during the 1996 Vendée Globe, loves a challenge and in all but the most benign conditions the little trimaran will be a handful.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, given the nightmare he went through with Team Philips and his bitterness over the way he believes that he was treated by some sections of the national media, Goss was extremely sensitive about talking about his past yesterday.

Speaking after he had addressed a press conference at the Royal Western Yacht Club, he was asked by The Times if he had come to any conclusions about what went wrong five years ago? “Not to share, no, no, because you’ll put all sorts of stuff on it,” he replied. “I’m not going to talk about it.”

Asked what he has been up to since Team Philips was lost, he said he had been leading “a happy and fulfilled life” and had enjoyed what he called “not public” sailing.

Having avoided the media for five years, Goss said that he had decided to go public with this new campaign purely to highlight Cornwall Playing for Success, the charity for which he is raising money. “I don’t do publicity unless I have a reason to and I haven’t had a reason to, but I do now,” he said. “We want to do this charity so I’ll do some publicity but I’ve no wish to be a celebrity and I’ ve always run it like that.”

During the press conference Goss was asked whether this new project might lead him back to round-the-world sailing and he indicated that he has not ruled this out. “I don’t know. We’ll get to the end of the Round Britain first,” he said. When asked to elaborate, he seemed jumpy. “How can you ask a question like that?” he said. “I’m too young to retire — I mean Christ — you know, no, this [project] is what I’m doing. This is what we’re launching and this is what I’m here to talk about.”

Aside from Goss and Larsen’s, there will be up to 44 other boats on the startline for the race, ten of them multihulls. The four-yearly contest is a generally amateur event for yachts between 30ft and 50ft in length and features four 48-hour pitstops at Kinsale, Barra, Lerwick and Lowestoft.

Goss and Larsen should be among the first to finish, all being well, in a boat that flies its central hull in under ten knots of wind. The pair, who are both well-known for enjoying roughing it at sea, say that they will take turns to sleep on the windward hull in their foul-weather gear when conditions permit.

“We expect the boat to be extremely fast . . . but it will be a case of battening down the hatches in rough weather,” Larsen said.