Noel Racine’s JPK1010 Foggy Dew has been one of the most outstandingly successful IRC designs of recent years, racking up numerous wins both inshore and in RORC offshore races. Foggy Dew – fully crewed – also finished barely seven minutes behind her sistership and outright race winner Night and Day – which was competing two-handed – in the last Rolex Fastnet Race in 2013
Masters of their field
The JPK shipyard in Brittany is synonymous with winning IRC designs in both shorthanded and fully crewed competition. Jocelyn Blériot asked company founder Jean- Pierre Kelbert the secret to their ongoing success…
‘We’re still very small,’ says Breton Jean- Pierre Kelbert, whose boats have filled a gap between costly prototypes and dull production cruiser-racers, and have taken the French – and the English – IRC circuits by storm since the first JPK960 was launched in 2003.
Today the JPK Composites yard employs 14 people. The range comprises eight models, including a Class 40 and the recently launched 1080, and is particularly well known on the UK scene due to Noel Racine’s Foggy Dew’s many RORC race wins and the Loisons’ now famous 2013 Fastnet victory… plus of course David Frank’s Cowes-based JPK1010 Strait Dealer, which notably wiped the slate
clean at the 2012 IRC Nationals with an unbroken string of race wins! A little conversation with the man who started it all seemed appropriate…
‘In my past life I was a professional windsurfer, having competed since 1983, winning the Europeans in 1988 and 1989 and being the runner-up in the French selection process for the Seoul Olympic Games,’ says Jean-Pierre when prompted about his background.
‘After five years spent in the French Olympic squad I created JPK Composites in 1992 primarily to manufacture high-end windsurfer boards… It all worked quite well until the beginning of the 2000 decade, when the big manufacturers started offshoring their production and really bringing down their costs. ‘I then decided to act on an idea I’d had in mind for a while, which was to build racing yachts. Meeting Jacques Valer, whose designs I knew, was a determining factor since I had a pretty precise idea of what I wanted to achieve; and it turned out that he was on the same wavelength. I knew about his one-off racers, but he had also designed the Hobie Tiger as well as the Alado F18 so fortunately he under- stood production building…
‘I was determined to persuade Jacques to work with me, even though at first he
was not that interested. Since then, however, he’s only worked for us and it’s a great association. We exchange a lot of ideas and today we have a very close relationship.’
Yohan Stephant, nicknamed Yos, also helps when it comes to turning Jacques Valer’s creations (Jacques ‘does not use computers a lot and is still very much a pencil man,’ says Jean-Pierre) into build plans. ‘I usually go to Jacques with an initial idea which we then discuss, and look at what is out there in the market. Once we’re set he draws up the hull shapes, works on the rig and the appendages while I take care of the deck layout and interior design,’ says Yohan. ‘IRC is the most interesting rule for us since it’s now very widespread in terms of market, and I believe that it offers the best handicap racing in the current environ- ment. Furthermore, it’s well thought through and allows us to create good all- rounders, proper seaworthy yachts,’ says Jean-Pierre.
‘I also think that Jacques was the first designer to appreciate that it was possible to come up with a light design for the IRC rule, efficient upwind and able to plane downwind, by minimising waterline beam, pushing the hull volume forward and working on fair, streamlined aft sections.
SEAHORSE 37
RICK TOMLINSON
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