that a foiler might not win, but it is closer than many people believe. ‘What we learned is that the foilers still need to improve a lot to be clearly more likely to win the Vendée than PRB. And I do not see how they can do that in the little time left; at the same time I similarly don’t see how I could have installed foils and caught up with the new foilers in time.’


Vincent concludes: ‘I know that I can win the Vendée Globe with my boat. What gives us, from our point of view, the best chance to succeed is to remain as we are. The Vendée is about balancing reliability against taking too many technical risks. If at any stage last summer we’d felt there were good reasons to go with foils then we would have done it. But that was never the case.’ However, his decision in 2016 does not prevent Vincent from believing that foils are indeed the future. He adds: ‘Besides, I am full of ideas to put foils on monohulls but those ideas were not applicable to my current boat. And they are different ideas from what VPLP came up with… we will not be copying the foils you see now.’ He laughs: ‘I keep these ideas for later.’ So instead of showing foils ‘à la mode’, PRBfeatures typical Juan K ‘bumpy’ rudders (similar to those on Rambler88). Philippe Ouhlen from Juan’s Valencia office told us: ‘These rudders are designed for the worst case scenario of high steering angles (an aggressive dynamic situation which is often encountered offshore with these boats).


‘In these conditions, for the same surface area a rudder with tubercules stalls later than one without. That allows us to design a smaller rudder to achieve the same stall angle, and since this rudder is smaller then global drag is reduced.’ He added: ‘There are several benefits. First, the drag reduction


at normal steering angles easily outweighs a small drag increase at very low angles (less than 3°). Second, with the high rudder angles common reaching (Imoca 60s demand an aggressive steering style), the nodules – or bumps – keep the water flow better attached. Finally, when the tip of the windward rudder meets the water it is at a bigger angle than the leeward blade, at which point these “whale-like” additions can help calm the typically messy free surface effects.’


And first prize goes to…


Just before the start of the two-handed Transat AG2R the members of the Figaro Bénéteau Class Association decided that the new Figaro 3 to be introduced in 2019 will be designed by VPLP, well- known multihull designers and co-designers with Guillaume Verdier of all the latest Imoca 60s.


There were three finalists in the contest. The opponents of VPLP were Finot/Conq working in association with Samuel Manuard, and the Mer Forte office managed by Michel Desjoyeaux. The VPLP team were also assisted by Imoca and multihull skippers Yann Eliès and Pascal Bidégorry. So the new Figaro One Design will be a 9.75m monohull (the maximum size permitted), 3.40m wide and weigh just under 2,800kg.


Quentin Lucet from VPLP explained: ‘Our goal was to have the lightest possible boat, with a powerful hull to compensate for using less water ballast while minimising wetted surface area for light airs and offwind sailing. To compensate for a modest keel area we also included a trim tab, plus the most advanced foil designs that we developed for the Imocas.’


Later on we did ask Vincent Lauriot Prévost, co-founder of VPLP, to tell us more about the next toy for the Figaristes. But he asked us to wait a little because the other members of the production group, including the Bénéteau shipyard, the builder and Le Figaro newspaper, have yet to conclude their input to the Comité de Pilotage… which also of course includes several famous Figaro champions.


To be frank, while VPLP will definitely be the Figaro 3 designers,


there is a lot that remains to be discussed inside the steering group before the official announcement later this month. Nor was everyone happy with the process they had just been a


part of. In fact, Denis Juhel from Mer Forte, presenting the narrowest (3.20m) and lightest (2,500kg) proposal, with a canting keel plus numerous other ‘Desjoyeaux innovations’, refused to answer any more enquiries about the boat they had submitted.


Only Finot-Conq-Manuard were prepared to release an image of their Figaro 3 candidate; eschewing a canting keel (cost), instead going for plenty of form stability plus foils for use offshore. It’s certainly an attractive boat – now we wait to see the competition


Of the three final groups, only Erwan Gourdon from Finot/Conq/ Manuard was even prepared to show an illustration of their design.‘Our presentation to the Class Figaro Bénéteau lasted just 45 minutes,’ he said, ‘and shortly afterwards we simply received an SMS telling us that our project had not been selected…’ Actually, the three projects were quite different. ‘Our design,’ said Erwan, ‘was a little shorter than the others, more extreme (beamier), having more sail area (with a long bowsprit like the Mini 6.50s), and was oriented towards offshore racing. ‘We had a fixed keel and Imoca-type foils; our investigations into the foils showed they become “profitable” at about 12kt of wind and should bring as much as 30 per cent more speed when reaching in heavy air… But they are useless upwind. Our sugges- tion was to keep the foils retracted inside the hull when racing round the cans, only using water ballast, and then deploy the foils offshore to really power up the boat.’


Joking about what happens in port, Erwan said that when retracted their foils only stuck out some 10cm from the hull, so really ‘they are just expensive fenders’.


By the way, construction of the Figaro 3 will be in foam sandwich, which is much better that the balsa core used for the Figaro 2. Patrice Carpentier


NEW ZEALAND


In all the major mainstream areas of international yachting – the America’s Cup, the Olympics, Whitbread and Volvo round-the- world events, the Ton Cups – New Zealand has triumphed at various times. The one area in which Kiwis have been under- represented is solo offshore racing.


Chris Sayer battled enormous odds to finish the Mini Transat twice in third place, although the second time was as a ‘pirate’ entry when the organisers controversially refused to recognise his qualifying sail. Graham Dalton, brother to Grant Dalton, twice competed in solo round-the-world events, failing to finish with a well-funded but ill-fated Imoca 60 HSBC entry, and then completing the circumnavigation but officially being knocked out of the race through a series of disasters in a subsequent 50ft campaign. Volvo Ocean Race winner Mike Sanderson then took Graham Dalton’s modified Imoca 60 to third in class in the 2004 Transat race, under Pindar’s colours, but has not ventured into the solo offshore scene since. Earlier, Dick McBride completed the first BOC Around Alone race in his super-slim City of Dunedinyacht, but ended up far down the leaderboard.


Some Kiwi solo sailors have completed remarkable solo voyages, including David Lewis’s circumnavigation of Antarctica (he also competed in the first solo race across the Atlantic), Gerry Clarke’s deep Southern Ocean passage and Naomi James’s circumnavigation. And a doughty bunch of Kiwis, many in very unlikely boats, regularly tackle the formidable Tasman crossing in a little-recognised race from New Plymouth to Mooloolaba. Our most recent standard-bearer is Conrad Colman, who was born and lived in New Zealand until he was 15 and then moved to the USA, but is now based in the heart of solo racing at Lorient, France. He has raced the Mini Transat, the Route du Rhum, won the Global Ocean Race (two-handed), completed the Barcelona


SEAHORSE 13


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