Left: well known shorthanded skipper Gildas Morvan sailing one of the first Pogo 40s in 2006. Multihull racer and respected routeur Dominic Vittet (top left) was also quick to join the new class with one of the early Lombard-designed Akilaria RC1s. One of the first skippers to establish dominance in the Class40 was Giovanni Soldini (top right) – his custom Verdier design Telecom Italia raising the bar significantly when it first appeared in 2008. Another formative Class40 design was Julien Martin’s hard-chine Tyker 1 (left). A more recent launch is Class40 #143, Owen Clarke’s new Longbow (right) – beautifully built by Carbon Ocean Yachts in Rhode Island
encouraging new skippers into the class. After ‘la crise’
Since 2012 32 new Class40s have been built. The production yards, particularly MTC in Tunisia, continue to be a back- bone of the class, with 20 per cent of the market. Meanwhile, Sam Manuard’s semi- custom, fast Mach 40 enjoys a similar market share, along with the Tyker 40 from Guillaume Verdier, another semi- custom build. Together these three designs account for more than half the boats built in the past three years.
Of those 32 boats 15 have been flagged in France and, while the majority of the rest of them are dotted around Europe, four new boats have found their way to the United States and the latest, #146, has gone to Japan where it joins a secondhand boat that we sold there in 2015. And the class continues to spread; notably, we’re receiving many more enquiries today from the Far East than prior to the recession.
Back in the old world
While the shorthanded Transatlantic events that initially defined the class are still a very important part of what this fleet offers, the majority of Class40 racing is now made up of shorter courses within a wide and varied calendar. In 2015 the Rolex Fastnet Race counted as part of the Class40 champi- onship, with 23 boats taking part in their own division, mainly fully crewed (four to five crew in Class40 speak). While the winning Spanish boat, #123, and second and third-place finishers were all launched in 2013, there was still room for Dragon (2008 Owen Clarke) and Cabinet Z (2007 LMN 40) to finish in the top 10. There were 17 other races in the calendar in 2015 with 15 events already
confirmed for this season. The Class40 year kicks off in February with the RORC Caribbean 600 (fully crewed), followed by the Grand Prix Guyader in the Bay of Douarnenez (fully crewed), ramping up to the solo Transat from Plymouth which arrives in the States in time for boats to join the fifth running of the Atlantic Cup.
North America and the Caribbean The Atlantic Cup is a combination of dou- ble-handed and fully crewed racing. It started in Charleston, then visited New York and culminated in a weekend of rac- ing around the cans in Newport, RI. For 2016 the format remains the same, while the finish will be in Portland, Maine, adding a further day and a challenging transit around Cape Cod to the second leg. In North America Class40 remains an amateur/Corinthian arena with no profes- sional projects. The racing is particularly close, old boats mixing it up on the podium with the new. In 2012 I finished Leg 1 of the Atlantic Cup in New York after four nights at sea with boats in sight ahead and astern. Four hours separated the winning professional European team on the brand new #115 from boat #30 in 10th. Three boats in the 15-strong fleet arrived in New York within seven minutes of each other. One local Corinthian team, Bodacious Dream, won leg 2 to Newport and another edged the highly regarded professional Franco/British team of Halvard Mabire and Miranda Merron off the podium to take third overall. Events such as this year’s transatlantic return race from New York to the Lizard will then feed North American boats back into the European scene.
Meanwhile, late in the year there’s even more traffic in the other direction with the
classic shorthanded events feeding boats back to the Caribbean. Half a dozen teams regularly enjoy events such as RORC 600, Pineapple Cup and this year there’s a good Class40 entry for one of the inaugural races from the US into Cuba.
Generation 4
Although on a smaller scale than the transatlantic races, the Class40 Atlantic Cup has well-organised offshore and inshore racing with good media support comparable with what we see in Europe. It has become the target event which has helped draw more North American own- ers into the class in recent years. To date US owners have by and large purchased cost-effective secondhand boats. However, this year saw the launch of our own new fourth-generation design, #143 Longbow. This is the first Class40 to be built on the east coast of the US and has been designed with races such as the Atlantic Cup very much in mind. Longbow is unique, as she is optimised for the average 8-14kt inshore/offshore summer conditions found on the US east coast as well as in local European waters, rather than the transoceanic weather and peak breezes that generally define her European cousins.
Designed from first principles, Long-
bow has many innovative features not seen in the class to date, including a masthead genoa and higher-aspect mainsail, three very narrow ballast tanks each side, a hull shape that sees a crisp chine morphing to round aft sections to reduce heeled wetted surface and numerous other performance- enhancing details, particularly on the deck. Next month we look in detail at Owen Clarke’s first Generation 4 Class40 design
www.owenclarkedesign.com
SEAHORSE 41
q
JM LIOT/DPPI
JM LIOTT/DPPI
BILLY BLACK
BILLY BLACK/DPPI
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85