Thirty five years ‘young’. The Young 88 was designed in 1980 but most boats are still sailing, of which 30 race regularly on Auckland Harbour where the class has lured back many of the biggest names in New Zealand yachting. Good one design day-racing keelboats will generally deliver close racing; throw in a supply of inexpensive used boats plus a vigorous circuit and the attraction is obvious
moment it is hard to decide what to do, but the move forward looks encouraging and the initial results are on balance positive. ‘This is not a case of smoke and mirrors. The stronger the wind and the wider the angle, the more pleasing is the result with the foils… particularly when reaching. We undertook a lot of compar- isons in the true wind angle range of 80° to 130°.’ These are the conditions that prevail during the TJV and so by the end of the month the top skippers will know a lot more about the trade-offs. It will then be time to make the final big technical decisions for the 2016 Vendée Globe. The Vendée course is mostly reaching or running, as far as the Horn, but the race can still be won or lost on the long trek northward back to Les Sables. A difficult leg for the foilers.
Recently Vincent Riou declared: ‘No, I am not actually a fan of foils. There is no reason to modify PRB. But we will continue to look cautiously at what is going on.
‘If a real advantage is identified we will go for it; the switch can happen more quickly than you might think. After the TJV and the Solo Transatlantic return race, which means before the end of the year, everyone will have made their choices for the Vendée Globe… depending also on timing and budget. ‘Today I am very happy with my PRB. This boat has always been fast and has been continually improved; particularly last year when a major effort was undertaken with the changes for the new rule and also a change of daggerboards. It took us several years to develop a top boat, fast and also reliable. That process was not always easy and we had major breakages along the way. Now I know my boat perfectly. Let the others do the work now.’ In the Class40 the favourites are the two new Mach 40s designed by Samuel Manuard that were presented in our last issue, along with their successful predecessor, the older Mach 40 originally named GDF Suez. In 2013 she won nearly all the Class40 races including the biannual TJV.
Other boats that should do well include the Humphreys design Bretagne-Crédit Mutuel, sailed by two Figaro experts (Nicolas Troussel and Corentin Horeau), the Guillaume Verdier-designed Le Conservateurand the British Ker design Concise, built by McConaghy
and with Jack Bouttell and Gildas Mahé at the helm. For sure, the first boat to cross the line in Itajaí will be one of the four giant multihulls entering the race. And it could be the new 30m Macif, the first design to be launched for the new 100ft solo class that will race around the world in two years’ time. The innovative 21m-wide VPLP design was launched in August at Lorient where she was built by CDK, working alongside skipper François Gabart’s team with further input from Multiplast who built the main hull. Altogether the build involved 100 people and required some 100,000 man-hours! The new Macifis light, the floats are narrower than on previous VPLP oceanic multihulls and a lot of effort has been spent on the foils, with Macifexpected to ‘fly’ in some conditions... Four years after the launch of the first Macif (the Imoca 60), which won both the big solo events she competed in, the Vendée Globe and the Route du Rhum, François Gabart and Macif now start a new chapter with this Ultim design. The objective of this two- handed Transat for François and co-skipper Pascal Bidégorry is to get used to their new trimaran, pushing it gradually to generate a maximum amount of information for 2016.
A busy year of solo ocean records in 2016 will then be followed in 2017 by a first attempt to conquer the solo round-the-world record, currently held by Francis Joyon.
As well as the boats preparing for the TJV, there were two other Ultim in la Trinité-sur-Mer in September. They were not entering the TJV but waiting for a weather window to challenge for the Jules Verne Trophy. The bigger one is Spindrift 2, the current record holder as Banque Populaire, but since heavily modified (mainly lightened) and with a new rig.
The other one is red and white after having been green and white in the colours of Groupama. She is now named Idec Sportand is skippered by the famous Francis Joyon. The 100m trimaran is very probably the best solo Ultim trimaran so far (we mean before a com- parison with the new Macif), but for once Francis is challenging a record with a complete crew. The two iconic Ultims may yet leave Brittany simultaneously… Patrice Carpentier
SEAHORSE 15
IVOR WILKINS
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