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The IMOCA Revolution O
High speed, big distances and close racing. The IMOCA concept has evolved dramatically over the past ten years...
riginating from an open rule design in the 1980s to deliver a platform for the epic Vendée Globe – a non-stop, no outside assistance, solo around the world race - it has evolved over ten 4-year cycles to a more
structured box rule class. Now used for all the world’s major solo, two-handed and fully-crewed oceanic races, including the Transat Jacques Vabre, Route du Rhum and The Ocean Race, the IMOCA class is the place to be. Today, the IMOCA class is a 60-foot racing platform mostly made up of cutting-edge foil-borne high-speed monohulls. The beauty of this class now is that the same boat can compete across all three disciplines of offshore racing – singlehanded, two-handed and fully-crewed. When raced fully-crewed, the roster is made up of four sailing crew, including at least one woman and two nationalities, along with a non-assisting fifth person, the On Board Reporter (OBR). The most recent two-handed
transatlantic race, the 2023 Transat Jacques Vabre, saw 39 starters from 17 countries, and the 2024 New York- Vendée singlehanded transatlantic race saw 28 starters from 11 different countries. Forty boats will start the 2024 Vendée Globe this year. No other class comes close. Across the ten editions of the epic, non-stop, singlehanded Vendée Globe race - sailing West to East via the three Capes - course records have been bettered each time by, on average, four days. In 1989, the first boat took just over 109 days to make it around non-stop, while the current record stands at 74 days and a handful of hours. In the 1989 race, the best 24 hour run by the winner was 304 miles. In the last edition of The Ocean Race, the best 24 hour run was just five miles short of 600 miles!! The evolution of the competition’s popularity has seen sailing technology driven hard towards progress and development. Naval architecture and all its modern
engineering sub-disciplines, composite materials use, and boat-building methods, all within a vast and powerful ecosystem of smaller offshore shorthanded classes, has transformed this once-niche French racing scene into the flagship of global offshore racing attracting many competitive non-French teams. And with that comes increased media attention. Sailing solo around the world is not what IMOCA racing is all about anymore. The fully-crewed configuration has resulted in the boats being sailed harder, manoeuvres becoming more frequent, and sails being trimmed accurately around the clock. When coupled with the major event organisers’ communications plans, this makes for hugely exciting racing, engaging fans for longer across all the modern social media outlets. Sailing lends itself well to this game, and the IMOCA class races have taken this to another level. The most recent Vendée Globe (2020-2021) took
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