IRC
Fabien Delahaye and Sébastien Rogues cross the line to win the Class40 in the 2013 Transat Jacques Vabre. The Class40 is the biggest success story of the modern offshore racing era with 156 boats launched in 10 years. Though budgets at the sharp end have risen the class still boasts a friendly mix of professionals and talented Corinthians. And while a new design will set you back about €650,000 that is less than half the price of the latest inshore-only Fast40… And most Class40 races are still won by production boats
Passion, commonsense… and more imaginative courses
Ever since yacht racing began there has always been one class at the pinnacle of the sport. But I am not talking about the America’s Cup… In the modern era I am talking about the kind of racing that we can more realistically aspire to. When I first started racing it was the IOR One Tonners. With the adoption of the IOR 50-footers and Two Tonners in the Admiral’s Cup, Kenwood Cup and so on, these three classes were the ones that you wanted a T-shirt from. Since then other classes have risen and classes have fallen.
Some classes also seem to defy the bookies with regards to when they fall off the edge. The golden question for all is ‘how do you stay at the top?’ At the moment I see four very similar styles of class that seem
to be making it impossible to draw conclusions as to what works and what doesn’t: the HP30, Fast40+, Super Series TP52 and Maxi72s all appear to have come from the same gene pool, but all are clearly going through a different stage in life. If this were a novel, then the HP30 class would be the wild child
of the four. As the entry level in this group most of us would expect this class to be thriving and drawing in a wide range of both pro- duction and one-off builds. Historically we would expect this size of boat to be home-built in a local barn by an enthusiastic team. Rather sadly those days seem to have gone, largely as a result
of the wholesale switch to modern composites with the higher demands that places on boatbuilding resources. However, the class has still managed to gain a foothold, helped by a pragmatic and well-structured class management team. But it just doesn’t seem to be expanding at the rate I was expecting. Then moving up to the Fast 40+. This class has rapidly risen in
stature in the past few years, mainly thanks to passionate manage- ment and the dedicated support of several owners, particularly Peter Morton who has built successive new boats, both to stay on top but also in part to maintain a supply of boats. The class seems tailormade for the One Ton Cup, which they have competed for since 2016 (great to see that famous trophy back out of the cabinet).
The Fast40 to me should have been a class capable of expanding
well beyond the Solent, but so far the spread has been very limited – strange when there is one of the great yachting trophies up for grabs. Why aren’t more of the top builders around the world set up with Fast 40+ tooling? It is also pertinent to see that the latest member of the fleet,
Rán VII, has come out and appears to dominate without even warming up. That was unexpected in a class that has had an oppor- tunity to mature. My personal view is that the focus of the class may be too much on Solent conditions, with racing limited to mainly windward/leewards and a few around-the-cans races. I suspect that had the class programme included some overnights
and trips out into the English Channel, such a specialised boat would not develop. How the class management deals with this will determine its future in my view. The Fast40+ is at a critical point right now, maybe even a tipping point, but good course selection is a powerful tool when used wisely. One approach that seems to work with varied success elsewhere
is to tighten the box that constrains such a class. We have seen this go well for the TP52s, as they evolved from an IMS class into a true box rule fleet, with the box continuing to be very carefully developed – and only ever with the unanimous support of the owners. The 52 class is unarguably the most successful and longest lived of our four classes (class manager Rob Weiland tells me that more than 80 examples have been built to date). But it has taken very strong management and a core group of
teams with dedicated owners who have not wobbled at the idea of change. A strong secondhand market into IRC and ORC racing, as well as from new Super Series entries, certainly gives owners more confidence to commit to new builds knowing that their old steed will be snapped up quickly. With nine new boats launched for the 2018 season, this class has to be seen as the outstanding success among our little group. So should the Fast 40+ class take the 52 lead and tighten the
SEAHORSE 33
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JM LIOT
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