Technology
Big fleet transport
How do you arrange return transport for a transatlantic racing fleet from a port with nowhere for a ship to come alongside? You get Sevenstar involved
There are many transatlantic races but the Transquadra is unique. An apex offshore challenge for amateur solo and doublehanded sailors over 40 years of age, this passage race from France to Martinique via Madeira is just as fiercely competitive as the grand prix ocean events for professional teams, with a big fleet and a high calibre of sailors. Arranging efficient transport to bring most of the boats back to Europe after the race is a complex logistical challenge, so it’s no surprise that Sevenstar is a longstanding official partner of the Transquadra and plays a crucial supporting role in its enduring success. This year’s Transquadra fleet of
39monohulls between 8.5mand 12mLOA arrived at LeMarin, Martinique inmid to late February after a fast and frequently boisterous passage fromFunchal,Madeira. Onemonth later, a full deck of 25 of the Transquadra boats were already on their way back to Lorient, Brittany asmast-up cargo on a Sevenstar ship, amassive logistical operation, along with 27 other yachts fromthe Caribbean. A separate transport was arranged on another ship for the smaller number of competitors who started the Transquadra in Marseille, rather than La Turballe, returning themto Genoa - a giant puzzle. Which yacht to be placed where in and on the vessel. A lot of calculations go into it beforehand.
62 SEAHORSE The man who schedules and
coordinates this operation is Matthieu Le Bihan, Sevenstar’s lead agent in France. A yacht transport expert with more than two decades of experience and an offshore racing sailor in his own right, Le Bihan has been organising return transport for the Transquadra, Route du Rhum, Mini Transat and most other French transatlantic races for many years. He has also arranged salvage operations for clients such as Alex Thompson and yacht transport for a wide variety of private owners. ‘The main business we have in
France is taking new build yachts from the factories of the main French brands like Beneteau and exporting them worldwide,’ he says. ‘But the French ocean races are part of my work because I know the market well and have developed very good knowledge of large fleet logistics and return shipments over the years.’ The French model of yacht racing
logistics is a bit different, Le Bihan explains. Instead of individual skippers or teams each arranging their own return transport or delivery passage after an ocean race, a shipping service is arranged for the fleet en masse. The Transquadra has this in common with professional French ocean races but the scope of the service provided is different. ‘We learn from each edition of
the race and refine our service for the next one,’ he says. ‘The racers
Above: 25 boats from this year’s Transquadra fleet were loaded onto a Sevenstar ship, which anchored in the bay off Le Marin in Martinique to carry out the loading operation. Nowhere for the ship to come alongside? No problem
are really confident in our setup.’ The stow plan for the transport
is designed long before the yachts even arrive at Le Marin. A key element of the operation, this is a carefully engineered process of planning precisely where and how each yacht is going to be placed and secured on deck. ‘That’s a really important job performed by our head office in Amsterdam,’ Le Bihan explains. ‘They work with specialist software like AutoCAD and Rhino. They get the design specifications of the yachts from the shipyards that built them. Then they design the stow plan according to the spec of the ship. For bigger yachts we make a 3D simulation so we can accurately visualise the loading. It’s high precision work.’ ‘That’s on paper. On the day of operation we have our own highly skilled loadmasters on site, normally two of them, who make sure that all the yachts are in the correct position on deck. We nearly always need to adjust things, sometimes on a daily basis, so we need great flexibility within our team and the plan needs to be flexible.’ One thing that’s highly unusual
about this operation is that Le Marin does not have a commercial port where Sevenstar’s ship can come alongside to load the yachts. Instead, the loading operation has to be done while the ship is anchored out in the bay.
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