Contents March 2019 FEATURES
4 Sneak preview JEAN-MARIE LIOT
30 Life at 40 Room for one more at the inn... ROB WEILAND
34 (Still) the greatest game in town Hello, Mr Bond... a new boat from the east and a ‘new’ crew put to the test. ANDI ROBERTSON
Arriving near you It’s too early to say just how far the evolution of better and better scow-shaped hulls will reach into offshore sailing. We already know its influence on the new America’s Cup boats will be significant as AC75 design teams battle for form stability – particularly for the pre-starts. The AC50 cats demonstrated more match racing, sometimes on foils, than expected, but with the ability for AC75s to close up tighter and survive longer periods almost stopped there should be more boat-on-boat action in Auckland. This means the new boats will need that extra stability just to remain manageable (upright) before bolting for the start. And expect those pre-starts to get more desperate in New Zealand with the big speed differences inevitable across a new fleet. Meanwhile Mini 6.50 designers are refining their scow packages with new rigs, sails and foils to address the different motions these hull forms exhibit. After a curious dormant period following David Raison’s Mini Transat win of 2011, the scow game is leaping forward at speed, much as did the foiling Moths. While an IRC scow may yet be on the cards one day (page 40), a lot of other development was stifled by new rules understandably introduced in the Imoca and Class40 to protect the fleet; fortunately there are other avenues for development. In any case, in Imoca especially and with Marc Lombard’s latest very full Class40s the battle of philosophies is already won. In both premier ocean racing fleets designers are pushing as far as they are allowed following Raison’s lead. One designer, engineer and outstanding sailor has gone a long way towards changing the face of modern racing (for now) yacht design
COVER: Ingrid Abery INSET: Christophe Breschi
36 Suits you, sir In very few years foiling has gone from being a single area of focussed development to a sphere of experimentation. ANDY CLAUGHTON
40 Coal face Buying a new Mini Scow is not the answer in itself... just the first step on a complex journey JOE LACEY
44 The Figaro milieu Be there or, well, at least be ready to get left behind. And this year an extraordinary influx of great champions of shorthanded ocean racing will only make your task harder, but potentially also more instructive. MARCUS HUTCHINSON
50 Fresh start? Offering your best critical, high performance foils to regular racing customers is really not smart. CASPAR NIELSEN and ØYVIND BJØRDAL
53Mr Rules And not just rules, LUIS SAENZ could surely write an ‘interesting’ book of America’s Cup tales
56 Anatomy of a project Take a detailed brief from an experienced client who knows exactly what they want, but nobody really knows how to get there... ERIC GOETZ
REGULARS
8 Commodore’s letter STEVEN ANDERSON
13 Editorial ANDREW HURST
14 Update Sad times –November 1969 and the first edition of Seahorse has just appeared. Now ANTHONY CHURCHILL who started the whole story off has gone; TIM JEFFERY and LUCY PUMFREY remember a polymath with Sydney-Hobart and Admiral’s Cup victories on his CV. Plus, just where is that Hobart race headed, who’s showing at the party and loving the mule. JACK GRIFFIN, TERRY HUTCHINSON and DAVID SALTER
20World news An Imoca explosion... VDH’s rearguard action, small race big challenges, Storm Trysail does not stand still, exporting a (rainy) Solent to (balmy) Block Island. PATRICE CARPENTIER, IVOR WILKINS, BLUE ROBINSON, DOBBS DAVIS
28 Paul Cayard
– Taking responsibility Meet the chairman of the board!
32 IRC – Breathing new life Last year’s combined offshore worlds in the
Hague turned out to be a win-win all round and the benefits keep flowing. JASON SMITHWICK
59Seahorsebuild table
– Look behind the curtain PATRICE CARPENTIER twists the arm of Pogo Structures founder CHRISTIAN BOUROULLEC
62Seahorse regatta calendar
64 RORC news – Fastnet frenzy EDDIE WARDEN-OWEN
65 TechStreet
95 Sailor of the Month Couldn’t be less similar but both are making an indelible mark (also less similar...) on sailing
Whole different world. French America’s Cup challengers Le Défi launch their pencil-thin ACC yacht in Valencia having spent two days boiling lead for a new bulb. Early sightings of tooling for the first AC75 Cup ‘spiders’ confirm that America’s Cup monohull design has gone full circle since 10 years ago, with dramatically wide hulls pushing as near as the rule permits to a scow form to maximise form stability when off the foils at low speeds
GILLES MARTIN-RAGET
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 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96
