Left: Joe Lacey sails his new IDB Maxi scow upwind in Concarneau illustrating how quickly waterline narrows with heel and why. With sails and sailing techniques being continually improved, at this angle of sailing and in flat water at least, the best-sailed scows now consistently see off less extreme traditional designs. In non-planing conditions off the wind (above) it is intuitive to expect the bluff bow to be slower but this is not borne out in practice. The bobstay is attached well aft because there is nowhere else to put it…
you want – with any crazy ideas about foils or wing sails that you can dream of. Build costs that I am aware of range from about 250,000 euros for some of the boats currently winning (which are profession- ally designed and built) down to not very much at all for boats designed and built in the garden shed. Depreciation can be huge – if the boats don’t win then they are almost unsellable – and given the rapid rate of development they could become outdated very quickly. The Series Division is almost the oppo-
site in that foils/canting keels/carbon are all banned. To classify as a Series 10 boats need to be produced – which also acts as an effective cost control. And depreciation is much less of an issue; I am aware of a number of Pogo 3 Series Minis that would have cost 100,000 euros new selling for 80,000 euros after competing for four years and in two Mini Transats. SH: You have bought one of the first Series scows. Just how standard are the boats and how much scope for input is there from the skipper within the Series rules and within the package delivered by the builder? JL: The hull, rig, keel and rudders are one- design and can’t be touched. The skipper can change the deck layout, deck gear,
running rigging, electronics and sails – although there are rules to reduce cost in all areas, so carbon and the top-end Imoca pilot systems are banned. I bought my boat without electronics or running rigging or sails and had those supplied by people I have worked with before. IDB Marine (who built the boat) were also very accom- modating in changing some points on deck layout and deck gear at my request. SH: You must be watching the other new designs now racing, especially of course in the Proto fleet. Do you see the latest Verdiers and other new designs trying to find a compromise between scow-power and more conventional all-round shapes? JL: In the Series division the Pogo 3 (Verdier – not a scow) is clearly the boat to beat having won the last Mini Transat and most races since. My training group in Lorient includes three Maxi scows (Raison), one Vector scow (Bertrand) and six Pogo 3s – including Ambrogio Beccaria and Amélie Grassi who came first and second in the 2018 Mini Championship. It was obvious from the first test sails
last autumn that when reaching in any wind strength or sailing downwind in 20kt+ the scows had an advantage. We are gradually learning how to sail the scows and becoming faster than the best Pogo 3s
in more and more conditions. I think that if the scows were sailed as well as the Pogo 3s (which is not currently the case) it is only when beating into a chop in light winds that the Pogo 3s would have an advantage, so the scows clearly have the potential to win. The only question is whether we can learn to sail them to their full potential in time for this year’s Mini Transat, as there is still a lot of work to do on sail development. The Vector scow carries its maximum
beam even further forward than the Maxi – which seems to help in light winds and flat water (by increasing the effective waterline length when heeled with weight to leeward) but is less forgiving once powered up, and smashes waves even more than the Maxi. Time will tell, but so far the Maxi seems the pick of the scows. In the Proto division it is a lot less clear
– there are more designs out there and as they are one-offs it’s hard to tell if the per- formance is down to boat design or the level of the skipper. My initial impression is that the new Lombard ‘semi-scows’ are close in performance to the Raison scow which won the last Mini Transat. There is only one rule compliant fully
foiling Mini currently racing (Arkema) and it doesn’t really work in most conditions –
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