The Figaro milieu
The next two years are going to be more than busy in France with the unprecedented number of Imoca 60s getting ready for the 2020 Vendée Globe and perhaps even more significantly the arrival of a fleet of 50 Figaro Bénéteau 3 one designs…luring back many of the greatest solo stars of the Vendée and Route du Rhum. Former Figaro competitor Marcus Hutchinson reports
Origins To promote mid-summer newspaper sales 50 years ago l’Aurore newspaper (since bought and merged with Le Figaro – one of France’s big national newspapers) decided to jump on the bandwagon of the then new-fangled solo-sailing thing by running an offshore race that their readers could follow every day on the pages of their newspaper as they lounged on the beaches. Consisting of four offshore legs, each last- ing between 72 and 90 hours, the race was sailed in IOR Half Tonners – the sleekest 30-footers of that era. The newspaper reported on their event
with plenty of interviews of the skippers and their crazy sleep-deprived exploits,
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household names were made, the news - paper readership (of which there were a lot back in the 1970s) lapped up each thrilling episode and copies were sold. It worked and the event grew. Gradually commercial brands started to
realise that a bit of crafty ambush market- ing, naming and ‘association’ went a long way to supporting the skippers in this pre-sponsorship amateur era. The sponsorship floodgates opened
early in France and by the 1980s the event saw many fully commercial projects long before the IYRU allowed sponsorship 10 years later. The now media-savvy short- handed offshore scene in France developed a level of professionalism unprecedented in any other racing environment outside the America’s Cup and the Whitbread Race at the time, especially for a relatively small- boat low-cost environment. The popular success of what is known
now 50 years later as La Solitaire Urgo Le Figaro has also driven the creation of the only true offshore racing one-designs. The increasingly obsolete and expensive
Half Tonner was replaced in the early 1990s by the Berret/Finot-designed Figaro Bénéteau one-design and, in turn in 2003, by the Marc Lombard Figaro Bénéteau Two. Significantly, the Figaro Bénéteau Class Association (FBCA) was established at the beginning of the one-design era and this skipper-run organisation now has almost 30 years of experience of develop- ing and promoting the ‘milieu’ with an
exciting and varied racing circuit, sensible controls on technology, strict one-design management and economic and sponsor- ship guidance. Today France, or more specifically
Brittany, leads the world’s offshore racing industry. With Mini 6.50s at the base of the pyramid and Imoca 60s and Ultime tris now at the top, and the Figaros, Class40s and Multi 50s in between, the sector employs thousands of people. The Figaro has been around from near
the start; now at least half the skippers are professional, training all year round, winning some prizemoney and sponsor bonuses and even making a half decent living. This in turn has led to a culture where this kind of racing and career path are considered normal!
Figaro Bénéteau 3 With the need to renew the fleet again and replace the long-serving Figaro Bénéteau 2 January 2019 saw the arrival, all at once, of 50 brand-new Figaro 3s. The new boat, again built by Bénéteau, was designed by VPLP and sports a pair of dynamic stability-generating foils. Unlike the 1 and the 2 the Figaro 3 no longer features water ballast, but a bowsprit and asymmetric offwind sailplan instead. It weighs in just shy of three tonnes on an overall length of 10.85m. Designed for the times. The latest boat was commissioned by
the FBCA to its own specification four years ago. The time since has been spent
BENOIT STICHELBAUT
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