Opposite: Thomas Rouxel training on a Figaro 2 at Port-la-Forêt. Rouxel raced six Figaros before joining Charles Caudrelier as a watch leader in the first Dongfeng Volvo campaign and then Brunel for the last race. He has since been head-hunted by Gitana for its Ultime programme with his old friend Sébastien Josse. The flow of talent from the Figaro class up into the most professional fleets like Imoca should only accelerate with a new design (left) that becomes more relevant with the incorporation of foils by designers VPLP
more fairing, no more surface preparation and hopefully no more hull shape tweaks. Each Figaro now has a boat passport,
designing, producing tooling and manu- facturing processes, building and trialling two prototypes and an initial production run of 60 boats. Deposits were taken from class association members in 2018 and Bénéteau’s special projects yard,
in
Nantes, produced one boat a week before upping it to one every four days. At the last Paris boatshow Bénéteau
invited all 50 deposit payers to come and draw their hull number out of a hat. The first weeks of January saw a steady stream of trucks leaving the Nantes yard heading for ports up and down the Atlantic coast. The ability to build a strict one-design
down to cost is what Bénéteau do better than most. Their industrial processes, longterm commitment to the class and sheer commercial clout see the first 50 of these boats delivered to their owners for the relatively paltry sum of 155,000 euros (excluding sails, electronics, safety gear and tax). The final cost on the water ready to sail is about 230,000 euros ex-VAT. The FBCA today is made up of young
and old, beginners, career ‘Figaristes’ and returning skippers from other offshore classes currently ‘between movies’. In much the same way as you acquire a car nowadays most boats are bought using a leasing structure offered by the Bénéteau/ Société Generale bank joint-venture SGB. An owner might sail his boat for a season
or buy it as an investment so that a skipper and his sponsor can operate for a year or two on a charter arrangement. The Figaro 1 and 2 turned out to be extremely good investments, paying for themselves at least twice over and still retaining a significant resale value once the main career was over. Today there isn’t one single Figaro 2 left
on the secondhand market, most of the 90-strong fleet having been sold in the past two years for 45,000-65,000 euros. The level in the top half of the Figaro
fleet is extremely high. There are now five coaching centres along the French coast. The best-known is the elite state-funded Port-la-Forêt, run by Christian Le Pape, whose alumni have dominated this and most other offshore classes for 22 years. The model used in Lorient is different. Headed up by keelboat coaching guru
Tanguy Leglatin, this year he is only taking six boats into his group, and that will be with skippers using three different sail- makers. The Vendée region has its own centre in St Gilles Croix de Vie, also the home of Bénéteau, as do the Normands in Le Havre and Granville. Some non-French skippers have made it through their doors – Damian Foxall, Sam Davies, Sam Good- child, Jackson Boutell – all now well- known in French offshore racing. Success in one-design offshore racing
demands consistency. The main event, La Solitaire, sailed over four legs, is scored on cumulative elapsed time, not points. As usual boatspeed really helps, but in one- design racing, when at least a third of the fleet has serious form, a certain style of racing also develops. There is no point winning three legs by
a boat-length if the skipper who comes second to you each time wins the first leg with a margin of an hour. He’ll beat you! Add in the AIS and the game gets even tighter. It’s all about positioning, anticipat- ing the next environmental episode – be it wind, tide, coastline or wave pattern. But a bit of speed always proves quite
handy and through lack of the strictest measure ment rules and a 17-year long career some of the Figaro 2s, much to the disappointment of many, proved to be a bit ‘quicker’ than others. A close look at the sit- uation out of competition with a thorough inspection of several hulls, including core samples, revealed what some had believed for a long time. Some hulls simply weren’t the same shape as the majority any more. The class’s success and longevity meant that many boats had been faired and re-faired again and again over the years, sometimes leading to a quicker shape altogether. The new class comes with new rules, the
FBCA drafting the ‘book’ with the benefit of the lessons learnt managing two previ- ous one-designs over the previous 30 years. To prevent history repeating itself certain strategies were adopted from the start. The Figaro Bénéteau 3 is female injec-
tion-moulded and its gelcoat finish must remain unpainted. No way to hide hull modifications any more. This means no more anti-fouling (not a bad thing), no
the equivalent of an Olympian’s Athlete Biological Passport, that consists of an identity on the class online database with the serial number of every major compo- nent (appendages, spars, machinery and major equipment) and a record of every measurement or inspection ever carried out on the hull, rig, sails and appendages. Most significantly the boat must, like an
Olympic athlete, be available for inspec- tion at any time by any measurer or third party appointed by the class. The boat also has a location status – yard, stored ashore, afloat at the pontoon, sailing (delivery, training or competition). With the help of the database the skipper must keep his boat’s location status constantly updated. Through this same database the skipper
must request permission, in advance, to put the boat into a yard (only accredited yards and technicians can be used) to make repairs, change a mast or a damaged foil (remember every one-design component serial number has been recorded). Depending on the nature of the inter-
vention, from a simple anode replacement to repairing a keel bulb after a grounding, acting before receiving permission from the class suspends the validity of the Certificate of Conformity and requires a measurer to come and check everything, as opposed to just what has been replaced, repaired or adjusted. It is all then written up and recorded online in the Boat Pass- port, after which the FBCA Technical Commission determines whether the boat is able to go back in class or not.
How does it sail? All of that aside, what is the boat like? Over the past 15 years yacht design and building techniques have come on in leaps and bounds. Design-wise, well, this article doesn’t need to delve into the experiences of designers, engineers and boatbuilders over that time, but suffice it to say the boat is a joy to sail. It will always be compared with the Lombard-designed Figaro 2, which itself was an excellent boat that over 17 years of service saw many sail the equivalent of several circumnavigations. There were no significant flaws with that boat, it was more than fit for purpose. The new boat is a tiny bit shorter and
lighter (ISO norms allow a lighter boat than before, using stability rather than minimum displacement
to determine SEAHORSE 45
FRED AUGENDRE/DPPI
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