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Left: 1992/1993 Vendée Globe winner Alain Gautier steering his Daniel Andrieu designed Half Tonner Concorde to victory in the 1989 Figaro… Tempted back by the attraction of both a new and more modern design and even more so by the immense wall of talent (of every generation) that it is attracting, in early June Gautier will start his 18th Figaro Solitaire. Yann Eliès (below) might well now be the only ever four-time winner of the Figaro had he not been dismasted rounding Wolf Rock Lighthouse when he was comfortably leading the opening leg of the 2014 race


light airs to simple and safe offwind sailing in a lot of breeze, along with all those tricky transitions in between. A furled gennaker attached to the


bowsprit and snaked across the foredeck will become the norm, as this is going to be so much easier to quickly hoist and unfurl on your own than setting a big masthead kite. The hoist is midway between the hounds and masthead making it relatively easy to hoist an A2 around the headstay when the situation demands. When it gets windier the choice between


suitability for OSR Cat 1 races). It has no water ballast, has a 50cm deeper keel, a heavier bulb and the most noticeable features: a pair of foils. The foils haven’t made the boat fly, yet, but they certainly add dynamic righting moment when moving at hull speed and beyond, and are ‘helpful’ in keeping the generous sail plan useful for longer in a building breeze. Upwind the skipper has the added


ability to play with the foil rake (+/-2.5°), which has a noticeable effect on leeway and speed, the ultimate moding toy! Above hull speed, in transition and planing regimes the foil contributes significantly to righting moment as well as pitch damping. Compared to the Figaro 2 the rig is


quite different. The mast is further aft in the boat making headsails proportionally larger, but significantly the boat sports a bowsprit and three asymmetric offwind sails compared to the two symmetric spin- nakers and spinnaker pole on the Figaro 2. The big kite (A2 120m2) will definitely


call for careful handling during the setting and recovery manoeuvres if it isn’t to end up in the water or, worse, wrapped around the foil. It’s a lot of sail to gather on your own. Techniques will quickly develop, retrieval lines and spinnaker socks are permitted, a deeper bear-away and a wind- ward drop will enter the panoply of tricks.


46 SEAHORSE


Sail development The big development area with the wardrobe will be in getting the balance right between the small A4 spinnaker and the gennaker. There are only maximum sizes for these sails and so playing with the geometry and areas will offer the biggest potential rewards over the first season. Sails measured in are limited to one suit for the season unless teams do the early-season long- distance two-handed races – in 2019 that’s the 1,700nm Sardinha Cup in April, in 2020 it’s the 3,800nm AG2R Concarneau to St Barths transatlantic race. In this case a second suit is permitted for later events. 2019 will be really interesting. Several


teams are planning to get scientific: 3D scanning the boat, working a lot on sails, developing accurate polars and ‘Sailect’ charts. Others believe that pure and simple time on the water, sailing, racing, two-boat testing, manoeuvring, is what will make the difference in the first six months. The time between the boats being commissioned and the first race varies from two months for the first boats in to just a few weeks for later boats. Subsequent seasons will see a convergence on an optimised approach, but the first season is an open book. The gennaker may be set on a furler. It


is already clear that this will become ‘the jib’ or all-purpose sail – from code zero in


the A4 and the gennaker will be key and students of Sailect will have plenty of data to get their heads around as they learn how best to use this boat. The choice exists between a maximum-sized gennaker, better for lighter winds and closed angles, also capable of being used all the way round to the cross-over with the A2, coupled with a small and flat A4 for when it is windy and rough, or a small flat gennaker to handle the breeze coupled with a real VMG-style A4. No one will know straightaway, and as this environment can’t really afford old- fashioned America’s Cup sail development and VOR-style performance studies, a properly formulated training programme with several good skippers with a variety of sailmakers will prove extremely valuable. The J2 (big jib), J3 (small jib) and


square-top fully battened mainsail may be filament-built. The J2 and J3 can be set on a headfoil or hanks. The J2 will have a reef in it to reduce area before the storm jib is set. The mainsail has two reefs. Some combination of J2, J3 or storm jib will clearly make an interesting double-header set-up… but only the stemhead fitting can be used for the tack of any headsail. The mast has less sweep-back on the


spreaders than on the previous boat and, to control forestay tension and mast bend with the fat-head mainsail, running back- stays make a return to the class. This is bound to make gybing more of a handful. The cockpit is not dissimilar to the


previous boat’s in overall arrangement except for the obvious changes due to the bowsprit and tacklines, foil extension and rake adjustment controls. All the halyards run through Imoca-style tunnels that cross the cabin and emerge at the back and sides of the coachroof rather than over the top. The cockpit floor is higher offering less shelter behind a lower coachroof that no longer accommodates


the secondary winches (no more symmetrical gybing). 


ALEXIS COURCOUX


HENRI THIBAULT/DPPI


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