lunch and dinner,’ said Trentesaux. ‘It is very comfortable because you don’t have to sit on the rail at all! ‘We have our own cabin and everyone can sleep when he wants.


Sometimes it is difficult in light weather, but in 10kt she is OK and in 15kt really fast. We stayed up with the Imocas and bigger boats for all the first day, upwind.’ Downwind from the Rock they were making 15-30kt… ‘This boat is super comfortable and very fast.’ It is amazing to compare the routes of Christian’s comfortable


TS42 with the fastest Class40 V&B. They were always together all the way around. Those latest-generation cats are really all-rounders and very efficient. They open up offshore competition to a different way of racing on a boat costing the same price as a recent, and much less comfortable, Mach40. Sam Marsaudon, builder of the TS in Lorient, is of course happy


about that. He has received several orders for his new TS5, the latest version of the well-known TS50, as well as for his new TS3, a day-sailing cat, and the existing TS42 (all designed by Christophe Barreau). Sam’s only complaint is about the Mocra rule which he finds less accurate than the Multi 2000 rule used in France. Looking at the Fastnet corrected-time results (scored under Mocra), he is a bit disappointed that a carbon boat like the HH66 has a better handicap than the much smaller 42ft TS42 which is built with conventional materials. Meanwhile, Didier Gaudoux, owner of the Bernard Nivelt-designed


39ft Lann Ael 2, launched early last year, is for sure the happiest man of the Fastnet race. Nobody would have bet a penny on his overall victory knowing that this boat’s previous results had been less than encouraging. Didier never gave up. He worked away steadily with Bernard, trying to optimise that


one-off nicely built by Trimarine in Portugal, which last year was described as ‘too fast reaching’ by Andrew Hurst when he skippered a close sister ship in the Brewin Commodores’ Cup; 2kt or 3kt – sometimes 4kt – faster than her ‘conventional’ 40-44ft rivals off the wind in breeze but very sticky in the light, it is easy to see why Andrew said what he did last July. But encouraged by her offwind speed the sailors were already


talking to Bernard about the changes needed to turn his latest design into a more all-round performer, while keeping her fast and fun to sail – as Bernard also likes. ‘Early this year we made the keel heavier, adding 300kg, and


modified the keel to have a more forgiving section. The result was positive,’ adds Didier. ‘Next we agreed to lengthen the mast, which in Cowes last year was too short and also difficult to tune. A length of tube was cut out around the second spreader and we added a new slightly softer 5m section made by Axxon. ‘Overall the height of the mast went up by 80cm but it was enough


to enlarge the mainsail with a 70cm-deep panel at the foot and also make a similar modification to the biggest spinnaker (the other sails stayed the same).’ Raising the hounds also improved the effi- ciency of the runners and made a relatively stiff tube easier to trim. Together the changes added just 8pt to her IRC rating. ‘But even


at the start of the Fastnet it was still as if the boat was brand new, as we played with the different set-ups!’ remembered Didier. The mainly family crew of 10 did include two professionals, Fred


Duthill, manager of the Technique Voiles loft in La Trinité-sur-Mer (actually all the sails on Lann Ael are from North!) and a tough racer called Christian Ponthieu. ‘It was good to have Fred take a fresh look at our boat without big preconceptions. ‘We were immediately testing new things and it was really good.


For example, he told us that we have to sail with more heel, which felt strange at first. But very soon we were going better…’ Lann Ael ran out of wind rounding Cap Lizard but stayed east of


the TSS and took the better northerly route to the Fastnet. After the Rock it was a piece of cake. Despite being a little heavier than when launched, the heavily chined Nivelt 39 had a fantastic ride home averaging more than 10kt all the way to the finish. ‘We were two or three miles ahead of some good competitors at the Rock, but by the Scillies we were 30 miles ahead simply because we were going much faster,’ said Gaudoux in Plymouth. He believes that to take risks building a one-off design that’s


quite different from existing boats – with inevitable difficulties and criticism along the way – is not an easy path, certainly not for the


French, but that it is exciting when it works. Didier was definitely a happy sailor in Plymouth. So were Gilles


Fournier and his charming daughter Corinne Migraine, co-skippering the IRC 2 winning J/133 Pintia, a name frequently seen at the top of the results in RORC races. ‘We have had some good results this year,’ he said, ‘but the Fastnet is the one that really counts! ‘All year we have had a nice private battle with our friends on


Lisa, including RORC commodore Michael Boyd…’ And he adds about the Rock: ‘You wouldn’t want to spend your holidays there but it is a legendary place and we are now part of the legend.’ In IRC 3 the battle was very close between the leading JPK 10.80s


(as usual), Arnaud Delamare/Eric Mordret’s Dream Pearls and Marc Alperovitch’s Timeline. Timeline was the first across the line but Dream Pearlswas not far behind and won on corrected time by just 1m 11s. IRC 4 was another French ‘club’ with a battle between two JPK 10.10s, the Loisons on Night and Day sailing two-handed and Noël Racine on Foggy Dew racing with a full crew. In 2013 the father and son Pascal and Alexis Loison became


the first double-handed crew to win the Fastnet on corrected time, ahead of all the fully crewed boats. But in second overall that year was Noël Racine’s Foggy Dew. This was also the case two years ago when Night and Day finished fifth overall (missing the two- handed prize by 14 seconds) with Foggy Dewninth. This time Pascal Loison, the Cherbourg orthopaedic surgeon, and his Figaro sailor son Alexis prevailed once again, beating their fully crewed rivals by 2h 13m. And winning the two-handed class of course! Patrice Carpentier


NEW ZEALAND Amid the tumultuous celebrations that greeted the return of the America’s Cup to New Zealand in mid-July were entirely appropriate echoes back to Sir Peter Blake who led the campaign that first captured the elusive trophy for the country in 1995. As a crowd of 80,000 fans, undeterred by lashing rain, celebrated the Cup’s return in a parade through Auckland, the land-based proceedings termi- nated with speeches on the waterfront of the Viaduct Basin. Once a neglected part of the city, the bustling bars, restaurants,


apartment blocks and hotels that now circle the inner-city harbour are testament to the transformative energy the Cup’s first arrival in 1995 injected into this city. After leading Team New Zealand to victory in San Diego, Blake and key lieutenants Alan Sefton and Scott Chapman set about preparing for the 2000 defence, cajolling government, city and private sector into developing the Viaduct into a vibrant focal point for the Cup village and lasting legacy. After the successful 2000 defence Blake embarked on a new


venture as an environmental educator and crusader. Under the Blakexpeditions banner, he completed his first expedition to Antarctica in the summer of 2001 before heading to the Amazon, where he died trying to protect his crew when armed robbers boarded his expedition vessel Seamaster. By a stroke of serendipity, as New Zealand celebrated the return


of the America’s Cup to its shores, moored among the superyacht fleet in the Viaduct Basin was the bulbous, bare aluminium schooner that spearheaded Blake’s post-America’s Cup environmental crusade. Now named Tara, the rugged boat, like the America’s Cup, was also back in town for the first time after a similar absence. And as the Cup parade proceeded to a waterborne circuit of the inner Waitemata Harbour, crammed with boats of all shapes and sizes, Tara slipped her moorings and joined the celebration fleet to salute the achievement. This massive, heavy-displacement vessel – built to withstand


the rigours of repeated polar expeditions – is about as far removed as it is possible to get from the fragile high-flying 50ft catamarans that had just done battle for the America’s Cup in the benign Bermuda lagoon. Yet they are both admirable for the fact that in each instance function has totally dictated form. The AC foiling cats are supremely efficient machines, translating 6kt of breeze into 24kt of boatspeed. But they are hopelessly fragile and demanding, limited to short intense bursts of action before their energy is spent. Tara’s bulk and heft require a decent blow before the sails have


much effect, but she can rumble along for months on end, if required, carrying a huge payload of researchers, scientific equipment, crew


SEAHORSE 15 w


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