News Around the World
In 2017 French yachtsman Didier Gaudoux won the Fastnet Race in his 39-foot Nivelt-Muratet designed offwind flyer Lann Aël 2, so when he began planning a new one-off two-handed special (above) there was no way Nivelt, with his shrewd understanding of the IRC rule, would be left out of the team. But Gaudoux is as keen a follower of yacht design trends as he is a racer, so the move to scow shapes across the racing spectrum had not escaped his attention. So what better than to combine Sam Manuard, with his success in the open classes, with Nivelt in the mix to optimise performance vs IRC rating. Those who have been fortunate enough to race them will also testify to the easier handling of a good scow type – especially power-reaching. Helpful for a two-handed team and easier on the power consumption for the pilot. Gaudoux’s masterplan proved masterful, Lann Aël 3 was rarely beaten in 2023 – very pretty too
shameless self-promotion, he flies under the radar but in British and French offshore circles Brian Thompson enjoys his own special place. Thompson is the first Briton to twice break the speed record for
sailing around the world, and the first to sail non-stop around the planet four times. Fresh off a plane after winning multihull line honours in the RORC Transatlantic Race on the MOD70 Argoof Jason Carroll, having crossed in just 6d 10h 34m 10s, and delivered the boat to Antigua while the majority of the monohull fleet were still days away from finishing, we sat down and ate artisan avocado bagels together. Brian is that rare sailor embraced and revered by the closed and
suspicious-of-outsiders world of the French multihull community, but to meet him there’s a refreshing honesty and an obvious deep love of offshore sailing. Talking to him, his passion for the grandest of multihulls, the warhorse MOD70 that he speaks so highly of, is infectious: ‘The MODs have been around a long time, but I personally think they’re the best boats in the world… ‘They built seven of them and the combined miles sailed must
be to the moon and back – and without any structural problems at all. And that is unbelievable. Now they’re 12 years old, incredibly well-designed and well-built, still delivering really close racing. ‘If they were going to design a modern one it would probably be
more Ultim-like, with that shallower hull and foiling, but they did such a good job I think in 10 years you could well still see them sailing around. It really is a fabulous boat. ‘They are slowly getting more and more private owners as the
price and especially the running costs are still less than, say, a TP52. But not every owner could put up with it – it takes a special person to enjoy the extreme discomfort of sailing across an ocean, no toilet, freeze-dried food… it’s very bumpy plus there is a frisson of danger! Banque Populaire [40m and now Dona Bertarelli’s Spindrift 2] was much more comfortable as you don’t feel the waves as much.’ Brian’s multihull experience is peerless and he’s renowned for
his consistency steering as well as his sheer outright speed. Reflect- ing on the final run into Grenada at the finish of the Transatlantic race he gave an insight into his technique: ‘Luckily we were VMG running which is a lot safer than any sort of reaching, it’s unbelievable how little sail you need reaching. Upwind in 20kt you could be full J1 and main if you want, but reaching in, say, 15kt you’d have two reefs and a J2 and still be well over-powered because of the apparent
22 SEAHORSE
wind. And then downwind you can put up a lot more sail because you can just sail deeper… you’re overtaking each wave, wave-jumping. ‘Of course at night you can’t see them, but you feel them as you
tip over and then you’re off again. But you never want to come down too far, you’ve got to keep the apparent locked in and not steer too much up and down. The tendency is to think ‘oh we’re going really fast, let’s bear away’, but then you get caught on the next wave and then you’ll have to come up and lose the apparent to do so. The best is just to keep angled to give you the acceleration to get up the next wave. Really accurate steering is very fast.’ Brian also described their transat watch-system, saying: ‘Everyone
steered one-sixth of the way. You were paired off with someone else so there were three on-deck at any one time and every hour someone would change, so every hour you would have four people on deck, two of them then swap over. ‘So you come on deck and for the first hour you trim the sails –
downwind you’re not doing much, just always ready to ease, looking around, tracking the AIS. Then in the middle hour you are steering and for the final hour you’re back to trimming… and then make yourself some food! Then you have three hours off. It’s a very good system.’ The key is the handover: ‘You really want to get a good handover
so that first hour you are watching the numbers, like what’s the maximum up-speed, what’s the average and what’s your max down- speed. But also what are you looking to target, as well as looking at the windspeed, whether it’s gusty or steady and the sea-state – if it’s all perfect then very often it’s ‘here you go, mate’ and you’re off!’ With constant speeds around 30kt and the drive to get more off-
shore boats foiling, by contrast the MOD70 skims. As Brian explains: ‘VPLP, who designed the MOD70, designed our current C-foils and T-rudders and it makes the boat way safer. The big thing is it’s much harder to nosedive and that’s a big thing as you can push harder, more confidently, especially at night, whereas before you could get quite a big stuff and you really had to limit the speed to about 30kt so that when it was stuffed it wasn’t too big a deceleration. ‘But now you can let them rip a bit more. You can be doing
32-33kt and not really be too concerned, but actually we tend to do about 30kt and go for a bit more depth. ‘The boats are so sorted… even simple things like tack lines, they don’t really chafe now. The rigging is really good and is well kept up.
VINCENT OLIVAUD
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