Clarisse Crémer’s L’Occitane is the former Apivia used by Charlie Dalin to take line honours in the last Vendée Globe. Apivia was the most refined and all round the fastest of Guillaume Verdier’s 2020 designs; Dalin had asked for a boat that was fast enough in the gnarly stuff down south – and reliable – but was at its best slipping along in light air and moving through the transitions that are key over such a long course, with the lowest drag hull form possible. Verdier delivered and Crémer now has herself a top-five contender
water without immersing too much of the hull. With the foilers’ inevitable instability in flight, our slimmer underwater sections cushion the boat and improve the touch- and-go by not slowing down so much. By comparison Malizia has even more
rocker and is wider at the waterline: which generates drag in medium winds. The idea on our designs is to limit the risks of a brutal stop at the bottom of the wave. During long periods of foiling our boats bounce nicely on the surface of the water and often take off again immediately, earlier than boats with a conventional U-shaped hull. The concept of our boat is to be opti-
mised for running with her narrow, low- drag hull, offering the ability to also sail deeper and achieve better VMG. Icing on the cake… these narrow hulls go well upwind too! The typical upwind speed is about 16kt, fast enough for the foil to increase the power of the boat. We saw that in the Fastnet and TJV. So what works well for running also works upwind in a big breeze. SH: So a true Vendée Globe boat? AK: To really perform during the five weeks the race spends in the Great South you have to give up something in the Atlantic. Thomas had warned his partners: ‘We made a round-the-world boat. On the Transat we will be beaten by the older boats…’ Actually, it turned out that in the TJV this
was not the case (the Finot-Koch designs fin- ished 1,2). Our speed-hole with For People and Arkéa is upwind in 14kt of wind and flat seas, but as soon as the wind gets over 16/17kt the boats goes well in all directions. The TJV was a good example of this.
From early on Thomas was well in front and so controlled his rivals. At the end of the
56 SEAHORSE
race we were also doing nicely on the former LinkedOut (Verdier), picking up some nice right shifts; nevertheless, just ahead of us Arkéa Paprec was always in control… and without bothering too much about the shifts! Every time we got her position by AIS she was going 1.5kt faster than we were… In those last two days before reaching
Martinique the sea had gently increased from 1.3m to 1.7m… For us it was now dif- ficult and we had some big crashes; we were having to change trim settings constantly, playing with the rear ballast, while running, to manage pitch (all Imocas have tanks on each side, at the rear and also in the front depending on the design). Also, we are con- stantly managing the foils’ angles, the keel angle, the sail trim and always the pilot! When we spoke in Fort de France after
the finish to Boris (Malizia) and Morgan (For People) they seemed surprised: ‘We didn’t notice any change in the sea state in the last two days!’ Tough news for us… but good for the new boats! The latest boats are interesting in the
different ways they pursue the best motion through waves and speed improvement in running conditions. Charal 2 is an obvious scow with a very high bow and a very flat underwater shape; the Manuard design is intended to plane above the waves with its very flat hull generating maximum lift. This is probably the optimal answer as long as you are passing over the waves and, in our opinion, as long as the waves are below 2m this approach works well. However, we wanted a solution that
also works in bigger seas, changing the bow shape so that when – as is inevitable in big waves – the forefoot does enter the water it lifts back out as fast as possible. If
you slice our hull horizontally at the level of the bilge, above this you have Charal 2. But below that line we have added more volume to cushion the motions. Macif is, in the logical iteration of the
Verdier culture, an improvement on Apivia (now Clarisse’s Occitane). Apivia was an excellent boat and Macif capitalises on her strengths: beating and reaching nicely on flat seas with a lot of forward volume. On Macif Verdier also added more volume in the lower part of the hull to improve run- ning performance; it’s not obvious because it’s done in a subtle way at the keel line – the boat is slightly deeper than Apivia before her. We will have to wait and see how this works in the big ocean swells. SH: And how about today’s foils? AK: Charal 2 and Macif aim for the mini- mum take-off speed and getting to that speed quickly. This requires a powerful hull because alone a foil is not enough. The problem is that at high speed the
wide and powerful U-shaped hull presents a larger frontal profile, which when you add in waves becomes quite a negative factor. It certainly does not help… We prefer an easier motion foiling at high speed (and to be more steady when flying) even if we take off a little later. Macif is a nice boat but it’s a different choice from ours, I would say almost the opposite. I’m waiting for the confrontation! SH: What do you think of Charal’s ‘virtual-elevator’ rudders? AK: Interesting. On the simulator you have conditions where it works well. In windy VMG conditions especially. Bravo to them for taking this risk. It’s a more complicated way to generate lift than if we were permitted real elevators…
GILLES MARTIN-RAGET
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