Above: Marc Lombard’s Lift V2 is a significant departure from his previous Lift Class40s which transitioned steadily towards a full scow concept while preserving some vestige of convention in the upper part of the hull at least. Now Lombard has gone the whole way to compete with his big rivals Raison and Manuard, as well as the first VPLP Class40 currently under construction at Multiplast. The forward hull-deck chamfer on the newest Lift develops into fully reversed upper hull sections forward with a much more severe treatment than is seen on either Verdier’s Pogo 40S4 or Sam Manuard’s Mach40.4. Verdier and Lombard also focus heavily on aero drag with the boom pressed hard onto the coachroof. One big one in the drink or two smaller ones… the Lift V2 features Imoca-style kick-up rudders while Verdier prefers conventional rudder blades beneath the hull – more vulnerable but it does allow smaller blades
15; it was only after a lot more work that we then got down to four or five shapes and the real refinement could finally begin,’ says Tymen. However, while this work took time,
access to the Gomboc VPP, developed for the America’s Cup under the stewardship of Team New Zealand’s chief designer Dan Bernasconi (Guillaume Verdier is a part of Team NZ), allowed Verdier to push out a long way in his exploration of new ideas. ‘Plus this tool also functions well as a simu- lator,’ says Verdier, ‘allowing us to visualise the impact of a change in the location of a ballast tank, a change in the centre of gravity, the position of the keel, sails or the rigging. It is an exceptional evaluation tool for making design choices and has con- tributed a lot to the success of Team New Zealand in the America’s Cup.’ Verdier’s studies led to a design that is
slightly narrower than the 4.5m allowed by the rule, with a maximum beam of 4.42m. His hull is rather pinched in towards the stern where the waterlines are tightened and the topsides flare slightly. At rest the nose sits quite high, for a boat that according to Tymen should remain quite stable in fore and aft trim with less need to
50 SEAHORSE
rear up at speed. Unlike the Lombard plan, which has a transom flush with the water, at rest the Pogo’s transom continues below the water surface. Erwan Tymen is not ready to share the
precise benefit of this deeper stern immer- sion, but he concedes that this feature is linked closely with that inverted curvature of the keel line: ‘On this type of fast boat when taken together the two features defi- nitely offer benefits in reducing total drag.’ The aerodynamic aspects of the new
Finot 40S4 were the subject of particular care, in particular at the front of the deck where a trench conceals the bowsprit and the lowered tack fittings for the J1 and J2. A flat and relatively wide coachroof is designed to close the space under the boom in pursuit of mainsail endplate effect. Like the Lift, the Pogo also takes advan-
tage of a change in the Class40 rule intro- duced in 2020, which allows the topsides to be faceted up to 4m behind the bow. The previous-generation Class40s
already featured a chamfer along the sheerline, limited to 150mm in span. This artifice, by reducing the volume in the hull- deck region, leads to a lowering of the buoyancy metacentre of the hull when the
boat is lying down during the 90° stability test. The chamfer reduces the ‘virtual’ measured stability of the hull at 90°, thus allowing an increase in actual righting moment for the same masthead tension at measurement. However, in the case of Verdier’s new
Class40 – and to a more subtle extent in the Lift V2 – this hull-deck chamfer plunges downwards dramatically as you move to the bow creating a second raised hull chine. ‘This allows us to gain a little in topside
and deck shell area (and therefore plat- form weight), with marginal gains also in aerodynamics… plus the improved modern aesthetics,’ explains Erwan Tymen. ‘We were tempted to push harder with
the Fast40-style, but in the end we stayed more conservative because offshore it can force a lot of water up and onto the deck.’ Final point: on the Pogo, Verdier and
Structures Shipyard leave a space in the transom reserved for the liferaft, so as to be able to access it under all circumstances (remember the escape of Kevin Escoffier when PRB sank in a couple of minutes, struggling to release his raft). Such a provi- sion surely deserves to be mandated when the class makes its next rule changes? q
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