Jules Verne Trophy, Vendée Globe, Mini Transat...
Profurl raises the performance!
Back in the day, perhaps; serious racing yachts, for sure. For a couple of seasons at the end of the imperious IOR maxi era the Farr-designed Longobarda (left) was the regular frontrunner – later enjoying a successful second life under IRC after being purchased by Mike Slade and often with the late Chris Law on the helm. Then (above) along came Bill Koch’s giant Matador2
,
the boat that prompted Koch’s successful Cup defence of 1992. Matador2
did for IOR maxis what Farr’s ketch Steinlager 2 did for
the Whitbread maxi sloops: bigger, heavier and with a cloud of sail, she was virtually unbeatable and killed the class stone dead
to be in Class Zero and have a chance of line honours then you have to be looking at 70-75ft as your target range. You are going to need some fancy appendages; to me that
doesn’t mean ridiculously expensive and complex solutions, that means a canting keel, a couple of rudders and a couple of boards for side force and a bit of lift. This isn’t a science experiment, it’s a yacht race. You need a rig that can be controlled simply by a crew of, say,
10-12 people. There is no need to take the full IRC crew number on an offshore race, and it is probably more fun for the owner if the team is smaller and more close-knit. You don’t want the complexity of water ballast filling up the interior when good appendages should be meeting all your righting moment needs. Have enough rocker for all-round performance with maybe a simple interceptor on the transom for heavy air. Add in enough freeboard for a drier ride and comfortable(ish) interior and off you go. But the problem then becomes one of who you are going to
race against? Get it right and you are probably going to leave the VO70s behind – they are all older designs now which were created to a class rule that was deliberately designed to constrain development. I for one would love to see where the VO70 would evolve to
today. Maybe not for the Volvo Ocean Race but for a really fun offshore boat. A very, very fast offshore boat. Simplified and brought up to date, the concept would be very interesting (the original rule written in 2003 prohibited foils and inclined keel pins to control development costs). Just by taking off some of the technical brakes applied for their
original round-the-world purpose it would be possible to recreate a more modern and much more efficient stepchild that would be both faster and more robust. Writing a new rule – or indeed a modified VO70 rule – to meet
these criteria would not be difficult and we would create a new generation of closely matched boats capable of delivering fast and exciting competition both around the buoys and offshore where they could really be let rip. Maybe idle speculation or maybe we are onto something? James Dadd, project manager & class management consultant q
profurl.com SEAHORSE 35
GILLES MARTIN RAGET
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