News Around the World
FRANCE Finally the foilers On Sunday 22 September at 14:15 local time 90 sailors (including eight women) will take the start in La Rochelle of the 22nd edition of the Mini-Transat La Boulangère with Las Palmas de Gran Canaria the destination of the first leg. Among the 90 entries, who represent 13 nationalities (24 overseas competitors altogether), 12 are ‘repeat offenders’, so the vast majority will be rookies setting out to take on the Atlantic. The second leg to Le Marin (in Martinique) will set sail on
2 November. The fleet is spread between 22 one-off (Proto) and 68 production (Series) boats and this year the biennial singlehanded race has attracted sailors ranging from 18 (Violette Dorange) to 64 years of age (Georges Kick). Initially restricted to 84, the number of entries in the 2019
Mini-Transat has been raised to 90. This opening was excellent news for the six sailors who were on the waiting list. To support the increased number of participants – ‘because we did not want to leave anybody on the dock’, said Jean Saucet, technical director of the Collectif Rochelais Mini-Transat – the organisers had to recruit an additional support boat, bringing to eight the number of boats (one for every 12 Minis) that will accompany the race all the way through the Atlantic. Among the racing fleet there are two foilers. The reason for that
reduced participation of innovative boats in a class that has been always at the forefront of innovation is money. By accepting the foilers the Mini Class thought the existing boats could be equipped with those appendages at an affordable price. ‘But this is not the case,’ said David Raison, designer of the historic first Mini scow and more recently of the first ever Class40 with a big nose. ‘You need to build a new boat and it is very expensive,’ said
David. ‘Made by a professional yard it will cost about ⇔250,000 plus at least ⇔100,000 for a pair of foils.’ The two foilers in the race are Arkema and Cerfrance. Raphaël Lutard signed up for the event with the extraordinarily innovative
20 SEAHORSE
(but also quite experimental) Arkema 3. Launched in 2016, Arkema really created a stir with her reefable semi-rigid wing, foils, scow bow, self-supporting bowsprit and a host of other new features that are less visible but nonetheless important, such as the use of recyclable resin for the construction. Aboard this extremely cutting- edge yet very complex and demanding Mini 6.50 Quentin Vlamynck secured sixth place in the previous Mini-Transat. The new Cerfrance was launched three months ago, with its
skipper praying to the gods to be accepted at the start of the 2019 Mini. Today he is very happy to be in. Two years ago, when he was 23, Tanguy, son of the well-known
Pogo builder Christian Bouroullec, bagged what he considered to be a frustrating fourth place in the production boat category (on a Pogo 3 of course). ‘I’d been counting on doing better than that, but I made a tactical choice that didn’t pay off. It was still an enjoyable experience, though, and I decided I wanted to set sail again, but now with a more innovative, high-tech project, to be bang up to date in today’s incredible offshore racing environment,’ he explained. As such he is coming back with a refined Verdier-designed
one-off foiling scow, very carefully built at his father’s shipyard in south Brittany (Seahorse 474). ‘The challenge was to design a versatile foiler able to race hard in all weathers and at every point of sail,’ said Guillaume Verdier, ‘so reliability is very important with this boat, one reason she took such a long time to complete.’ Tanguy entered the Mini-Fastnet a week after the launch of the
boat and finished fourth despite suffering a failure of one of the rudders. Shortly afterwards he finished second in the Transgascogne which he was very pleased about because, with poor winds, he never used his foils… Up to the moment of the start of a race the width of the Mini
including the foils cannot exceed 3m. That is the reason for Tanguy’s T-shaped foils. The maximum extension of the foil out of the hull is 1.5m. The foils of Arkema are very different. The shaft is used for preventing leeway. On Cerfrance Tanguy uses the tip. ‘We need at
CHRISTOPHE BRESCHI
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 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124
