Opposite: Hugo Boss undergoes its final stability test in Portsmouth; there is an uncanny reminder from this angle of bow images of the first Ineos AC75, Britannia – both boats of course being immaculately built by Carrington Boats. Doubling up on tooling would reduce the carbon footprint… Ignore the scow L’Occitane, and Hugo Boss (VPLP) and Corum (Juan K) define the current ends of the ‘skiff’ spectrum. Corum: very flat but fat and rounded in the topsides, with that curious upturn in keel line behind the fin (reminiscent of Daniel Andrieu’s SunFast IRC winners) and a mainsail profile distinctly shaped to lower the centre of effort. While Alex Thomson’s boat revisits the angular foredeck of his previous Imoca, Juan K has taken a smooth multihull approach for Corum’s novel sheerline


At the same time the development of


racing multihulls takes off, helping to prompt a wave of new materials and build techniques that will further benefit the new ‘open’ monohull designs. For the first Vendée Globe, in 1989,


13 competitors lined up at Les Sables d’Olonne for a solo non-stop round-the- world trip. The sailboats are disparate, with supporters of the narrow hull philos- ophy lining up against those who placed their faith in wider, flatter hull forms.


The relatively beamy Bouvet-Petit


design Ecureuil d’Aquitaine II, skippered by Titouan Lamazou, prevailed, but Jean- Luc Van den Heede came in third aboard his slender cigar 36-15 MET, designed by Philippe Harlé and Alain Mortain. The first yacht home has a maximum beam of 5.2m, while the yawl of Van den Heede is only 3.45m wide. The next edition, 1992-1993, was won


by a creation from the firm Finot-Conq, then best known for their successes in the


Mini 6.50 class. Sailed by Alain Gautier, Finot’s winning ketch-rigged design boasts a beam of 5.8m, while runner-up Van den Heede is now racing a new Harlé /Mortain- designed yawl, built in composite and a little wider than its predecessor at 3.76m. But if Jean-Luc is ahead of the other 13 competitors, Alain Gautier’s victory marks the end of the narrow boats. In 1996 Isabelle Autissier’s 60, PRB, is


at the forefront of what’s happening in naval architecture. Now Finot-Conq are 


SEAHORSE 41


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