St Malo in November hosted the greatest assembly of cutting-edge racing yachts ever seen in the history of the sport. Of 138 yachts that started the 2022 Route du Rhum few were ordinary… In the Imocas (above) the race went as predicted, the two most successful established Guillaume Verdier designs making most of the running followed by Charal, the only 2022 boat with miles under the keel. A snapshot of Imoca development (clockwise from top left) sees the current all-round benchmark Apivia (Verdier 2019); ‘battleship’ Malizia (VPLP 2022); Maître Coq V (Verdier 2022); V&B Montana (Verdier 2022); Holcim-PRB (Verdier 2022); and Charal (Manuard 2022)
So Jean estimates that foilers are not the panacea for a solo
round-the-world race. He continues: ‘I’m not interested in reaching speeds of 35kt. What interests me is to go 1-1.5kt faster than Hubert. And if that had been the case, even 1kt better, I would have been 480nm ahead of my position after 20 days’ sailing in the 2020 edition. ‘And if I had had a 480nm lead by the time I saved [Kevin] Escoffier,
when his yacht broke in half, I would have had some margin racing to the finish. That’s my story. I do not believe you just follow the fashion.’ When he arrived in Les Sables d’Olonne on 28 January 2021,
after his fifth VG, Jean declared that in the end foilers are a lot of money and energy for nothing. These words began a four-year project recently unveiled by ‘King Jean’, who will race his sixth VG campaign with a new Scow design but with only daggerboards. ‘What I’m doing today is what I said at the finish of the VG.’ The project took shape under the leadership of Eric Bellion, also
a competitor in the last VG. Bellion had wanted to make a team with some other Imoca skippers to pool resources and modify some the best existing boats. But he could not find enough sailors to join him (English Imoca skipper Sam Davies tried to persuade some other teams to save money by sharing common parts like foils, but again no one wanted to co-operate). Bellion then started talking to Jean about building a new but
much simpler Imoca at a lower cost, but still capable of competing with the best boats. They exchanged views with several architects and finally chose David Raison, the father of the Mini Scow and also the first to design a Scow Class40 – for Ian Lipinski. Jean has closely followed the evolution of the Class40, whose
performances have greatly improved thanks to the evolution of the hull designs – while still remaining simple. And when we ask Jean if his next Imoca is a big Class40, he answers: ‘Indeed, it will be
something quite similar to David Raison’s Class40, but made of carbon, with a wing mast, two daggerboards and a canting keel.’ (The Class40 keel must be fixed). The Archimedean Scow Imoca is different from the foiler Scow,
because ‘We’re looking for power at the front of the hull and a foiler doesn’t necessarily need it because it’s going to look for dynamic support with its foils’. The last non-foiler Imoca – and Jean’s reference in the pro-
gramme – is the boat born as Macif, winner of the seventh Vendée Globe with François Gabart (2013), which sailed the last edition under the banner of Banque Populaire, skippered by Clarisse Crémer. Jean, who by the way has never sailed on an Imoca foiler, has got to know the former Macif very well since it was bought from Banque Populaire by skipper Benjamin Ferré. The two boats, this one and Hubert, are currently training in Port La Forêt. He believes that his future Imoca designed by Raison will be as
different from a ‘conventional’ Imoca as a new-generation Class40 Scow compared to a ‘conventional’ Class40. Beyond the performance Jean believes that a foiler consumes
‘a lot of energy… and a lot of money. Our boat costs 3 million euros less than a foiler, whose total cost is now around 7.5-8 million euros on the water. Plus we do not face another big price when we break a foil! ‘The extra energy is not only when you race – just parking a yacht
that needs fenders 3m wide and dealing with all the extra logistics of such demanding and complicated sailing boats.’ Jean reminds us too that foilers reach peak righting moments
of around 40 tonne-metres compared with 26 tonne-metres for the most powerful non-foiling designs… ‘The extra power of the foiler must be managed everywhere with sensors and alarms, as well as auto-releases as on the big multis. Plus you have to have a big team
SEAHORSE 21
JAMES BOYD
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