Technology
Ultimate glide surface
The world’s fastest offshore racers require very special and specific types of antifouling, hull and deck paint… plus about 5,000 hours of highly skilled labour to apply them correctly…
The relaunch of the Banque Populaire Ultimwill be followed by offshore training including a round trip to South Africa to validate the changesmade during the winter works and to compile asmuch data as possible about the performance of the boat. The Rolex Fastnet will see her raced in anger and then skipper Armel le Cléac'h is due to sail “false solo” (racing with two crew but only one person actually sailing the boat, often carried out for safety reasons when solo skippers are training) in the Arkéa UltimChallenge, which will set off fromBrest on 7 January 2024. The equivalent of the Vendée Globe, sailed on Ultims, this is the colossal challenge ahead. Several key parts of meeting
these challenges will have been addressed before the boat leaves the base. Of these challenges, good surface glide and abrasion resistance are both absolutely critical. Pierre-Emmanuel Hérissé, technical director of Banque Populaire and a major player in the ocean racing community for a quarter of a century says, ‘the BP team has always collaborated with Nautix for paints and coatings. We appreciate the reliability of the company and its expertise. In addition to its proximity, Nautix is
64 SEAHORSE
a 15-minute drive from our base in Lorient. We have always worked with them, from the Figaro to the Ultim, for underwater paints, non-slip deck paints and also lacquers. ‘We subcontract the task of
painting to Blackfiber, they have one or two people permanently at our site. We define the maintenance and refit schedules and we rely on their know-how for everything coatings- related. Team Banque Populaire has two buildings sited in Lorient. The first, 400m2
, was intended for
the ORMA trimarans. The other, twice as large, houses the Ultim. ‘The maxi tri is often inside the
shed. We spend our life dismantling, reassembling the appendages, to maintain them, pamper them, sand them and so on. It takes a lot of work to keep the appendages at peak performance in terms of good glide and abrasion resistance. We do the preparation and Blackfiber comes to apply the paint, from the primer to the final topcoat’. The appendages are becoming
bigger and more and more stressed; the boats are going faster and faster offshore and this causes violent impacts. Hard matrix paints meet these two requirements of abrasion and impact resistance. It is a time- consuming task because it is often
Above: maxi trimarans like Banque Populaire XI need hard matrix antifouling such as A4 T.Speed (right)
necessary to strip the coatings back and recoat to regain an optimal finish and preserve the cleanest flows possible. Hérissé says. Other teams
lacquer their boat completely, topsides and under-water sections. ‘But not us,’ says Hérissé, ‘we continue to use antifouling on the underbody to avoid tedious time spent on underwater cleaning work’. The antifouling does not eliminate cleaning dives. A BP diver works every week when the boat is in the water and this allows an application on the underbody only once a year. Guillaume Helfer has been
working for 20 years around the submarine base in Lorient where the best of the world’s ocean racing fleet is located. Originally, Helfer was part of racing teams but created his own company, Blackfiber, 15 years ago, which employs five to six very busy people. ‘We handle the painting cycle on the new boats (shaping, priming, paint application)
NAUTIX/BANQUE POPULAIRE
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