News Around the World
Not what you want to be doing during the long double-points Leg 3 of the current Ocean Race. A few days into the leg crew member Annie Lush noticed the floor on Guyot Environnement moving beneath her when down below. This was accompanied by increasing crunching sounds typical of a developing core failure which left the crew with no alternative but to head back to Cape Town. Once back ashore an NDT inspection quickly revealed large areas of core failure and delamination in the hull bottom, rendering out of the question any thought of quickly resuming leg 3. Guyot is the ex-Hugo Boss 2016 – a VPLP-Verdier design and the fastest Imoca in that year’s Vendée Globe, when it finished runner-up to Armel Le Cléac’h’s Banque Populaire. This is a very major repair in a critical area of the hull; fortunately the rest of the structure passed an understandably thorough NDT examination without any further issues
under the bilge producing vertical and lateral lift to increase righting movement but without paying too much in drag. SH: We can see with the latest generation of Imocas that they sail flat on the two foils, and often pitched up from the stern… DdP :Those photos taken during The Ocean Race in-port competitions are deceptive. The two foils are often seen lowered because the course marks are close together and the crew does not have much time or need to play with the foils. Having said that, we discovered that in certain conditions and at certain speeds, particularly running, using two foils simultaneously allows us to find a nice flying mode. You lift more with two foils, and as the drag of the foil is always
less than the drag of the hull we are better off doing this when the boat is unable to take off on a single appendage. But the optimum is still to be in balance on a single foil+the keel+the stern of the boat. The windward foil can then be used as a fourth leg when you don’t need righting moment… But the simultaneous use of two foils is still a new approach which we are just starting to understand. SH: Have you tried the Charal approach, to generate lift from the rudders? DdP :We examined this possibility but we did not consider it appro- priate because the gain in stability does not justify the extra weight required, not to mention the extra cost of such a complex solution. (Let us remind ourselves that the question whether Charal’s rudders comply or not with the Imoca rule has yet to be decided). SH: To sum up, can you tell us how the design of your two boats differs from the other new Imocas? DdP: The hull is different because of the bow, and her rather V-shaped hull sections. The other new boats are more U-shaped. The new boats also vary quite a lot in beam. For example, our hull is narrow like Charal 2, much narrower than, say, Malizia. The narrowness of the hull has direct consequences for the design of the foils, particularly with new rules which allow longer tips. Fully deployed, our foils have roughly the same span as the others but due to the narrowness of the boat the tip is increased while the length of the shaft is slightly reduced . Another difference is that we did not look for as much freeboard
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as on some other boats because our priority is to make a light boat with a very low CoG. Between the freeboard forward and the free- board aft the other boats generally have an inverted sheerline (convex on the deck line). Ours is concave, almost straight, I would say. This is to save weight, lower the CoG and optimise stability in the measurement condition. Without foils these two boats should sail pretty well while running (the most common sailing mode in the VG). Then when we are power-reaching the foils will do the work.
The skipper Yoann Richomme had strong views about the design and ergo - nomics of his first new Imoca. ‘We preferred to return to this type of sharp bow, but very high and clear of the water at rest. The deck curves upwards quite dramatically to shed water and also increase the natural rigidity of the platform – so saving weight. ‘The layout is super-clean… there is not one rope sitting on the
deck to interfere with the aerodynamics and hydrodynamics when water comes aboard. A central chute conceals all of the lines as they come back to the mast then to the cockpit. On the foredeck I have only added two large footholds for my security – although today we no longer dare go to the front of the boat at high speed! ‘We studied the existing fleet carefully to refine our coachroof
configuration. We wanted the protection of the previous enclosed boats, but not at the cost of good forward visibility – which many of the 2020 designs do not have. On the previous boats you spent 90 per cent of your time working inside a dark black hole with very limited outside vision. We have tried to make sure we are in a space where we can see the sails, the sky, sea and foils. ‘We also have a comfortable standby “seat” on each side of the
“work space”, again with good vision around us. I like to see out when I am racing; I think some of the very enclosed boats pay a price for this lack of contact with the environment outside. You often saw Charlie [Dalin] and Thomas [Ruyant] sailing in the open air in nice weather and they did rather well [they have dominated the Imoca class since 2020]. My idea is to need to move around very little to make adjustments. And, clearly, to not wear oilskins.’
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