News Around the World
Make new with old At time of writing Damien Seguin is racing the long Antarctica leg of The Ocean Race onboard Paul Meilhat’s brand new Biotherm. After the last Vendée Globe, again with sponsorship from Apicil, Damien purchased Maître Coq, Yannick Bestaven’s winning boat. This Verdier/VPLP design, built by CDK, was originally launched in 2015 called Safran II. She took on the colours of Maître Coq IV for the 2020/2021 Vendée Globe, and its new skipper, Yannick, worked hard to make her as reliable as possible, which contributed greatly to his success in the last edition. Damien, born without a left hand, is an outstanding racer with
five world championship titles to his name, two gold medals at the Paralympic Games onboard the 2.4mR, plus a silver medal. At the same time he went to race offshore: first on a Figaro, then in a Class40, notably with two solo participations in La Route du Rhum, despite his handicap, as well as a second place in the 2011 Transat Jacques Vabre 2011 sailing with his good friend Yoann Richomme. While the skipper is surfing the South Seas his ‘old’ boat is
undergoing quite a makeover at the CDK shipyard. The main project is the installation of new foils and cassettes… which is not a small operation.
the aft hull had to be reinforced with a new bottom section. Moreover, since these foils have neither the same geometry nor the same location as the old ones, it was necessary to replace the foil wells. Given the resulting weight increase of the boat, Groupe Apicilmust also be adapted to meet the latest stability standards imposed by the Imoca rules. Plus, as the boat is heavier, it is necessary to add volume to the deck! ‘So it is necessary to modify the coachroof and the distribution
of the water ballast… And as if all this was not enough, a piece of the bow was sliced off from the forefoot to spatulate the nose of the boat for better motion over the waves…’ This type of surgery has been done already on other existing
Imocas. We did not dare ask Damien the cost of all these big modifications… nor the price he paid for his seven-year-old 60-footer. Overall it must be a tidy sum!
The secondhand market is booming! Last year we saw records being broken in the secondhand boat market. But the same was true in 2020 and 2021, and the same situation already looks likely to be repeated in 2023: further increases in the total number of transactions and with higher average sales prices. Jérôme Le Joubioux, a well-known yacht broker in south Brittany,
says: ‘Since 2019 the used pleasure craft market just kept on grow- ing. In 2019, 61,172 transactions took place in France (including sail and motorboats). 2020: an exceptional year, 79,677 transac- tions. 2021: exceptional growth, 115,895 boats changed hands! 2022: figures are expected in the coming weeks but it is very likely that the number of transactions will again exceed 100,000 units sold. As a direct consequence for 2023 the fleet of available boats has shrunk considerably, while demand stays very strong.’ This is good news for sellers but paradoxically also for buyers,
as Jérôme explains: ‘The purchase price of a used boat in 2023 will be higher than in 2019… But the prices of used boats will continue to rise in the coming years; it is inevitable because the price of new boats is also increasing very strongly.’ So for buyers who purchase a used boat in 2023 the probability
of reselling at the same price in a few years, if not for an even higher price, is quite high. Good luck! Patrice Carpentier
Three-time paralympic medallist Damien Seguin (left) and Biotherm skipper Paul Meilhat check the traveller lashings during the long leg 3 of The Ocean Race. The hugely talented but often overlooked Meilhat was the last skipper to launch a new Imoca before the race, his Verdier design going afloat just three months before the race start… no wonder it was a couple of gentle legs before Meilhat started to crank things up on leg 3
Damien: ‘All these changes were considered as soon as the
boat was purchased at the end of 2021. Since 2020 there has been a steady emergence of new technologies, particularly in foils, with faster and faster boats. Today there are a lot more new Imocas and they are all equipped with larger foils. So if we want to get in the front spot we have to update Apicil. The performance gain with these change will be between five and 15 per cent, depending on the angle and strength of the wind. ‘When we bought this boat it was a great opportunity for our
ambitions in the next Vendée Globe. But we quickly saw that we would have to do a big job on her to be more competitive. Winter 2022 was the right period because it gave us time to make all the modifications focused on the performance of the boat including the change of the foils. But it was also very important – and pro- ductive – to sail this boat in her initial form for a year before going into the shed, while we learned her qualities and her defects. ‘In 2022 we launched the design studies for the new foils with
VPLP. We wanted to model these foils on the course of the Vendée Globe. The new foils are one-off, not made on existing moulds. Their manufacture began in October 2022… it is a long process! ‘One consequence of the new appendages is that because of the increased performance with the boat now trimming by the stern
26 SEAHORSE
GREAT BRITAIN The Wright stuff Ed Wright’s name has been at the top of the Finn class for as long as most of us can remember. Born in any era other than that dom- inated by Iain Percy, then Ben Ainslie and Giles Scott, he could be a double or triple Olympic gold medallist. But in Finn circles he’s pure sailing royalty and just cemented that status by winning his second Finn Gold Cup out on Coconut Bay in Miami, 12 years after first securing arguably the most coveted trophy in dinghy sailing. The manner in which he achieved the double was remarkable:
four bullets and three podiums, from a 58-boat fleet that has lost none of its competitiveness since being ousted from the Games. But it nearly didn’t happen: ‘To be honest I almost gave up on the idea of entering the Gold Cup this time. ‘During the Etchells Worlds in Cowes I was trying to get my Finn
from the UK to Miami, but it was going to be a very expensive under- taking to send my boat alone and the Brits didn’t have any slots left in the team container. Then, thankfully, my friend Joost Houwel- ing offered me a “TT2” as someone had cancelled on a charter. So there I was suddenly with a boat and no excuse not to enter.’ That ‘TT2’ is the ‘Tim Tavinor 2’ – the all-conquering Finn off the
genius design board of Phil Morrison and built by DC Composites in the Netherlands. Wright describes it: ‘The TT2 is built to a low rocker hull design, but the brief was for a more all-round boat com- pared to what other builders were making. The centreboard was developed by David Howlett and Steve Mellors in the UK and built in-house by Sail Industries (a partner of DC Composites), machined out of high-grade aluminium and finished with a special coating.
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