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Jérémie Beyou was the only skipper in the last Vendée Globe to add foils to an existing non-foiling Imoca 60, Maître CoQ, now Sam Davies’s Initiatives-Coeur (left). Beyou finished a solid third. His foils (seen here) were designed by then Team New Zealand technical director Nick Holroyd (now in the role at Ineos Team UK); however, those foils were a compromise for reasons of practicality and cost, relying on straight elements as opposed to the complex multi-curved Dali foils of Beyou’s rivals. Next year Initiatives-Coeur will gain a set of much larger, up-to-date foils being designed by Guillaume Verdier – who encouragingly was the foil designer behind TNZ’s eventual America’s Cup victory!


designed for foils it is easy to break the hull or the rig or both. However, he proved it works and this has given my team the confidence to move on to a Version 2 foil after the Rhum. This way I learn to use the ‘small’ foils while acquiring enough experience to play a useful role in the V2 design loop with our designer Guillaume Verdier. Guillaume is very optimistic about our project. The good part is


that now it is all about the foil – and so we are confident that with our V2 foils we will leapfrog those who do not optimise their 2016 boats. So in a way this is a good means of keeping the secondhand boats as close as possible to the new ones in terms of performance – and that has to be good for everyone. Having said that, there is no doubt the new boats will be lighter and stiffer generally as tech- nology has moved on a bit since 2010! But for me a big part of the Vendée is still clocking enough miles


other 2016 foilers that on paper are all faster than my boat. SH: Your boat was built in 2010 but then had foils added by Beyou for the last VG. What changes are you making? SD: Last winter we modified the ballast system to meet the 2016 rule, which means for the same righting moment my boat is now 800kg lighter… which is handy! We have also changed the sailplan to better suit my sailing style, and also to meet new Imoca rules that limit the number of sails onboard to eight (including storm jib). I am pretty happy because now my boat is easier to sail as well


as faster at most angles. We also added a means of moving the foils to change the rake (a late rule change this winter) – which I have been playing around with. Plus I’ve been working with Madintec developing an autopilot that runs on my existing Bravo processor; for the Vendée you absolutely have to stay at the front in this area. SH: You said in Cherbourg you are happy with your boat now but don’t you think the next ‘full foil’ Imoca will be rather faster? SD: Yes. Definitely… I have been training with Yann this year on his 2016 foiler and he is always faster than me once the foils come into play… which for him is also sooner than for me. There is no doubt we will see a huge leap in performance once the next- generation Imoca launch. In current mode I will struggle to keep up with the 2016 boats in the Rhum, and in theory the new generation – Charal and perhaps PRB – will be even further ahead. My foils are small and comparatively not at all powerful – Jérémie


didn’t want to take too much risk when he modified his older boat. The foils add so much righting moment that if your boat was not


in the boat before the start. The new boats nearly always suffer from being a bit too late on the water. I knew at the beginning of last year that I was entered in the Vendée Globe 2020 with my boat already on the water and ready to tough out enough training miles for me to have full confidence by the time the race actually starts. SH: Romain Attanasio, your partner in life, is also a professional sailor, also skippering an Imoca and also entering the next Vendée! I wonder how you manage this ‘way of life’ and how Romain feels when you finish in front of him… SD: We are the only couple in the Imoca fleet and the only couple to have ever both finished the Vendée Globe! We are both living our dream so we are very happy and have managed the situation pretty well so far. Romain accepts that I finish in front at the moment because I have more experience and a faster boat. And the fact that our boats are from different generations takes the pressure off between us. And of course we have a young son, so sometimes the logistics are complicated, but we luckily have a good network of family and friends who support us. SH: You are definitely focused on the next VG but there are many other races before then… SD: I’ll enter all the Imoca Globe Series – crewed and shorthanded. Races are the best way to prepare for the VG and the new series allows our sponsors to get some good returns outside the ‘big’ race. Also my shore team is made up of some top-level sailors (within the team there is a women’s match race world champion, Figaro sailors and Mini Transat veterans) so I don’t have to look far when we enter a crewed race. But for the double-handed races next year I plan to race with someone more experienced, who can help me learn about my bigger new foils as quickly as possible. SH: You have experience of the Vendée Globe and the Volvo. How do you feel with the choice made by the new owners of the race to get on with the Imoca boats? SD: I am one of the few people who ‘floats’ between the French and Anglo-Saxon world of offshore sailing, so I am happy to see the two worlds converge. I think it is a good idea; definitely the format of the VOR needed to change because there are so few entries (and even fewer that got there without financial support from Volvo). For sure, when you look at the Vendée where there are more


skippers trying to enter than the 30 boats allowed, then you compare that to the six or seven boats in the VOR... I admit that not all the Vendée competitors are top-level and there is more of an ‘adventure’ feel for the second half of the fleet, but even so the gap is huge. There is a lot of work to do to make this work for the new ‘Volvo


Ocean Race’ but Atlant (Richard Brisius and Johan Salén) is the best team to take it on and if anyone can make it work then they can. I obviously worked closely with them with Team SCA and I trust their competence to find the right balance for the future of the race. But there are many difficulties to make the Imoca work as a


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