Having battled the foilers for several years – stripping his boat to the bone along the way – PRB skipper Vincent Riou finally succumbed, adding these relatively big puppies to his Verdier-VPLP design. For a combination of reasons, including cost, structural complexity and the fact that PRB is wider than the newer boats, Riou has had to compromise slightly with a radiused shaft system leaving his foils concealed below deck; the new Charal (pg3) carries foils with longer straight shafts that protrude above the foredeck
From Imoca’s point of view we didn’t
completely agree. The technical project was ambitious and we weren’t convinced the economic model would stack up either, potentially affecting the secondhand value of our current fleet. But before Johan and Richard arrived on the scene Mark had flagged the fact that there was a need to collaborate, and to consolidate the two major ocean racing events, and we recog- nised that. The direction that Mark was pushing for and the door he opened was really good. We must thank him for that. It’s important to remember that we are a
small sport compared to others like foot- ball, tennis or Formula One. We have too many categories and too many series. For the uninitiated fan base it’s hard to know who is the best skipper, who is the champion team. To do the Vendée Globe and the VOR, the two major round-the-world races today, in the same boat can only be positive. But during my first conversation with
Johan we didn’t talk about what we could do together. To start with we discussed the strengths and weaknesses of our respective worlds and what the visions for the future were. Interestingly we already shared more or less the same views about the current situation within our two worlds. JS: For Richard, Antoine and me the main area to focus on is developing a better economic model for the Imoca class and VOR, to build a more sustainable financial basis for team sponsors. We are very open to private owners getting involved but it is important for the event’s continuity that it works as a good platform for sponsors. But for Richard and me, despite all we
agreed on with Antoine, it wasn’t just ‘fall in with Imoca’. We still had a couple of other options on the table. One of them was to continue with the VO65 class alone, but we didn’t feel this was a good enough option for two reasons: 1. There are only eight boats in existence and we want more entries than that in the
36 SEAHORSE
future. It would be difficult to get new teams to build new 5m euro VO65s that they would probably only use in one round-the-world race and nothing else. 2. The VO65 has a lot of qualities as a one-design but in the next event they will be close to 10 years old and obviously no longer the most high-tech boat capable of attracting the best sailors in the world. The other option was to introduce
another new class, something that has been done three times already. It’s worked out before but it’s never been a huge success. Every time we considered an option we
had to be satisfied that it fulfilled our number one goal: deliver more teams to the race. The Imoca solution always came back as the most attractive. SH: So Antoine, tell us about your class… AM: The Imoca class is in good health. We have this fantastic event every four years which is the Vendée Globe, and the 2016- 17 edition was a great success. We also have a really interesting boat that has been constantly evolving over the past 30 years. Every four years a new generation of
boat appears that is significantly better than what came before. And during the period between VGs we have plenty of other events to race in with our own circuit, the Imoca Globe Series. Our boats are exciting and technical to sail. All these factors mean we have a strong secondhand market for them; then we enjoy the match of having a unique solo round-the-world race and a wide variety of skippers with ambitions to sail alone around the world. So there is something for everyone. The last major rule changes took place
in 2013 when we introduced the one- design components (mast, keel, hydraulics). This was a good decision as it has mas- sively improved reliability. Modern Imocas are the only monohulls with foils and a wing mast and an active racing circuit. When you see one you know what it is! It is a challenging class to manage as it
has many different levels of competitors, big teams, small teams, amateur teams, a lot of French teams but also now a lot of foreign teams – about a third of the fleet today is non-French. The diversity is some- times not easy to keep control of. The people who sail these boats singlehanded are unique characters too… In the Imoca world the economic model
still just about works, but a top team with ambitions of winning the Vendée Globe must today count on a budget of around 10m euros spread over three to four years. This is not easy to find in France. To become even more international and to be able to use the same boat in a second major round-the-world race is something that is really important for Imoca’s future. JS: The Volvo can now use a different model to generate teams. There is a strong group of constantly active teams that already exists in the Imoca class which the Volvo has never had before. For the exist- ing VOR teams that want to continue they have a better economic model and a better base to build their projects on – this hasn’t been possible before as there were no activities for Volvo teams between events. Imoca with the Globe Series currently
has two or three big events every year. For new teams this combination is attractive. That’s the feedback we have at the moment. To make it even more attractive we intend to work with the Imoca class to generate more fully crewed activity including an Imoca class in all of the classics (Fastnet, Sydney-Hobart, New- port-Bermuda, Middle Sea Race and so on), making it more attractive for private owners to be involved with it too. Antoine’s point of consolidating the
sport, with the overriding criterion of attracting more teams, is the priority. The sport is so fragmented today – introducing new classes is not a good idea. Using a class that already exists and is constantly evolving is intelligent.
w
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