News Around the World
Maxime Sorel’s new Verdier-designed Imoca V&B Monbana comes out of the shed at Mer Concept in Concarneau, the race preparation and raceboat building operation founded by two-time Vendée Globe winner Michel Desjoyeaux. V&B have been supporting Sorel for approaching 10 years now, first building him a Mach40.3 Class40 in 2013. Finishing 10th in the last Vendée Globe, Sorel’s declared goal for his second edition in 2024 is to step up from ‘finisher to performer’. To this end he chose not to push the design envelope too hard at the cost of reliability – hence V&B is at its core an Apivia development and less radical than some of the other new 60s
‘My decision to sell dates back to July 2019 when I learned of
the 2023 launch of the Ocean Globe Race, a sort of “revival” of the Whitbread, a race that has always made me dream,’ said Dominique Dubois, who has been at the helm of the Carboman Group since 2009. ‘I knew it would be impossible to run such a project while meeting
the company’s orders, so I started looking for a buyer. One day the Breton investment fund Agence Epopée Gestion came to see me and offered to lend me money to develop the group. I explained to them that I was more interested in finding buyers… they came back three weeks later with Jean-Denis and Damien!’ These are two entrepreneurs, childhood friends and engineers
by training who, in 2017, bought Ouest Composites, a large Auray- based company specialising in manufacturing composite parts for the industrial sector. ‘We wanted to embark on an external growth strategy, and we were contacted by Aymeric Le Renard of Epopée Gestion – also a Mini 6.50 sailor – who had thought of us for the Carboman Group,’ explains Jean-Denis Bargibant. ‘We were a little afraid to enter a universe too different from our
core business, but the more we turned the pages of the book the more interested we became, because it offered us many new oppor tunities for synergies and developments… but also because we realised that Dominique had already been very successful in diversifying Multiplast.’ The new buyers have kept the existing team in place, confirming
Yann Penfornis as managing director of Multiplast. Yann also now becomes a partner of the holding company, a nice thank you for the decades of success he has helped generate since first taking a desk alongside multihull genius Gilles Ollier – the founder of Multiplast 40 years ago. Patrice Carpentier
NEW ZEALAND For more than six decades the Pied Piper Class has been a rite of passage yacht for young Kiwis, who use their newfound indepen- dence to maraud far and wide. Piedy sailors have built a reputation for racing hard, playing harder and generally making a lot of noise doing both. So what, you may ask, possessed 67-year-old Tim
22 SEAHORSE
Snedden to return to the class, having bought his first Pied Piper nearly half a century ago. ‘In their day Pied Pipers were bloody fast,’ he says of the plywood
22-footers. ‘They were light, high-performance boats that could beat anything under 30ft.’ With modern sails and materials revitalising these perky boats, his enthusiasm is fully revived. Against reservations that he is 46 years older than the current
class champion, Pierre Harrison, Snedden is delighted at the welcome he has received in the class – and that his racing instincts are as sharp as ever. His initial two competitive events more than 47 years after first entering the class found him in the winner’s circle once again. The first was the CBRE Auckland Regatta, where he sailed as
tactician in Harrison’s crew. And the second was a 38-mile SSANZ two-handed event, where Snedden borrowed Harrison’s Motamouse and swept to a convincing victory, nearly 12 minutes ahead of the runner-up. Harrison, who is away working as shore crew with the Sled TP52
in Europe, was thrilled to see his boat’s champion status upheld by someone old enough to be his grandfather. ‘It just shows how these little old boats can bring youth and wisdom together!’ he says, with a grin. In fact, Harrison has played a large role in facilitating Snedden’s
return to the fold. Beyond lending his boat while Snedden’s own Pied Piper is undergoing a refit, he has helped bring him up to speed on the latest techniques for getting the most out of them. ‘Pierre is only 21 years old but he is already a class veteran,’
says Snedden. He got his first Pied Piper at the age of 14 and he and his father did a full rebuild. Motamouse is his second boat and is probably the most successful Piedy ever, with about eight national titles under three different owners. ‘Pierre helped me find a boat to buy and also took me out sailing
and doing a couple of races. We had a great CBRE result, with four wins, a second and third. And he was good enough to lend me his boat for the double-handed race, where we had a blinder. It was a really nice day of sailing, quite light but never flukey.’ Coming off the downwind startline Motamousepicked up an early puff, squirted into the lead and extended for the remainder of the
PIERRE BOURAS/DPPI
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