Trepidation justified?
Simon Fisher has competed in five Volvo Races, winning the event in 2014-2015 navigating for skipper Ian Walker with Abu Dhabi Racing. But his latest round-the-world adventure, navigating Charlie Enright’s 11th Hour, is something new entirely; never before have furious but often fragile Imoca 60s raced fully crewed around the world. This time it really could be ‘to finish first, first you have to finish…’
It has been an exciting and interesting challenge getting our heads around the foil- ing Imoca class for the now retitled Ocean Race. Having arrived in Alicante in early January, to see the boats assembling on the pontoons it is hard not to think about how much things have changed since the last two races when we got used to looking down the dock at the one-design VO65s. The Imoca is of course a completely
34 SEAHORSE
different breed of offshore racing boat compared to the VO65. With huge foils, low freeboard, enclosed cockpits and dra- matic deck-spreaders supporting a rotating wing mast, their appearance makes the VO65s look nothing if not conventional. But the differences go well beyond
appearances, and a new class for this race has meant a totally new approach to our campaign. Although our sights have always been firmly set on the Ocean Race, to understand what really makes this class tick we have had to fully immerse our- selves in the French shorthanded culture. For the past two years we have been based out of François Gabart’s MerConcept base in Concarneau alongside the likes of Charlie Dalin’s Apivia, which has proved to be both a good reference point for per- formance and also an excellent starting point for our own new Imoca design. For me personally it has been refreshing
to get back to racing in a development class after two events in the 65s; they
served their purpose well as a premier crewed racing class in recent editions of the race, and the one-design fleet in 2017- 18 delivered some of the closest racing ever seen in this event. But as a sailor who has enjoyed the development phase of previous campaigns it has been great to work closely with a design team again to try to develop a one-off winning package. Our designer Guillaume Verdier and his
team have a wealth of experience in the Imoca class and it’s been a fascinating journey working with them to turn our design concept into reality. As a sailing team we were tasked with creating some- thing we had little prior experience of, so throughout the design phase it was impor- tant to trust the experience of Guillaume’s studio of experts along with MerConcept, while trying to give useful input from the perspective of fully crewed racing. Our previous individual experience in
this race, coupled with a data-driven approach using historical routeing, was
AINHOA SANCHEZ/VOLVO
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