Opposite: 11th Hour training in Biscay onboard Malama. Charlie Enright’s US entry is the only team racing an Imoca built for crewed sailing and so should be a good bet for the overall win – especially with some rival ‘non-Anglo’ skippers freely admitting to having not fitted in any crewed training before the race. Enright had easily the most crewed miles under his belt at the start, but there is a daunting amount of Imoca experience in some other teams and the same deep well of shorthanded experience that helped Franck Cammas to his completely unforeseen (by rivals) maiden Volvo Ocean Race win on Groupama 4. If Enright’s team pull off the win it will be a magnificent result… but not a first of course for the land of the free. Paul Cayard dropped into the EF Whitbread programme late in the day in 1997, bringing with him a bunch of America’s Cup and Star boat amigos and they learned pretty fast, fast enough to win the 1997/98 Whitbread Race with time to spare. Meanwhile, among the challengers to 11th Hour one skipper, Kevin Escoffier on Holcim PRB (above), would first just like to finish this time, having narrowly escaped with his life after his previous PRB snapped in half and rapidly sank during the last Vendée Globe. Escoffier will be especially mindful of the structural limits of a modern Imoca 60
experienced to be fully appreciated, and it’s fair to say doing anything onboard becomes a challenge; my back isn’t going to be quick to forgive me. Owing to the massive amount of right-
ing moment from the foil the boat typically sails below 10° of heel which only tends to make the slamming worse. From a heel perspective at least the sensation onboard is probably more similar to that of a multi- hull than that of the 65s, where we were used to sailing around at 25° all the time. There’s just a whole lot more hull to bounce off the water. This righting moment provided by the
foils, combined with the slamming, means that we have to be constantly vigilant of the loads we are putting through the boat, and as things start to get interesting onboard we have a huge number of alarms to warn us when we are approaching the edge. All the rigging loads are measured by loadcells and the foils are fitted with fibre optic sensors that inform our conscious decisions about how close to the limit we wish to sail. Then there’s the fact that the Imoca is
inherently much more fragile than a VO65. The previous two one-design editions of the then Volvo Race evolved into a compe- tition of who could push hardest for longest as the fleet was all so evenly matched. But with the Imocas we will need
to be much more respectful of the limits. How hard to push, and when, will
inevitably be an important element of race strategy. We will have to choose our moments wisely when to go all out. Equally there will be times when we
have to spend considerable periods of time sailing well below the ultimate potential of the boat, and as counterintuitive as that may seem if it avoids a breakdown it could be a race-winning move. With all this in mind, sea-state becomes
one of the big performance limiters and it is going to be interesting to see how much the teams will be prepared to invest into finding flatter water and less wind, espe- cially when you need so little wind to achieve the boat’s maximum potential compared to what we were used to before. On a personal level I certainly feel as if
I’m going to have my work cut out navi- gating this race: it feels like a very different challenge to the VO65s. If you were confi- dent of your boatspeed in the one-design you could sail conservatively, stick tight in the peloton and hope the boats around you make the mistakes. The fleet inevitably stuck close together and the optimum route for one boat was usually the optimum route for us all. With the Imocas we are going to have to sail much more our own race and to our
own strengths. As a result I expect to see the fleet spread out far more widely. There are going to be times where we are
faster than our competitors, and I’m sure there will be times when they will be faster than us as a result of the design choices we have all made. Coupled with knowing how hard to push the boat, the race strategy is definitely going to be interesting. Not least because the work needed to sail the boat means I cannot really afford to be sitting in front of the computer for long periods of time. At least the large navigation screen in the pit area means I can do the bulk of my navigation work on deck. It is an exciting prospect to be here in
Alicante shortly before we finally get going. In the three and a half years since the campaign started it has been a long road to the startline but an exciting journey filled with not only great experiences but also many challenges along the way. We have covered thousands of miles on
the water with our two boats and tested no fewer than six foil designs, and virtually we have tested many more. Countless hours have gone into the design, build and maintenance of a raceboat that we as a team can be very proud of. This time around it feels like a very
different race. I can’t wait to get started. Simon (SiFi) Fisher, Alicante
q SEAHORSE 39
JEAN-MARIE LIOT/ALEA
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