News Around the World
It’s as though skipper Armel Tripon and designer Sam Manuard are torturing their Vendée Globe rivals the way they have drip-fed their new Imoca L’Occitane onto the scene. First some scant renders, then yard photos of a blank white hull that was impossible to scale, then some fit-out shots and now, finally, a floating Imoca 60… still with a lot of work to do. There is no doubt Manuard’s first Imoca, and the first Imoca scow, look right as well as sea-kindly for her skipper. However, whether a radical new design and relatively inexperienced – in Vendée terms – skipper can win next winter remains to be seen. Builder Black Pepper certainly turned out a good looking boat, and Manuard has not gone overly extreme with the scow influence for his first Imoca. But the two Class40 scows to date have shown so much performance superiority that even a modest interpretation of the theme is enough to worry Tripon’s Imoca rivals
FRANCE And the strong get stronger Launched last year, the new-format UNCL Channel/Atlantic Champion ship worked well. Based mainly on coastal and offshore races, the series features around 15 events racing between Baiona in Spain to Cowes and includes those RORC races that finish in a French port, as well as the must for French skippers: the Rolex Fastnet Race in odd years. There are two classifications, as for RORC races –DH (duo) and Overall – including all the boats crewed or otherwise. Your five best results count as long as there are at least 10 boats in the class. This format has enabled everyone outside the Mediterranean to
take part in enough races to score for the championship – the geographic distribution of French IRC fleets is too spread out between the Channel, south Brittany and La Rochelle to think about a unique programme for everyone in a single region. A look at the results from 2019 demonstrates the importance
of good offshore race results. Only Spi Ouest France, a giant inshore and coastal regatta with round-the-buoy courses, makes a serious dent on the final scoreboard. Interestingly, the tremendous growth of the two-handed divisions is levelling off a little in France – but it is now at a high level of both fleet sizes and racing skill. The two- handed racing is now a permanent and large feature on the handicap racing landscape. The final classification for 2019 showed a healthy number of
participants: 536 boats overall in IRC including 231 in the two- handed division. But, as well as record numbers of boats, we note that in 2019 more boats were sailing a greater number of races and also that the results were surprisingly tight. Meanwhile, the UNCL Mediterranean Championships saw 292
boats scoring points, 83 two-handed and 28 singlehanded. Proof once again of the good health of the IRC on the ‘Grande Bleue’. Although the big regattas have relatively constant participation,
growing mainly through the increased interest in two-handed com- petition, offshore races are still seeing their numbers growing, with entry records regularly broken. Ludovic Abollivier, director of the IRC rating office at UNCL, confirms: ‘The number of IRC boats in France
20 SEAHORSE
is still increasing, as it is in the majority of countries where our rating office is managing IRC activity. Our good health is based on solid Mediterranean foundations with a big boost from the relaunch of the Channel/Atlantic Championship in 2019 – and the emphasis has deliberately been pushed towards offshore racing in response to the wishes of the sailors themselves. ‘For all the IRC events attendance is up. Full crew, double or
solo, the UNCL and all the clubs associated with IRC have been developing nicely balanced programmes, attractive to all disciplines and all competitors. In 2020 our championships are again innovating and new clubs are coming to work with us to make IRC competition even more accessible. ‘This healthy evolution results in well-stocked starting lines, and
an increase in the number of certificates. The number of requests for trial-runs and amendments of certificates during the year is also growing, as is the demand for measurement by our team. And, with the carefully preserved consistency of the IRC rule, the optimisation of ratings by the serious teams is going well… but not too well!’ The 2019 programme in its new format was a success. A rather
good omen for 2020. The introduction of the new championship, based on similar principles to the RORC’s own season champion - ship, at last offers a single shared calendar for races in the Channel and in the Atlantic. But this improvement took a lot of ‘organising’, with UNCL needing
to do a lot of communication with the relevant clubs in the two zones to build a unified longterm programme. It was, however, important for UNCL and the French clubs to regain momentum in these two regions, as competition was beginning to become too confined to local competitions. Especially since today we are witnessing this big demand for the offshore and two-handed regattas. The Channel/Atlantic championship was built on beautiful existing
events such as Spi Ouest France, Gascogne 45/5 and La Trinité- Cowes (now counting for the RORC Championship). The approxi- mately 15 races are divided between the three big regions for this type of racing: La Rochelle, where offshore racing has been growing a lot; south Brittany; and the Channel with its own events but also the proximity of other English and Irish races.
PIERRE BOURAS
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