Left: the image and result that began to move the Vendée Globe from a purely French event to a competition that today attracts the wider international interest that a human adventure of this stature deserves. When Ellen MacArthur finished as runner-up to Michel Desjoyeaux in the 2000/2001 Vendée Globe she set off a chain of events that culminated in fully one-third of this year’s entry hailing from outside France… and one-fifth of them female. The first Vendée in 1989/90 was won by charismatic French sailor – and artist – Titouan Lamazou (above) onboard his Bouvet-Petit designed 60-footer (early editions featured 50 and 60-foot divisions). Lamazou’s success was rewarded with major backing from TAG Heuer for a monohull attempt at an 80-day circumnavigation; unfortunately the giant Bouvet-Petit design built at the James Bond-like Tencara facility in Venice broke up with a large crowd of media folk onboard during her maiden voyage, stalling Lamazou’s racing career and badly hurting the reputation of his talented designers, Bouvet-Petit
A huge entry and quite a number of potential winners Among the 33 sailing yachts engaged (a record number) around the world in the non-stop solo race, eight are of the latest generation and have tested one, two or even three pairs of foils before the race in order to take off from 13kt of wind upwards, and thus have a considerable speed potential while also creating a nice window of performance and sailing angles in higher sustained winds. Not surprisingly, the VPLP design
Charal, the first to be launched in 2018, benefits from the longest period of devel- opment. She is driven by Jérémie Beyou who has only one goal: to win the race. Hugo Boss, also designed by VPLP but
equipped with extreme C-foils, is very optimised for reaching/running. As with Jérémie Beyou, Boss skipper Alex Thomson, a veteran of the VG (this will be his fifth participation), is seeking victory but we cannot say what his potential is because his only confrontation with the French sailors was very brief during the Transat Jacques Vabre (2019) due to a premature collision with a UFO that took off the keel of the black Hugo Boss. Partly because of Covid, Alex subse-
quently preferred to train alone at home. Still among the new boats, the two Verdier designs (that have both experimented with two different sets of foils) quickly went into battle with Charal. Apivia is skippered
by the Figaro champion Charlie Dalin, very involved in the development of his boat but a rookie of the South Seas. Linkedout’s skipper is Nordic sailor
Thomas Ruyant, who has two great solo oceanic victories (Mini Transat and Route du Rhum in Class40) to his pedigree and distinguished himself in the last Vendée Globe by bringing alone to port (south of New Zealand) a severely damaged vessel. Two other new prospects are the Juan K
designs for Sébastien Simon (Arkéa-Paprec) and Nicolas Troussel (Corum), once again two distinguished Figaristes (Troussel has won it twice). Sébastien’s boat experienced repeated foil problems and it was not until the Azimut Challenge in September that he distinguished himself onboard his boat with large C-shaped appendages quite similar to those of Hugo Boss. Corum was the last of the Imocas
launched and has not competed against the other boats in an official competition. Nicolas is preparing quietly in his corner under the eye of Michel Desjoyeaux, the man who has marked the VG both by his two victories and by the management of Vincent Riou and François Gabart, two other winners of the race. The ‘Professeur’ invested himself in the
construction of Corum and her develop- ment. Nicolas surrounded himself with three other experts, Nicolas Lunven, Sébastien Josse and Thomas Rouxel, to speed up his preparation. Sébastien Simon,
coached by Vincent Riou, and Nicolas Troussel are VG rookies. The seventh new boat is a VPLP design
built in the same mould as Charal but without the benefit of the same develop- ments. The ambitions of its Japanese skipper Kojiro Shiraishi are not at the same level as those of other new boats’ skippers. The eighth Imoca of the new generation,
designed by Samuel Manuard, is probably the most original of all with its narrow scow shape and the exit of its foils high up on the topsides near the deck and not close to the waterline as on the other Imocas. The handicap of this machine, which proved to be the fastest of all under certain conditions, is that she was launched late (at the beginning of the year) and had several trips back to the shed at La Trinité-sur-Mer following a collision with a UFO and other damage suffered at high speed during train- ing when the panels of the hulls are often highly stressed (it is a bit a sickness for the new-generation foilers!). The skipper of l’Occitane en Provence,
Armel Tripon, made a name for himself when he won the last edition of the Route du Rhum aboard a Multi50 and his track record includes medals in the Mini, Figaro 2 and Class40. Tripon’s campaign started quite late – he was actually ready to begin three years ago but his partners decided to go with Thomas Ruyant instead… so the l’Occitane skipper had to begin again! It would be ‘normal’ and expected that
SEAHORSE 53
TITOUAN LAMAZOU/DPPI
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