so than ever with foiling. If you can be 500kg lighter overall, there are gains to be had in foiling earlier. And, any weight you can save high up quickly adds to the advantage.’ One big change is in the construction method of the sails. ‘The sails come off the Stratis floor 50 per cent more finished than they were three years ago,’ Bouzaid says. ‘Virtually everything that was once stitched on afterwards by sailmakers on sewing machines is now built into the laminate. All the batten reinforcements, corner patching, hand patches, luff attachments and so on are now precisely laminated in place.
‘That not only makes them more durable, which is particularly important in a race like the Vendée Globe, it also gives a much smoother surface finish. With the high speeds these boats achieve, the sails take a battering from the force of water and wind trying the rip them apart. High speeds mean the apparent wind is nearly always well forward of 60° and when true windspeed approaches 20kts, sail reduction comes into play. ‘Those decisions about how far up the range to carry big sails will vary from skipper to skipper,’ says Bouzaid. ‘In the last race, we saw footage of Hugo Boss in the Southern Ocean with reefed main, a jib and a staysail ripping along at maximum heel. In similar conditions, some boats were down to two reefs and a tiny jib. ‘Generally, with singlehanders, the significant sail changes are made in the lower wind ranges, up to about 20kts. It takes a long time to change a sail on your own. A lot of thought and planning goes into it and you can lose a lot of time, particularly if it goes wrong, which it can easily do.
‘The biggest issue is getting caught with too much sail up, so in winds above 20kts the rule of thumb is to get down to small sails reasonably early. Because the boats are fast and generating a lot of apparent windspeed, a few sails on these boats see a huge amount of time while other more conventional sails do not see much time at all.’ Sail design decisions need to take account of hull and foil shapes, so the package is tailored closely to the individual boat and skipper. ‘It is definitely not plug and play. You could not just take a set of Hugo Boss sails and put them on another boat. They would fit, because the rigs are one-design, but they would not necessarily work well because they were not designed for that particular setup or how that skipper wants to sail the boat.’
Sail shapes and depths also need
Above: Alex Thomson’s latest Hugo Boss has an all-Doyle Stratis sail wardrobe with Structured Luff tech- nology on all the flying sails,
including staysails. The forward projecting luffs of these sails are especially well suited to Imoca 60s, which have high righting moments but low rig tension. Headsail design is crucial on a boat so fast that the apparent
wind is nearly always for- ward of 60°. The hull and foil shapes of individual Imocas have a direct
bearing on sail design decisions. So does the autopilot and the skipper’s style of sailing
to take account of how autopilots handle the conditions. With the apparent wind forward, the tendency might be towards flat sails but they require more accurate steering. ‘With flat sails, the problem is that if the apparent wind moves aft and the autopilot doesn’t correct quickly enough, the boat will slow down very quickly and take a while to recover. Deeper sails are a bit more forgiving. It is a balancing act to find what maintains the highest average speed. ‘It is not like a Volvo 70, say, with a driver and a full crew trimming constantly for every little change. You don’t have that luxury.’ Bouzaid’s involvement with Thomson’s singlehanded campaigns has given him enormous respect for the Imoca boats and the skippers who drive them hard around the world. The punishment they and their machines endure is something that Bouzaid has observed first- hand through thousands of miles of ocean testing.
‘I have done several Atlantic crossings with him, done passages from Auckland to Portugal and we have notched up countless miles in the English Channel,’ he says. ‘Alex knows I don’t particularly like going offshore anymore so he doesn’t tell me the plan. I arrive in England and we generally leave to go sailing the next day.
‘Only once we are at sea does he tell me we are going to be away for two or three weeks. He gets great enjoyment out of that,’ Bouzaid laughs, before confessing that, despite the discomfort, he greatly values the association and the experience. He even uses the term “phenomenal fun” at one point in the conversation.
These passages typically have four
or five people on board and involve testing all day and then usually slowing down overnight. Even with this rare switch to “cruise” mode, it is not exactly an occasion for relaxing. Life aboard an Imoca is relentlessly tough. ‘These boats are incredibly noisy and the motion is extremely harsh and jerky, both from the slamming and from the autopilot making constant high-speed course corrections,’ says Bouzaid.
‘It is hard enough just standing up, let alone moving about and getting things done. As each generation has evolved, it gets more brutal as the boats go faster and spend half their time out of the water.’
In racing mode, the idea of one person alone coping with 70 to 90 days of this onslaught non-stop is hard to comprehend. The endless battle against fatigue and sleep deprivation; the fine line between speed and risk; manhandling sails weighing up to 80kg either to make changes on deck, or re-stacking them below to make trim changes, surely make this one of the most extreme mental and physical endurance challenges on earth.
‘I take my hat off to them,’ Bouzaid acknowledges. ‘I really don’t know what drives them to do it. You can’t race these boats for any period of time and not do some damage. It is almost 50-50 whether you are going to finish for one reason or another.’ Alex Thomson knows the pain of not finishing. His first two Vendée Globe attempts ended that way. The last two, however, ended on the podium with a 3rd and a 2nd respectively. Momentum in sport is greatly prized and the trend is decidedly positive as he embarks on his fifth bid to seize this daunting title.
www.doylesails.com
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