Opposite: Plenty of room inside… Marc Lombard’s dramatic Ofcet 32 is the first IRC design created for shorthanded racing. Initially the boat proved disappointing, suffering from being a little heavy and under-canvassed – problems some observers were quick to misinterpret as being down to the boat’s full hull with its particularly blunt forward sections. Now the Ofcet has been ‘liberated’ with more sail plus a reduction in displacement that has also made the hull easier to trim. The deck plug (above) for Mestral Marine’s new MMW 33 with the hull mould behind showing the substantial rocker that Michele Molino has given his demonstrably all-round design
sail plan, crews even struggled to heel the boat to leeward enough in light airs. This was all the result of a (very French)
obsession with rating as low as possible. ‘The first Ofcet 32 was launched late, in September 2016 instead of spring,’ says Eric Levet of Lombard, ‘so we missed that summer’s races and with it the time we needed for development and tuning. ‘In a silly way we kept chasing a lower
TCC, following the normal IRC routes including weighing the boat down – even adding extra batteries that are useless. We had already made the hull slightly heavier than originally intended, through simplify- ing the construction; we ended up with a boat that was immediately good in a breeze, but clearly weak in light air.’ The first two boats weighed in at 3.6
tonnes against the 3.45 tonnes on the original plans. Sail area was also trimmed to get down to a TCC of 1.005, ie as close as possible to the JPK 1010. In this trim the two Ofcets that entered Spi Ouest France 2017 had disappointing results: 15th and 22nd in a fleet of 31 boats… ‘Being purpose designed as a boat for
the open sea or coastal courses, with a small or shorthanded crew, the original Ofcet clearly lacked versatility,’ explains Eric Levet. ‘During the inshore races the boat really
struggled, coming off the startline lower than her rivals, which makes it impossible to reach the first mark in the lead,’ explains Maxime Paul, sail designer at Incidence Voiles, who have been develop- ing the sails for the first two examples.
‘The first sails we had were much too
small, and the more we developed the rig the more canvas we added. ‘The mainsail area has increased, with a
little more roach. The headsail area has been increased, though less dramatically, our focus being on better shapes to suit the powerful hull form. The jibs are deeper than before, with the upper girths increas- ing but the lower girths pretty much unchanged. The jib luffs have also been shortened slightly to compensate for the rating cost of making the sails bigger.’ The Ofcet is rigged with a single-
spreader rig, again for rating reasons, but according to Maxime Paul, ‘This allowed us more freedom when our new headsails were being designed.’ So come spring of 2018 and there has
been a paradigm change to the Ofcet pro- ject: ‘We put aside our ambition to race the JPK 1010s in IRC 3,’ explains Yann Dubé. ‘Now we aim only for performance and then we’ll see where the rating comes out. ‘At a new TCC of 1.011, the Ofcet 32
now competes in France in IRC 2 with the bigger JPK 1080s and Sun Fast 3600s; the boat is the smallest in its class, which is never very good inshore but it doesn’t matter if the sailing programme is oriented towards the open sea and even more so to racing shorthanded, where everyone races together in one fleet without separate class starts to worry about.’ Thus Black Mamba, Ofcet 32 no1
sailed during the ArMen Race by Yann Dubé and Figaro specialist Xavier Macaire, won the event with more than an hour to
spare on corrected time. At the same time Jean-Philippe Cau, owner of the other Ofcet taking part, Of Course, took second place in the IRC 3 fully crewed division. ‘I’ve got Ofcet 32 no5,’ says Cau, ‘on
which we’d already changed the sail plan as we saw last year at Spi Ouest that the Ofcets had a huge problem in light airs. ‘We added a little area to the genoa and
extended the mainsail on the foot by 15cm. I was also the only one so far to have chosen the full-asymmetric option for the boat. However, we have since gone back to symmetric sails because the penalty downwind in light air was too big. ‘So we abandoned the large asymmetric
spinnaker, shortened the bowsprit, which nevertheless remains a little longer than on the other Ofcets, and added a symmetric spinnaker of 88m2
.’ In the ArMen Race Of Course also
sailed with only four crew, as Cau is convinced that even ‘fully crewed’ these boats must be sailed as light as possible. ‘There is no point on this boat just “hang- ing more people on the lines” with a hull that is already naturally stiff. ‘From Ofcet n°5 onwards the keel has
also been made lighter, which should enable it to go even faster in the conditions where it was already fast and improve its weaknesses,’ adds Cau. ‘In certain condi- tions a boat with such a full hull will always have some difficulty, such as when the sea is stronger than the wind, but overall the package now is nice.’ From the naval architect Eric Levet’s point of view the boat ‘no longer has that w
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