Above: the Lombard design Crosscall with its bulbous lower bow shape where the designer literally forced the sides apart between bow measurement points to maximise volume and righting moment. Crosscall had a poor TJV with its tricky tactical challenges; nor did she ever look slippery in the light airs of the first week. Left: by comparison, David Raison’s Max40 design is less radical with softer lines. Raison’s Mini won its first Transat, as did his first Class40 Crédit Mutuel in the 2019 TJV. While his fat-nose Mini 6.50 looked radical when it appeared 10 years ago, Raison prefers fair shapes rather than maxing out at a single measurement point. The odd ‘pointy’ bow is driven by the new beam measurements introduced following the success of the Mini scows
naval architecture it’s always a choice! Of the latest boats, David Raison’s Max
has a little more rocker than the Manuard 40.4 and I suspect it may have a small advantage in light weather and running in the strong breeze. However, most sailing is done between these two extreme condi- tions and so I prefer something with slightly straighter lines like the Mach40.4. SH: In some conditions during the TJV it certainly seemed that Redman had the higher speed potential… AC: We must be wary of making hasty comparisons. At 20 miles from each other we do not have the same wind conditions. I would say that we know our boat well, we didn’t damage the spinnakers and we kept the boat at 100 per cent potential all the way. Also we had generally good conditions for our hull. The Swiss (Banque du Léman) with the same boat as ours were also fine. Before the departure from Le Havre I
knew that we were not always the fastest, far from it, but the conditions favoured us. As you know we are limited to eight sails
48 SEAHORSE
on the Class40. Our new A2 spinnaker was well-suited to the moderate winds, plus we had a max VMG-runner, another max-luff VMG chute for over 17kt TWS and just one gennaker. I don’t understand why many of our competitors chose the option of two gennakers and only one big spinnaker. Some found themselves severely handicapped when they damaged their only large spinnaker. In Biscay we were reaching, then off
Portugal we were VMG sailing, then we headed up for a while between Gibraltar and the Canary Islands and only then did we eventually get the gennaker up. Then it was mainly VMG again in the
trade winds, though sometimes we headed up a little for a wind shift. We were very often sailing a ‘high-VMG’ mode at around 135° TWA, to go fast and get the hull really working. Generally speaking we were a little higher than the others… but sometimes we were 2kt faster! We were also at the helm most of the time… which in general terms is unusual
on a modern Class40. I think that more than the shape of the hull this was about keeping the spinnakers at maximum effi- ciency. Also remember that in these mod- erate conditions the well-sailed conven- tional Class40s are still performing well. SH: Do you think the Scow was a single big step and that going forward will be more evolution than another revolution? AC: I don’t see another revolution in terms of design because the rule is locked down again. However, I do advocate the intro- duction of lateral outriggers, for both safety and performance. This also allows wider sheeting of the sails – we could sail much lower with the gennaker, which is safer when you are running singlehanded under autopilot than flying a big chute. Especially in the breeze. I’m thinking of lateral spars like those on the Imocas. It’s cheap too. It is easily adaptable on
all the boats and it would allow larger gennakers replacing at least one spinnaker. So we’d go faster too! On the electronics side Class40 has
fixed a maximum price for the equipment for the autopilots, which seeing how the Imoca systems are going is a good move. They are now as expensive as the foils.
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