Sébastien Simon’s Arkea was the first of the two new Juan K Imocas to go afloat, but in the early part of the Vendée Globe before both boats retired it was Nicolas Troussel’s barely broken-in Corum that was always in front and looking more of a potential winner. One thing that is striking about Arkea is the similarity of her single-radius C-foils to those on the latest VPLP-designed Hugo Boss. Both teams went this way in pursuit of maximum potential VMG sailing and indeed the Hugo Boss team were convinced their boat was fastest in these conditions – and there were indeed times before he pulled out when Alex Thomson’s boat did look very slippery. The C-foil produces less vertical lift than the longer spans but in the end such lift proved far less important to success than expected
waves; but if you are prepared to sail maybe 5-10° higher you want a different boat completely. For this reason the client must choose which of the two avenues he prefers. SH: And foils? JK: The exit of the foils from the two hulls was a bit different, the shapes too. Corum skipper Nicolas Troussel placed the empha- sis on reaching and upwind, while on Arkea Sébastien Simon’s foils were designed for downwind runs. The Arkea foils are more curved, with a constant radius. The single radius allows a greater range of adjustment – Arkea’s foils can be withdrawn almost completely into the hull while those on Corumretract perhaps 50 per cent. SH: Wasn’t the Corum launching just six months before the regatta a little too late to make the boat reliable? JK: From the point of view of the dismast- ing, yes, but we still don’t know the reasons for the breakage. All the fittings on the hull are OK, the tube broke. I think that if the boat could have sailed longer before the Vendée the tube would have broken earlier and probably not during the race. Apart from the mast the boat was going well. She had been prepared well, she was in the leading group before she retired. I honestly
think Corumwas there to win the race. SH: Was it useful to be able to test foil designs on PRB before making decisions for Arkea? JK: In theory it always helps, since they are hours spent sailing and looking at the problems. But in reality I would tell you no because the PRB foils were designed to a righting moment of 37 tonne-metres – we never wanted to go beyond that because they told us that the mast could not survive it. But then Charal came out with a RM above 40! So you play along. But then we designed new foils for Corum and Arkea to increase our planned RM… And then Occitane emerged with a RM of 50!!! According to all the information and
previous predictions, these masts must now all break? In other words, all the pre- vious work we did with PRB was actually of little or no use to us. SH: Forgive me asking an awkward question. You did a lot of work with PRB… did this include working on the reinforcement of their hull and deck? JK: No, not at all. I did not find out about the structural changes until much later on. It was a decision that Vincent (Riou) and Kevin (Escoffier) made on their own.
SH: The Imoca rule limits the number of sails onboard. How involved do the design- ers now get in deciding the sail plan configu- ration as well as choices about specific sails? JK: Yes, sure. We make recommendations, but sometimes they ignore us. Some French people think that they live in a far superior world when you talk about the Vendée Globe, and they do things against the recommendations you give them. Then you discover that on many of those occasions it is actually about the money, they do not want to spend as much. That usually causes problems. It also often happens that they do not
pay close enough attention to our laminate specifications. It is frustrating that ‘small’ details are altered which then have a big effect on the structure, things that we have been doing successfully since the Volvo 70 ABN Ambro. However, I must say that neither Arkea nor Corum had any struc- tural problems except for a few small minor details. SH: Is it profitable that the foils for the Vendée Globe are so long? JK: No. Our conclusion is that under the same Imoca rule there are now three main types of boats. For transatlantic regattas we
SEAHORSE 57
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