Anywhere that traditional offshore racing is popular you will now find growing interest in racing doublehanded. In France and the UK two-handed divisions now make up a big proportion of a typical IRC race entry and in other strong sailing nations like New Zealand interest is growing fast – all areas where sailing conditions are often less than benign. The balmy drifter vs upwind thrasher divide continues to widen… This is the two-handed start of the 270nm ArMen Race – including many customised shorthanded IRC designs
The story has a happy ending but there are still questions to ask.
Without programming their computer (the Adrena software has this function) no sound signal was emitted onboard Anavelwhen Vincent triggered his beacon, as happens when a MayDay is triggered on a VHF. If the Anavel crewman had not been in front of the computer at the chart table when the AIS MOB signal lit up on the screen Vincent’s recovery might have taken much longer. On many boats, especially sailing doublehanded with both the
two crews on deck preparing for a manoeuvre, it is very unlikely they will know that an AIS beacon has been activated in the area. They must see it appear on the screen – there is at present no audible alarm. After his mishap Vincent wanted to find out why the AIS distress
beacon does not activate a distress signal on the ASN VHF. He was told by the French authority: ‘The AIS beacon does not retain the current MMSI number of the boat and thus does not activate a sound alarm over the fixed VHF.’ French legislation does not make it necessary to connect the
AIS beacon to the distress device but the British maritime authority does. It is surely time for France to follow suit, isn’t it? Codiam and Cifraline In IRC 1, the biggest group after the two-handed division, Nicolas Loday once again got a win steering Jean-Claude Nicoleau’s nice-looking and well-known Grand Soleil 43 Codiam. He also won overall in front of Nicolas Groleau, skipper of the original canting-keel light-displacement Bretagne Télécom, a 45ft Manuard design built several years ago in the same shed at La Trinité-sur-Mer where the famous Mach 40s, dark horses of the Class40, are built. In the two-handed category, getting more and more popular with
the repeated success of the triennial Transquadra, the Sun Fast 3200 R2 Cifraline carried the day on corrected time also beating several well-sailed JPK 10.80s, very often the offshore plat du jour. Let us say that Cifraline did not have designer Daniel Andrieu
and his wife onboard, but two of their children: Cecile, 28 and a fine sailor, and Nicolas, 30, engineer, sailing champion and high- level athlete, who has just joined the Beyou Racing Team after several years working for Vincent Riou/PRB. Cherry on the cake, Cifraline took third overall on corrected time. She is a hard boat to beat in IRC (she was top of her class at the 2016 Commodores’ Cup). A big attraction of the ArMen Race is that there are many
categories (15 in all). In the Multi 50s, now equipped with foils, Armel Tripon – on Yves Le Blévec’s old boat (now renamed Réauté Chocolat) – finished in a beautiful way for the class newcomer in front of Erwan Le Roux on FenêtréA. In the Imocas the fight was very tight between SMA and Safran. Only six minutes separated the two boats at the finish in the river
of La Trinité. The Imoca fleet is still ‘resting’ after the Vendée Globe and many more boats will enter in 2018. So 250 in 2018? ‘250 boats next year! Why not?’ challenges
Antoine Croyère, new president of the SNT. It should be said that the La Trinité club received a shower of compliments on the organ- isation of the race, directed by Hervé Gautier, even before the exem- plary prizegiving. Nice weather during the race has also been a part of the success, added to the job done by all the SNT volunteers. Antoine Croyère is pleased to compare the ArMen Race to the
Rolex Giraglia in the Mediterranean, saying that ‘our’ oceanic multi - hulls are a counterpoint to the maxi monohulls racing in the blue waters. The president, also skipper of the A35 Hey Joe, is confident of more boats next year and especially some more foreign boats. Put it in your diary… ArMen is definitely on a success curve.
We’re fast Less that two weeks before The Bridge in which four Ultimes are going to compete across the North Atlantic, from St-Nazaire in France to New York, François Gabart, skipper of the latest Macif, answered our questions. Seahorse: Why a crewed race on a boat designed to be sailed singlehanded? François Gabart:Well, my boat is also good with a crew (laughs!). Since the launch of Macif we have been working with the Collectif Ultime and are involved in all the scheduled races including The Bridge. Yes, Macif was not originally designed to be driven by a complete crew, nor did we make special modifications last winter to optimise the boat for that. So The Bridge is another opportunity for us to compete against our rivals and in a different manner. SH: In the ArMen you made the break on Sodebo in upwind conditions. Are you definitely faster in those conditions? FG:No. The conditions were very specific to the ArMen Race so we cannot generalise. Actually, I was rather surprised about our good speed upwind compared to what we thought it would be and slightly disappointed by our speed running… Sodebo was sailing a little higher and faster with a different VMG than ours. But we can’t get a clear conclusion. In the upwind part of the course we were a bit in front but the wind was a bit stronger. SH: What about crossing the Atlantic against the prevailing winds… FG: Well, our boat was designed by VPLP for reaching conditions around the world, especially through the Southern Ocean, but she has shown pretty good performance upwind offshore. We can sustain 20kt upwind. Compared to the Imoca it is much better. We go nearly twice the speed upwind… but running we do not go twice as fast as the 60-footers. And because of that upwind speed we can deviate easily from the rhumbline in the North Atlantic which
SEAHORSE 15
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