Richard was constantly working with HB on what the VPPs were for the boat and so what the sail ranges and crossovers should be. So it wasn’t like we launched the boat with older-style designs built for wider angles and had to adapt – they came out of the box very close and then it was mainly a matter of refinement once the guys started sailing the boat. Sails nowadays are engineered for
stretch, far more so than they are for break strength. You get the break strength for free when you are dealing with the small elongation numbers that are considered acceptable these days – that, though, is assuming that the fibres and the surface stay intact. That is the massive gain in sail- making over the past 10 years in particular. Stratis and 3Di are pretty much going head to head across most facets of sailing and, given the right inputs, both are capable of doing a good job. Where we try to make gains with Stratis is in how much our designers can customise the product to be very exact; now I am not just talking about fibre layout, I am talking the fibre choice itself and the many outside finish surfaces we can now laminate on. In terms of the much harsher motions of
the new boats, as mentioned, these sails are all designed for elongation under maxi- mum load so that gives you a massive break load safety factor. SH:What about interplay with other areas such as multihulls and the superyachts… MS: Where the interplay comes in is the process. Just as we have spoken about with
46 SEAHORSE
the Volvo race of years gone by where Illbruck learned off EF Language, and ABN learned off Illbruck, now people are going to learn from what happened at Hugo Boss and Banque Pop – this is now the bench- mark of how to do an Imoca 60 pro- gramme well. So for sure next time we will have to go the next mile again. My point here is that the processes learnt
with the Hugo Boss campaign we are now using on other programmes as part of the evolution of ‘the right way to do it’. That stuff benefits any programme that has a clear goal. So it’s probably the process that’s developing more than the sails themselves. The sails we knew would do a great job as
the whole team had done the work – there really were no unknowns in the territory that we went down. The ‘Hugo Boss way’ is a well-documented library at the loft; every sail that we have ever built for the programme has been a development of the one before and that progression is carefully recorded. Alex and his team need to know exactly
what’s going to turn up – professional teams aren’t big on surprises. So we take that very seriously all the way down to what side of the sail the leech chord cleat goes on. SH: In terms of construction are Imoca sails now closer to inshore grand prix sails or superyacht sails? MS: To be honest all these sails are getting closer together. You no longer have that massive spread you saw 20 years ago, with Cup jibs that were only really expected to stay in peak condition for maybe one beat, while at the same time you had sails on
even a 100-footer (which was a large boat 20 years ago) weighing half a ton or more. For the quality of the sails we can
produce now, stretch (or lack of it) is the biggest input, whether it’s Bella Mente, fully sheeted on upwind with 20 guys hiking hard, Hugo Boss doing 30kt across the Atlantic or Elfje the 46m Hoek ketch charg- ing upwind at the St Barths Bucket. They all now expect the lightest, fastest, smoothest, longest-lasting sails they can have. And so, yes, all the sails are for sure
getting closer together. But again it’s the ability not to have to compromise the sail’s build efficiency but having exactly the correct fibre and surface for every applica- tion that is enabling this all to happen, along with much-improved lamination that is giving us the longevity. SH: Last-minute improvements… MS: The Boss guys had a pretty good idea what they were going to race after the boat’s double Atlantic crossing. From there it was a matter of making sure wherever possible that any good aspects of the sails that didn’t make the inventory were still carried across onto the final race sails. SH:Wasn’t there still a step-change when the foilers came in? MS: Not really. There were no radical new sails appearing suddenly in the HB inven- tory – all the concepts had been used before, just normally on bigger, faster boats like fully crewed Volvo 70s or multihulls. So the biggest changes were to the sails already carried by Imoca 60s and the wind ranges in which they used those sails rather
MARK LLOYD/DPPI
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