Too soon?
With the announcement of its as yet unchristened new, foil-assisted monohulls for the 2019-20 crewed lap of the planet, and beyond, the Volvo Ocean Race contin- ues its longstanding tradition of letting the Imoca class do much of its full-scale R&D. But has it all happened too fast this time? Water ballast was first introduced in the
Whitbread 60s for the 1993-94 race having been used on the Imoca 60s’ forebears, the Open 60s, from the early 1980s. VO70s made their Volvo race debut in 2005 with canting keels, some 12 years after Isabelle Autissier’s Ecureuil Poitou Charentes 2 became the first Open 60 to use one (and several more years after Michel Desjoyeaux – inevitably – had introduced the canting keel to the Mini 6.50 fleet).
48 SEAHORSE
In comparison the latest change has been
much swifter, the first foil-assisted Imoca 60s launched barely two years ago with the first foil-borne Volvo boats following just four years later. What must be of some concern is that,
compared to water ballast and canting keels, foiling technology is way more com- plex and tricky to engineer in an offshore environment. For example, of the five new- generation semi-foiling Imoca 60s on their first major outing in the 2015 Transat Jacques Vabre, only Banque Populaire fin- ished (with structural damage), while oth- ers suffered severe failures, the worst being Hugo Bosswhich was nearly written off. In last winter’s Vendée Globe five of the
seven foilers finished, with Alex Thomson famously breaking one of Hugo Boss’s boards. Upon finishing, race winner Armel le Cléac’h admitted that he had been cau- tious about using Banque Populaire’s foils: ‘I tended to use them [only] in situations where I thought I needed to boost my speed, like a turbo, when I needed to attack a little more.’ But this may also have been to avoid repeating the same damage that sistership Edmond de Rothschild sustained to the top of her port foil, which partially broke within its case leaving it, as skipper Seb Josse alarmingly reported, ‘just hang- ing by two screws’. Before it was finally rubber-stamped by
the class in the build-up to the last Vendée Globe there was a lobby in Imoca arguing that the new foil technology would be both expensive and also premature, as the class was at the time more focused on improving reliability with one-design masts and keels.
This was highlighted at the Mini Transat
start in 2015, when the president of Classe Mini said they were looking to the Imoca 60s to see how the new foil technology fared before deciding whether they would allow it on their 21-footers! Isn’t R&D work usually carried out on
smaller boats first? In fact, Banque Popu- laire had done exactly this – testing new- generation lifting foils on a Mini for R&D purposes before building the foils for their latest 60-footer. This may be one reason why their boat
suffered the least structural issues when it went on to win the Vendée Globe. Mean- while, Classe Mini has relaxed its rule, now allowing lifting foils that extend beyond their 3m Bmax limit. Of course, fitting foils to boats, be they
monohulls or multihulls, is very desirable, being one of the most significant perfor- mance developments in the history of yachting. Trying to restrain its develop- ment is like trying to hold back the tide. But be warned… In the build-up to the 35th America’s Cup, teams broke very many expensive foils and they had working for them some of the best hydro and engi- neering talent money can buy (fortunately Guillaume Verdier, designer of the new Volvo boat, works for Emirates Team New Zealand which allegedly didn’t break any). Foil developments, both for multihulls
and monohulls, are at present mostly occurring within the constraints of rules. So, for example, the AC72 rule didn’t permit any part of a daggerboard to extend beyond the ‘yacht’s’ 14m maximum beam. As a result – although this was probably
GILLES MARTIN-RAGET
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