News Around the World
Thomas Ruyant’s Guillaume Verdier designed Linkedout is one of the dark horses of this Vendée Globe. Ruyant and Antoine Koche had a forced pitstop soon after the start of the last TJV with pilot failure but once going again passed almost the entire fleet to finish 5th. The Verdier design sits between Charal and L’Occitane in terms of form stability, but with a flat run aft comparable to the Juan K designs contrasting with the V-ed aft hull of Charal. Same objective of a clean take-off and landing – two different ways to approach it
JB:We need power in the sails to take off but then we must quickly flatten and adjust them because of the increase of the apparent wind and the wind heading as soon as the boat gets higher. It is also necessary to adapt the cant angle of the keel to adjust the rake by giving the fin more angle to take off and then reduce it in flight mode. But this is easy because it is simple to press a button! Also, as I said before, we play with the weight distribution inside
the boat starting with the water ballasts. While flying the lack of elevators on the rudders is disappointing because it would help a lot to keep the right attitude… Instead the game today is to stay in the air as long as possible because the speed gain is considerable. It is necessary to find both a constant trim and a foil that stalls
as little as possible. That’s not easy because you can fly from 12kt to 30kt of wind. The limit is the sea state. It’s hard to say how long we’re going to be in flight mode during the VG as I lack experience in a short sea and strong wind. In the TJV we had these kinds of conditions before the Canary Islands. We were going fast but the attitude of the boat was irregular (go and stop) and was not sat- isfactory. It confirmed that the new foils (which were then already designed) had to deliver a better attitude. We should fly longer with the V2s when the wind gets stronger. SH: Comparing your foils to Hugo Boss’s? JB:Hugo Boss’s V1 foils are optimised for running (remember how fast the ‘black beast’ was sailing out of the Channel on the first night of the TJV). Our foils are more versatile. With the V2 we try to go faster running with a better attitude of the boat. We also want to maintain versatility because a long race like the VG is dogged by transition zones. It is not sufficient to be the fastest running. SH: What are the other parameters beside the flying mode? JB: It depends on the weight of the boat and her static RM… You can decide to make a very extreme boat at 20 tonne-metres of RM, or less, where all the power comes from the foil – but then you have to quickly get to take-off speed. Or you take a 25 tonne-metre design with quite a lot of ballast, a big bulb, a powerful hull to have stability until the boat flies. Not all the foilers are the same at this level. Bulb weight and
22 SEAHORSE
ballast capacity are important figures for the CoG and remain confidential. And then it’s not just about foils. There are the 110° AVS rule and the 127.5° limit that decide a lot of things. Roughly speaking, if you reduce your ballast volume you can reduce your bulb weight. The ideal would be to have big ballasts and a small bulb… But that’s not possible. Also, the keel cant affects the 110° just like the weight of the bulb… It’s complicated! You have to do a lot of calculations but also add in some gut
feeling. We also saw things that were winning on paper that turned out to be ‘losers’ in real terms while navigating… Plus the range of our studies is still growing. SH: What about the modifications made to the bow of Charal? JB: Originally we had thin bow shapes to pierce the waves but now the Imocas and especially Charal are frequently above the water. When we were flying we felt that the forefoot of the boat was quite often hitting the water – when the boat overtakes the waves the bow bites into the water and upsets the speed and tracking of the boat. This of course then compromises the sail trim. How can this impact be reduced? The lowest and most advanced
portion of the bow has been refined to facilitate passage through the waves sailing at high speed. Our goal is to get the bow out of the water as quickly as possible. We went from the wave-piercing bow to a fuller, more rounded and banana-shaped bow to help the boat take off as quickly as possible. Nicolas Andrieu from our team put it quite simply when he said, ‘Our objective now is to climb over the water rather than cut through it.’ SH: Your thoughts six months out from the VG start? JB: We already have good experience of the boat and a lot of reference data. So we’ll be able to progress quickly operating the new configuration during the coming months. But we will still need more navigation to compare theory and practice. Looking at the VG, I hope my experience of three previous races will allow me to make the right choices. Last time we put all our resources into foil changes (the boat was named Maïtre Coq and is now Initiatives-Coeur). This time we have more resources to be at the top in all areas. The VG is not controllable, the preparation is and we do our best.
PIERRE BOURAS/DPPI
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