Top: before the arrival of his old Mini 6.50 rival Raison in the fleet Sam Manuard was the most successful Class40 designer of recent years with his Mach 40 series. This (far left) is his Mach 40.3 design while the very recently launched Banque du Léman (left) is the first Mach 40.4. The complete switch between two consecutive designs reflects Manuard’s acceptance of the superiority of the scow form in this class. Whether or not the class managers now jump in before many more Class40s are commissioned remains to be seen, but there are already several scows on order. Left: the same situation now dominates the Mini with the ‘skiff’ hulls competitive over an ever-shrinking set of conditions. Originally it was felt that the bluntness of the scow would compromise performance in very light conditions but these photos illustrate how fast the scow loses wetted area as the waterlines are foreshortened
Arkema, the most audacious of the foil-
also plays an important structural role, making it possible to do without longi - tudinal stiffeners in the forward area. ‘Finally, it represents an enormous
ergonomic advantage for manoeuvres: on boats that are very wide at the front, at 25° of heel movements become dangerous; a deckhouse running forward is reassuring.’ It is certainly no coincidence that in the
Mini Transat Florian Quenot established a new 24-hour record for a Series Mini during the same period, and in the same area, that Lipinski and Hardy signed theirs off onboard Crédit Mutuel. Quenot’s run of 291.47nm is 15nm better than the previous mark – it is also very close to the best 24- hour performance in a Proto Mini (304.9nm by Bertrand Delesne in 2010). That means 12.1kt average speed in the middle of the ocean on such a small car – you have to try to imagine what it represents. ‘As the Mini scow doesn’t decelerate
hard there are no violent jolts, but lots of small shocks, it shakes, it would not have occurred to me to move one metre without getting attached,’ says Quenot. When he wasn’t at the helm – a surprisingly light helm, one of the key characteristics required for high average runs – he remained on standby in the cockpit, wedged on his ball cushion, his hand on the autopilot remote control, ready to tweak course even by a degree. ‘The objective in the production Maxi
650 is to keep sailing a little high for speed, at 144° or 145° from the true wind, where the Pogo 3s go down to 150°.’ Quenot also suffered some delamination
a little later as well as water in the bow, perhaps due to a collision with a floating object; he had to back off until Martinique where he ranked 13th in class – who knows where hellish pace might have led him. In general, the Pogo 3s (a very refined
Verdier design), led by the impressive Italian Ambrogio Beccaria, took the lion’s share of this Mini Transat, with eight boats in the top 10 of the Series ranking, the first Raison Maxi 650 ranking sixth.
The Maxi 650, whose first model was released in late 2018, is still a little young. ‘The keys to performance in this new
boat are a little less well known than on our competitors’ more familiar designs,’ says the architect. ‘Our downwind angles are different, we sail higher and faster so, with the ability to accelerate faster than the Pogos, our sails are different. ‘When we start to accelerate very fast
the apparent wind changes abruptly, the spinnaker is destabilised – we are forced to sail with flatter and more flexible sail shapes. Sailmakers still have questions about what works well… but our owners are amateurs, they can’t afford three sets of development sails per season!’ Maxi 650 development has also been
delayed, with some areas of fragility to be corrected on the bowsprit and around the rudder connections. ‘It didn’t help our skippers, but it’s a necessary part of the process of developing a new Series Mini – especially one built by a small shipyard.’ There is still work to be done, according
to him, to bring the production Maxi 650 to its optimum. At the same time Raison is working on the transformation of the orig- inal Magnum, his first design, with which skipper Laurent Cornic will compete in the 2021 Mini-Transat… but now foiling. The architect worked for a while for the
Breton company SeAir, which works on foil development for craft of all types, sail and power, where Raison focused on an experimental programme using his 2011 Mini Transat winner. Equipped with a single foil on the port side, n°747 was the first ocean-going monohull capable of steady flight… but on one side only! Now the objective is to equip n°747
with two symmetric foils, and to bring it back into conformity with Mini class rules. Some people still wonder if small solo
boats can really fly offshore, but Raison has no doubt about the potential of foils, even on small boats. ‘It works on Ultims, Imocas and Moths, there’s no reason why it can’t be made to work on the Minis.’
ing Minis, has still not won anything, but with its unstayed reefing wing rig it suffers from being rather heavy. ‘But in some reaching conditions the boat is already the fastest because she’s so powerful – she literally sails around our boats, and that’s good,’ says Raison. Cerfrance, the new foiler designed by
Guillaume Verdier** and built at Struc- tures (who build the Pogo), finished at Pointe à Pitre fourth Proto and eighth overall. But it has only just been launched. The Minis should also have better flying
characteristics than the Imocas, whose rules currently prohibit any horizontal planes on the rudders. ‘So they are still missing the rear stabiliser that would allow them to fly more steadily and for a much longer time,’ says Raison. The Magnum foiler version should fly
early, with its foil configuration designed for take-off in just 10kt of true wind. The paradox is that David Raison is almost conducting this work with regret, fearing that the foils will destabilise the Mini class. ‘It’s getting too expensive, a pair of foils and their systems come at the price of a new Proto! These are budgets that young riders in particular simply can’t afford. ‘For the moment foilers have been
developed either within a professional team with the support of a major sponsor, as with Arkema, or with the support of a boatyard such as Structures.’ If it were only necessary to look at the future of a class to which he is very attached, and not to the technological opportunities, David Raison would prefer that the Mini rule prohibit these appendages.
*In the Mini 6.50 we name the boats by their class number, which is very practical and allows us to follow their achievements beyond the name and/or sponsor changes. Raison’s first Mini, Magnum by its bap- tised name, bears the n°747 which ideally fits its jumbo jet look. Maximum, n°865, won the 2017 Mini Transat in the hands of Ian Lipinski under the name Griffon, then the 2019 edition with François Jambou, who renamed it Marée Haute. ** Issue 477
SEAHORSE 43
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CHRISTOPHE BRESCHI
OLIVIER BLANCHET/DPPI
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