The winners of the two premier classes in the last TJV were both running Madintec advanced pilot systems – Imoca winner Apivia’s Charlie Dalin and Yann Eliès (left) and Ian Lipinski and Adrien Hardy on their David Raison-designed Class40 scow Crédit Mutuel. The Ultim did not race the TJV but Macif skipper Gabart continues his development with Madintec while main competitor Pixel sur Mer is pressing ahead with Gitana Team. Madintec’s system only went public following the double TJV success – too good to hide
(According to skipper Sam Davies, the
foiling Imocas are now simply too fast to be helmed well by a human). In addition (or in combination) to the
Performance Supervision Modes, there are safety controls! The maximum limit of heel is particularly relevant in multihulls, where ‘we quickly start to get scared around 18 to 20° of heel’, says Riou. ‘The pilot’s reaction depends on the
speed: downwind, it is by constantly bearing off when it’s necessary to keep a multi in a “safe” configuration; sailing fast upwind the opposite applies, of course, the pilot luffing fast when needed (faster usually than in an Imoca). ‘We tested it, and it’s very safe,’ he says.
‘And the faster the rate of heel the faster the response rate will be from the pilot; it is rather reassuring!’ Other ‘safety modes’ will respond to
structural or rig and foil loads recorded by strain gauges or load sensors installed in critical areas. Then there are the fast-improving
‘avoidance functions’ that instruct the pilot to avoid an obstacle without the risk of capsizing when changing course. The system interprets information from
the AIS, or from the nautical chart: this is probably not a luxury, if we remember the collisions during the Route du Rhum with cargo ships, or Alex Thomson’s grounding on the Guadeloupe cliffs during the 2018 edition. The pilot’s computer can also be
connected to the latest Oscar masthead camera system that is being trialled by the big teams to detect floating obstacles. It will come as no surprise that these new
formula pilots were invented in France, where shorthanded ocean racing is both the heart and the spearhead of professional sailing, and more precisely in Lorient, where most of the teams have their base. The most advanced design on the
subject, from the company that currently provides the most complete proprietary system, is MadBrain from Madintec, founded by engineer Matthieu Robert, who has participated in three America’s Cup campaigns as a performance analyst. Originally Robert
to successfully clean up wind vane data from parasitic information (‘noise’) due to the movement of the masthead). ‘At the beginning,’ explains Robert, ‘we
connected our navigational systems to com- mercially available pilots. But for an engineer it wasn’t satisfactory – the pilots were closed systems to which we didn’t have access. ‘We provided input data, which pro-
duced results at the output, and there were a few parameters to be adjusted, but we didn’t necessarily understand the principle. So we decided to create our own pilot, in partnership with François Gabart. ‘In 2017 his Ultim trimaran Macif was
equipped with it, as well as Sam Davies’s Imoca and Lalou Roucayrol’s Multi 50; all three benefited from it in the 2018 Route du Rhum.’ In 2019 other teams took it on and the system made a victorious ‘public’ debut in the Class40 when Ian Lipinski’s boat won the Transat Jacques Vabre. A Madintec installation works with
imported and
installed the Spanish Bravo System (CPUs), which also grew out of the Cup, hooking up navigational software with generic onboard performance sensors. (Matthieu Robert was also one of the first engineers
sensors from most major brands (Le Blevec has two wands at the masthead, a B&G and an NKE), a central inertial system analysing the boat’s attitudes and accelerations on all axes, the Bravo navigation system, the in-house autopilot called MadBrain, the
SEAHORSE 49
JEAN-MARIE LIOT/ALEA
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