After the mixed experience of the foilers in rough sea states last time around, for this Vendée Globe edition German skipper Boris Herrmann asked designers VPLP for a robust new Imoca capable of being driven very hard in tough conditions. The boat also had to double up for a serious attempt at The Ocean Race last year. The resulting design features quite rounded forward sections, but a flattish forefoot blended with generous rocker. That VPLP met its brief was confirmed when Herrmann’s Malizia outperformed and outlasted all the opposition during the race’s longest ever leg through the Southern Ocean. Inevitably such a powerful hull is not at its best in light-medium conditions and sloppy seas; what it does do, though, slightly unexpectedly is glide along very nicely on flat water in lighter airs, benefiting from reduced wetted surface as a consequence of the scow-type spoon bow and narrow flat run aft
Globe marks the architectural break with the appearance of the Imoca foils planned by the VPLP/Verdier duo. ‘There was a lot of discussion in 2013 about the rule, a reduction in the number of ballast tanks, the move to a one-design mast and keel, all elements on which we had worked hard for more performance,’ explains Quentin Lucet from the VPLP office. ‘This pushed us to find other solutions elsewhere to generate power, without increasing the weight by too much. So the logical place to search for power was with the introduction of foils.’ The architects had shown that the
challenge was not easy, initially designing hybrid boats capable of operating with or without foils: ‘As we were not sure whether it would work, we left ourselves the option to return to a classic configura- tion,’ concedes Quentin. ‘The first foils were small – 90kg, against 300-320kg today – and there were modes where we still relied mainly on the hull and the water ballast to generate righting moment.’ The results were immediately impres-
sive, however, with two VPLP/Verdier new-generation designs in the first two places (Banque Populaire VIII skippered by Armel Le Cléac’h followed by Alex Thomson’s Hugo Boss). After the 2016 race Armel said simply, ‘Now there is clearly a before and an after.’ With the foils having proved themselves,
the architects at VPLP, this time working without Guillaume Verdier, go further for the next generation, responding to the numerous requests from existing skippers
58 SEAHORSE
to draw larger foils and to specifically orientate the design of the new hulls around these appendages. ‘We really wanted those boats to foil,’ confirms Quentin. ‘The first of this “new breed”, Charal
(launched in August 2018), had almost three times the foil size compared to the first boats in 2016. I remember the first Azimut Challenge with Charal’s stern often 1m above the sea. We completely changed our world in terms of attitude.’ The priority now was to fly the Imocas:
which meant a different hull type. ‘The aim was to limit drag. So fewer sharp chines, narrower, rounder hulls, more volume at the bow and less wetted surface.’ At the start of the 2020 VG everyone
predicted the domination of the new foiler generation. But it was a VPLP/Verdier design from 2016, Maître Coq IV (ex- Safran), skippered by Yannick Bestaven, that triumphed with the benefit of redress after helping rescue Kevin Escoffier, whose boat snapped in half and quickly sank; but first to cross the finish was the 2020 Verdier design Apivia of Charlie Dalin. ‘Apart from the damage that is common
in all mechanical sports, in the last Vendée Globe we clearly did not see the technolog- ical breakthrough that we were anticipat- ing,’ admits Quentin. ‘In theory we saw performance deltas of up to 4kt, but every- thing evened out completely in the South- ern Oceans. The skippers were unable to exploit the speed potential of their boats alone in rough conditions, especially in sea states very different from those they had
encountered during the previous Transat. Indeed, through the south the previous Imoca generation managed to keep up simply by maintaining a more sustained and consistent pace. ‘At VPLP we then decided that as
designers we needed to sail more our- selves.’ In 2021 Antoine Lauriot Prévost, son of Vincent, co-founder with Van Peteghem of VPLP, thus made the return delivery of Hugo Boss from South Africa where the Brit went after his VG retire- ment with a broken rudder. Antoine then completed two Transats on Teamwork (ex-Charal), in 2022 and 2023. ‘We heard many skippers say that these boats tended to nosedive in steep waves,’ says Antoine. ‘After three weeks on Hugo Boss I had
no doubts about where to put the cursor for the powerful new Malizia hull we were drawing for Boris Herrmann,’ he says. ‘We added a lot of rocker in the hull,
that is to say more curve, so the boat takes a higher, more bow-up attitude, allowing us to reduce volume in the bow and reduce, or even eliminate, those brutal stops piling into waves. Given the very intense pro- gramme of the German navigator between 2022 and 2024 (including The Ocean Race), the emphasis was also on strength, therefore structure, while Boris’s foils are also oriented towards more versatility. ‘Finally, we paid a lot of attention to
ergonomics, with a geometry the reverse of many boats, namely a cockpit just behind the mast, extended aft by the living area. In addition to getting more weight centred in
GILES MARTIN-RAGET
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