Winners’ row… well, four favourites. Left to right: Charlie Dalin is the thinking man’s racer – his Verdier design is away from the mainstream but it reflects a very detailed brief from the fastest Imoca skipper around the world in 2021; Yoann Richomme’s confidence is demonstrated by the fact that a Class40 champion, but new to the Imoca, went with one of two radical new quasi-sisterships rather than taking a known fast shape and relying upon his known exceptional sailing skills; Thomas Ruyant, who has the other one… since the last VG Ruyant and his strong racing team have been running an intense and non-stop development programme while winning all the major shorthanded oceanic races as he went along; Ruyant’s team-mate, Brit skipper Sam Goodchild, won the Ocean Fifty circuit and then he spent his first two Imoca seasons scaring the bejesus out of the previous biggest names in the Imoca class, racing Ruyant’s 2019 design as he shot up the rankings. If Sam finishes he will be on the podium
To be truthful I mismanaged this section
of the course. You know how it is when you don’t have the speed, you don’t always sail your best. But it was a useful race as you can see,
lots happened and there was almost every condition at some time or another. We put a lot in, we gave of ourselves physically as we rarely do, and in the end there were a lot of little lessons for me, validations, sail choices for the Vendée, things like that. SH: The Vendée Globe will be your first solo round-the-world race – actually your first race around the world. YR: Yes. And there is always a little appre- hension because some sections of the course have, let’s say, a bad reputation. So I start with great humility very aware that I must take care of the skipper and his boat. But today the stories of the Southern
Seas are different. We now sail relatively north with the large forbidden ice zone. So you don’t go into zero-degree waters any more. You don’t see an iceberg. It’s differ- ent from before. Nevertheless, to think that we will spend a month in the Southern Seas is still quite engaging. So let’s say we approach it studiously. That said, I have a lot of information on how to dress, how to eat, what to expect and all that. I talk a lot with sailors who already have this experi- ence so I feel a little more reassured. SH: Your priority? YR: First, not to break the boat, especially with the level of competition that we now have. Frankly you think you will ease up a little, lose speed to try not to break anything… It’s nice to say, but to do it is not so simple because each time you do that today you let several boats pass. It is so tight now with this level of competition. At the same time I am convinced that
we’ll have a hard time keeping our boats sailing full speed for 80 days; in every recent Transat all the frontrunners suffered breakages. So we will have to find a balance – and such a balance is obviously impossible unless you can forget that finishing the race remains the priority. In
the end it depends on whether you are ready to accept a second or third place, or is it victory at all costs? SH: Among your opponents who would you say has best chance of winning? YR: The strongest right now is probably Charlie, because he has proved his ability across several seasons. That said, he has a boat that goes very fast upwind (like Charal), so it is a little opposite to the cur- rent trend in the class. It gives him advan- tages on events like the Azimut, which he won. Also the 2023 Fastnet which he won had a lot of upwind. I have a hard time try- ing to decide how his boat will work sail- ing around the world but it could pay off. Then I see Thomas Ruyant, and Sam
Goodchild who is very fast even on his pre- vious-generation boat. Sam is really a super sailor with a beautiful boat. And what is good is that it gives the last generation great press… Sam Davies, Boris… Everybody is sailing well. There’s a good group of seven or eight at the front who are very strong. SH: Sail wardrobe? YR: The J0, J2, J3, J4, they are pretty much standard on the foilers; the main variations in size are on the J2 and J3. A big genoa that can sheet inside the shrouds for upwind sailing in 0-10kt of wind. Then the J2 is better for 10-20kt, J3 from 20-30kt and J4 for 30-50kt. That leaves a choice of three sails for reaching/running. For me it is a big gennaker like an MHO, a small- breeze gennaker (the FRO) and the famous MDTK of Michel Desjoyeaux: actually, a Yankee-shaped J2 of about 100m2
, used in
the strong winds of the Southern Seas to prevent damaging the J2, which we later need for the ascent of the Atlantic. SH: You are also a naval architect and studied in Southampton like Charlie… YR: No, Charlie had the wrong university, he went to another one (Yoann laughs). He enrolled in the wrong one. There are two universities in Southampton and both have a naval architecture programme. One at the University of Southampton, that one is really big ship design. And another at Solent
University! So Charlie took a traditional naval architecture course for big ships… SH: But you are the same age (41). YR: We are the same age, the same culture, the same education. We have been friends since the Tour de France à la Voile; we had a team at university, and then there was the Figaro circuit together. Now we sometimes take our vacations together. SH: Is he therefore one of the competitors you are closest to? YR: Yes, I’m very close to Nico Lunven (skipper of Holcim-PRB) too. We’ve known each other since we were young and our parents have been close for a long time. SH:Why did you choose Finot-Conq plus Antoine Koch to design Arkéa Paprec? YR: I chose them because they impressed me the most in the energy they put into the project and in the intensity of the research that they continuously invest in to try out new ideas. We often have designers who tell us: ‘What do you want and I will make the boat you want’. Actually, I’m not a tech guy, I don’t know which boat I want, I just want you to make me a boat that performs according to my personal criteria. They were already very advanced in
preparing to break back into the Imoca class – which they once dominated. They had been working a lot on a new design concept which would make the Imoca behave better going through big seas. And I liked it, they were already ahead of the curve, plus we could rely on someone like Antoine Koch with his incredible knowl- edge of the modern Imoca. You see the development work he did with Sam Good- child: a great boat from a past generation which is still very competitive. SH: Your boat is identical to Thomas Ruyant’s, except for the inside? YR: Let’s say that the hull is the same, the foils are the same, the rudders the same, the structure the same, just the layout of the living space and the cockpit position that change. We have taken great care over the ergonomics, life onboard, the sailplan, the choices of the sails, all the electronics…
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