Rogues’ gallery, clockwise from top left: Yannick Bestaven finished 2nd behind Charlie Dalin in the 2020/21 Vendée but was awarded the win after receiving redress for standing by the sinking PRB of Kevin Escoffier; a near-literal one-arm-bandit yet an utterly brilliant yet an utterly brilliant racing sailor, Damien Seguin; Jérémie Beyou, back with another Charal… always in the hunt but to date rarely at the top; Jean ‘Le Roi’ Le Cam… a sixth VG now with a brand-new David Raison design eschewing foils; Boris Herrmann will be fine if he can hang in there down the Atlantic and into the south where his boat will take off; the determined Pip Hare did a great job last time earning great respect in the class; Justine Mettraux, a first VG for a first-class racer; Tanguy Le Turquais… who better to round up a rogues’ gallery
SH: You say you’re aiming for the top five in the Vendée Globe… does that mean you will be disappointed if you are not in the top five, or you will not be disappointed anyway because you will have finished your first Vendée Globe? YR: It’s a bit of both. If I’m competitive to the end, and there’s a good fight I’d still be disappointed not to be in the top five. Then if I have technical issues I’d be disap- pointed not to finish the race. SH: You have an incredible track record. What is the victory you are most proud of today? Is it in the Figaro? In Class40 in the Route du Rhum… twice? Or in Imoca more recently with your double-victory in Retour à la Base and the CCI Lorient-New York? YR: I don’t like to play ‘which is best’ because all these races have such impor- tance in my career that it is too hard to classify them. It’s hard to say, but my victory in the Retour à la Base Race was a pretty remarkable performance. We were new to the class and still didn’t believe that one day we might win an Imoca event, at least not in our first year, certainly not in my first solo race. The great thing is that we confirmed it again in the Transat CIC. I was super proud to win that. SH: Imocas were once dependent mainly on water ballast but now this is not the case… YR: You can still use three tons of water. And recently this figure started increasing again. We have a ballast tank at the very front of about a ton, to lower the nose when the boat is flying. The rear ballast is used to delay diving into heavy seas. There is also lateral ballast used here and there… Flying is never really permanent. But
64 SEAHORSE
you can have long periods as during the Azimut between the islands of Groix and Belle Ile on a relatively flat sea. We were flying for an hour and a half and always at 20-25kt or more. It’s pretty awesome, the boats are just fantastic. They no longer fly at 3m above the water either, now the hull remains relatively close to the water. SH: Are you one of those skippers who regret the lack of an elevator on the rudder to keep the boats flying for much longer? YR:No! Because we think it is very expen- sive and it would create too much disparity in the fleet. We are happy that the fleet remains relatively tight so the boats keep their value. You see, today we still have boats without foils in the fleet. So there are already some very big differences in per- formance. If you add a category with boats having elevators there will be several completely different worlds. Even for the organisers it may be a struggle to manage. The elevator will come in time, but later. SH: One day you will be sitting in your cockpit under your helmet like a fighter pilot and you will manage your Imoca like the helmsmen of the America’s Cup? YR: (laughs) It’s true that in some ways it already looks like this. The difference is that we still have to change our sails and do other things up on deck! SH: Do you think like Charlie that it is more the design of the hull than the devel- opment of the foils that improves the latest boats’ behaviour in the sea? YR: Absolutely correct. That’s what we tried to work on with our hull design. The problem is not necessarily related to the foils, but rather to the design of the hull.
The boats of the past generation could not pass through waves or really remain very stable. As soon as they accelerated hard they lifted then quickly stalled, and as they landed they slowed down brutally. They are very violent for their skippers. If you look carefully at the foils today they
have not evolved so drastically. It is generally the same design; their position is much the same on the hull. However, there are some boats, especially us, Malizia and a few others, who have bet on very different hulls precisely to overcome this problem. This was less the case, for example, with Charlie’s Macif, with a raised freeboard to have more volume but the hull shape did not really change. The bot- tom is still flat and narrow. That’s not our approach. We have ‘banana’d’ the boat, added curves beneath the water, and made a finer bow that pierces the waves. SH:How do you explain the superiority of Macif sailing upwind? YR: The shape of the hull. Macif has a flat hull. She is a very flat boat that gives a lot of power. She is leaning on her chine with the boat heeling 3-4° while we lean on our chine when we reach 12° of heel. That gives an idea of the power of the Verdier design, and that gives her a big advantage sailing upwind. Today it is even a little embarrass- ing because at times she can go 1kt or even 2kt faster than us. Actually Macif impresses us so much that perhaps I do wonder if it is just the hull that makes the difference! SH: Conversely, your boat performs very well running/reaching in heavy seas. YR: Yes, no doubt. We saw that in the CIC and other races. That’s definitely a good thing… But it isn’t everything! q
PASCAL HUIT
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