NEXT GENERATION
THE LATEST CROP OF IMOCAS IS MORE DIVERSE THAN EVER BEFORE. ANDI ROBERTSON TAKES A CLOSE-UP LOOK
The 34-boat fleet that is expected to line up for this year’s round the world, non-stop, single-handed epic is one of the most intriguing, and untested that we have seen.
In the last Vendée Globe in 2016, the majority of new IMOCAS built for the race were from the Vplpverdier collaboration. But the design field has been blown wide open for the 2020 race with four different design studios in play, all with very different ideas. The resulting combinations of hull shapes and foil concepts span a much wider spectrum than recent editions of the race. Factor in a critical lack of racing and training time because of the COVID-19 pandemic and November’s solo race promises to be the most intriguing since the landmark 2008/09 edition.
DOMINANT DUO
Back in 2016 the Vplp/verdier near-monopoly accounted for six new boats, all launched in close succession in the summer of 2015 and the first in the class to all sport foils from the outset. By the finish they had taken three of the top four spots, including winner Armel Le Cléac’h’s Banque Populaire VIII, 2nd placed Alex Thomson’s Hugo Boss and 4th placed Jean-pierre Dick on St Michel Virbac.
VPLP and the group headed by ETNZ’S America’s Cup winning lead designer Guillaume Verdier have since gone their own ways and both have designed new boats for the 2020 race cycle.
The first of the 2020 generation boats to launch was Jeremie Beyou’s Charal by VPLP, considered by most to be the current benchmark boat and winner of the recent Vendée Arctic Race. VPLP followed that with Alex Thomson’s radical Hugo Boss and Japanese skipper’s Kojiro Shiraishi’s DMG Mori Global One (built from the Charal moulds).
Meanwhile Verdier’s designs are an extension of the initial research and modelling that went into the one-design Volvo Super 60s proposals, which sadly did not survive the transition of The Ocean Race to new ownership.
They include Charlie Dalin’s
Apivia – a collaboration between Verdier’s design team with project management by Francois Gabart’s Merconcept, and top Figarist Charlie Dalin as skipper. Apivia won last year’s Transat Jacques Vabre and finished 2nd in the Arctic Race.
Thomas Ruyant’s Linkedout is another highly fancied Verdier package that finished just behind Dalin in 3rd in the Vendée Arctic.
The Vplp-verdier heritage is apparent across all five boats, but there are benefits to working separately also.
“It is good for us to be working on our own, when you have six projects from one design office you cannot focus so much on your design.
“I think now, with three new designs and two 2020 foil upgrades, you can be more focused on your concepts,” explains VPLP’S Quentin Lucet.
“It is exciting now for everyone because the range of philosophies is so wide. You can go from a fully boxy shape to much more rounded. Some don’t compromise on weight at all, others are focussed more on the skimming mode, some flying.”
The fundamental key to Charal’s design was that the hull would not generate any real righting moment: the foil does that. VPLP’S lower drag model proved very fast at the start of the TJV, with both Charal and Hugo Boss in full flying mode making 1-2 knots faster as they left the Channel. Both also have ‘skimming’ mode; touching down periodically.
“We have worked hard to reduce drag. Consider that 15 years ago we all added chines to add extra righting moment,” explains Lucet. The VPLP designers have now realised that instead it is more efficient to generate, for example, 1.5 tonnes per metre less in terms of righting moment to have significantly lower drag.
Hugo Boss, launched eight months later in April
2019, benefits from the extra design development time. Thomson’s boat is a more extreme option in terms of lowering drag, the beam waterline is narrower with a more rounded transom and slightly straighter, more parallel, waterlines and a fuller nose. Thomson’s team also placed an obsessive focus on weight reduction.
JUAN K RETURNS
The return of three times Volvo Ocean Race winner Juan Kouyoumdjian to the cutting edge of IMOCA design in this cycle was unsurprising. Juan K, as he is widely known, initially worked on optimising Vincent Riou’s 2009 design PRB, including new foils that were precursors to those on Sébastien Simon’s new Arkea-paprec. Arkeapaprec was launched last year but broke a foil very early on, which rendered the team short of testing and training miles. Simon entered last month’s Vendée Arctic race, only to again break a foil soon after the start. He is now in a race to qualify for the Vendée Globe.
The second Kouyoumdjian boat is the very last to be launched before the Vendée Globe: Nico Troussel’s Corum Lõepargne went in the water only in May this year, so is also missing time on the water.
In essence there are two hull families, while the VPLP designs are slimmer and lower drag, Kouyoumdjian and
Verdier’s IMOCAS are more powerful with more wetted surface, designed to be sailed heeled: Kouyoumdjian says the optimum is at 10-15°. Both Kouyoumdjian designs are relatively angular with the most pronounced chine aft, and noticeably flatter underwater.
Like Dalin’s Apivia, Troussel’s project has a dream team behind it including project management by double winner Michel Desjoyeaux. Corum L’epargne has a more pronounced reverse sheer in the aft sections, and both boats also have the dreadnought-style bows that are common to several of the generation 2020 designs, not least Hugo Boss.
Troussel’s boat has a raised, flush deck line making for very high freeboard aft but offering good protection with lots of cockpit volume. It offers a different solution to Alex Thomson’s and Charlie Dalin’s enclosed, or nearenclosed ‘cockpits’.
THE INNOVATOR
The real newcomer to the IMOCA design field is Sam Manuard. With Armel Tripon’s L’occitaine the successful Mini and Class 40 designer and sailor has pushed the hard scow bow concept as hard as the IMOCA rule will allow. The scow concept may have been successful in Class 40 transatlantics like the Transat Jaques Vabre, but on a foiling IMOCA in the big southern sea success for a chunky snub-bowed hull is far from a given (see page 22).
L’occitaine launched in February this year, only to be immediately locked down for two months. Tripon then suffered bow and rudder damage on an early qualifying sail. “We are definitely lacking sailing time right now.
Armel is not yet in the state of mind to really push it yet,” Manuard commented as they prepared for the Vendée Arctic start in early July. Tripon was forced out of the Arctic race due to structural damage, after the skipper reported a collision with an underwater object.
“With the scow influence we are a bit alone,” observes Manuard. “The advantage we have with the scow is that when the boat is well lifted on the foils, [if] the bow pitches down the scow bow helps the hull bounce back
‘These boats are capable of very high speeds, but they are not withstandable for the skipper’
and get back a normal trim without the bow plunging deeper into the wave.”
Manuard explains that the scow shape allows a more parallel sided hull form. This means that when the boat heels the effective waterline remains longer and so the flow to the foil is less disturbed, compared to a more classic bow shape, where the waterline shortens when the hull heels.
“When you heel you don’t alter the angle of incidence on to the foils so much. If you hit a gust, and the boat heels, you are transforming the change in energy more directly to boat speed. In flat water the scow has no advantage but as soon as you have wind with waves then you have the benefit. And, to me, there is no weak point in the light.”
L’occitaine has curved foils and a very high exit point, which also means they can be retracted completely, and should create significantly reduced drag in light airs.
FLIGHT CONTROL
Foil evolution has been rapid and increasingly focused on reducing the amount of regulation required for both foil and sails to provide a much more stable, even ride for high, sustainable averages. Charal and Apivia, the fleet’s best optimised new boats, have just fitted their 2020 generation foils.
Beyou’s first generation foils were essentially too hard on the skipper. The boat would take off too bow up and would crash down back to ten knots, Beyou recalled. So their new 2020 ‘C’ style foil converges with Verdier’s thinking as well as Hugo Boss’s, being more forgiving while retaining high average speeds.
Marcus Hutchinson, project manager on Thomas
Ruyant’s Linkedout, explains, “The V2 2020 foils are less extreme. The first version effectively had two elbows. It was more about lifting the hull than generating righting moment, which the newer generation do.”
The new V2s now have single elbows but work deeper in the water with a longer shaft so that the boat will have less of a tendency to ventilate but will also make the boat more powerful.
Hutchinson adds, “The new profiles are more tolerant. Flying stability is going to be everything. But maybe the most significant changes are inside the boat where the ergonomics have been updated, the bunk, the seating arrangement, everything needs to be at arm’s length at most. You are on all fours to get around: it has to be like a padded cell.
“It is dangerous. The weak link is not the boat, it is how much punishment the skipper can take and how quickly they can recover.”
Kouyoumdjian also believes this race is more endurance than design race: “Every boat will have its moment. I don’t think one will outperform the other, it goes way beyond design. These boats are capable of very high speeds but they are not withstandable for the skipper.”
Finding those limits will involve stepping into the unknown for many of these untried designs, in a race where the attrition rate can be over 60%. Hutchinson warns: “None of us have done any sailing. It is pretty scary. I am really worried about this because right now, we should be finishing the New York Vendée and that would have been two transatlantic races by the end of June. Some of these boats have hardly sailed.
“To go straight into a Vendée Globe without the boats having done miles is pretty scary. It really is.”