Aeolos P30

LOA 9.14m 30ft 0in

• Beam 2.91m 9ft 6in

• Displacement 1,550kg 3,420lb

• Ballast 800kg 1,765lb

• Draught 0.50-2.30m 1ft 8in-7ft 7in Price from US$128,000 ex VAT aeoloscomposites.com

There’s nothing conventional about this short-handed offshore raceboat, which challenges almost every established way of thinking. It’s therefore radically different from any other design in this rapidly growing part of the market.

The P30 is the brainchild of Hans Genthe, a past winner of the hotly contested singlehanded 134-mile Silver Rudder race sailing a Farr 280. It’s optimised for ORC racing and is designed specifically for typical Baltic sea conditions

The concept encompasses a nocompromise view of how to create a very quick and lightweight boat. It therefore differs considerably to typical IRC optimised double-handed boats, that until now have been relatively heavy, with displacement:length ratios largely unchanged from that of the 3.5 tonne J/105, which was designed more than 30 years ago.

Instead, the Aeolos P30 weighs around 1,550kg in lightship mode and therefore delivers ultra-fast planing performance. Light airs performance has also been considered and when upright the boat has a slight bows-down attitude, with a lot of fore-and-aft rocker that helps to minimise wetted surface area. Once heeled to 15° the immersed shape is totally flat, meaning the boat will plane at 15-30° of heel.

The fat bow sections are different to the scow bows of today’s Mini 650s, Class 40s and IMOCA 60s, but play an equally important role, providing plenty of lift when planing at high speed, along with increased form stability.

The interior is very stripped out, but there’s still plenty of attention to detail. Pipe cots under the side decks outboard of the cockpit, for instance, put your weight to just as good use as sitting outside. Equally, you can sit on the companionway step to use the nav computer on its rotating table.