Vendée Globe

With each passing edition of the Vendée Globe, the 60´ monohulls have made gains in terms of potential, thanks to a significant increase in their power: wider in the beam, with more canvas and more ballast, their performance has reached that of multihulls from fifteen years ago! The only limit is now the ability of one man or one woman alone to manage this wealth of power for three months…

Whilst from the very first edition of the Vendée Globe, the tone was set with the Finot designed boat sailed by Alain Gautier, which favoured a wide beam, light weight and simplicity, there have nonetheless been some amazing developments over the past twenty years! The figures below speak for themselves, as they indicate a weight saving of 30% with an increase of almost 35% in the sail surface area. If we look more closely, we can see the mass of the hull has been halved and the effect of the ballast stepped up considerably with a draught increased by 70 cm, a keel, which cants to 40° windward and one tonne more of seawater ballast.
We must not forget either that the aerodynamic efficiency of the sails has been considerably improved, that the wetted surface of the hull has been reduced, and that the appendages cause less drag. The overall results are clear, as the winner of the first edition, Titouan Lamazou, took 109d 8h 49’ to sail around the world, while the current title holder, Vincent Riou, only took 87d 10h 47’ in 2004. Everyone is expecting this year´s race to be completed in under eighty days, which is what Bruno Peyron´s 25.5m catamaran took in 1993 on her crewed Jules Verne Trophy record! A gain of 25% in the time taken in nineteen years on a course, which has grown a bit longer over the years with the establishment of gates in the southern seas…

The dilemma of power

Thus, in terms of architectural choices, designers have moved towards similar solutions after attempting experiments, which have been more or less successful, such as very narrow, lightweight boats like Jean-Luc van Den Heede´s in 1992. The speed parameters on a 60´ monohull depend on the sail surface (the engine), the stiffness defined by the beam at the waterline and the ballast ratio (ability to carry so much canvas), the weight and wetted surface (the brakes). The heavier and more sail a boat has, the more powerful she is, offering a better performance in all points of sail upwind and with the wind on the beam. On the other hand, she is not as quick as a light boat sailing downwind, as it is more difficult to move a heavier weight through the water that a featherweight.

This is in fact, the real difficulty for the skippers and designers as they look at a round the world voyage, which has a lot of reaching (up and down the Atlantic) and wind from astern (Indian and Pacific). Moreover, extremely powerful monohulls like Pindar designed by Juan Kouyoumdjian and Artemis by Rogers, not only are more demanding on the equipment in rough seas, but also require greater efforts from the sailors to adapt the canvas to the weather. On the other hand, a lighter boat like the Lombard designs (VM Matériaux, Veolia Environnement) and VPLP-Verdier (Safran, Groupe Bel) seem potentially slower reaching in winds above twenty knots, but more at ease with the wind astern, as they are easier to handle and require less physical effort to push them forward.

The difference between these two extremes is important, as the heavyweights weigh around eleven tonnes when laden, while the lightweights only weigh in at eight and a half tonnes. There has not yet been a real battle between these two concepts and the difference will be significant, as the weather during the first stretch of the race (Les Sables-Good Hope) could be favourable for one or the other of these design choices. However, in the long term sailed by a solo yachtsman, a boat "fit for a man" would appear to enable the skipper to remain alert and physically operational during the transition zones (going through the Doldrums, crossing calms, wind fluctuations), which from a strategic perspective are very important.

A difficult compromise
If we look at the fleet setting sail on 9th November, the majority of skippers and designers have chosen the middle way with a lot of power, but without being radical with a walterweight like the Farr designs, (Foncia, Gitana, PRB, Delta Dore, BT, Paprec-Virbac, Cheminées Poujoulat), the Finot designs (Brit Air, Generali, Hugo Boss, DCNS) or the Owen-Clarke designs (Ecover, Temenos, Aviva). The compromise between power and a light weight is not easy to find and often depends on the ability of the yachtsman to be in harmony with his machine. While excesses have rarely been successful at sea, in ocean races sailed by solo yachtsmen over a certain time, the notion of where to place the cursor on the dial between the extremes is more intuitive than scientific: there are so many other factors at play in the Vendée Globe !

Infos précédentes :