In order to qualify for the Transat Jacques Vabre, François Gabart and his co-skipper Sébastien Col carried out their 850-mile qualifier last week in the Celtic Sea sailing from Brittany to the Fastnet Lighthouse. This offered them an opportunity to try out the new Imoca 60 Macif and the first results seem to be very encouraging.
François Gabart says he learnt three things from this first sail. Firstly, he still has some technical details to sort out, essentially minor points to make the boat easier to work: reorganising the galley and the equipment storage area. However, the new boat lived up to the skipper’s expectations. The second lesson was that the pair work well together and they found a way to work together from their very first few hours of sailing. Finally, François immediately felt at home aboard his boat. This was his first trip as skipper of the new 60-foot 60 boat and quite naturally, François was rather apprehensive about this first trial: “I was a bit stressed about this first sail , as it is quite a leap moving from the Figaro to the 60-foot boat... But I soon felt at ease. Especially seeing that with Sébastien, we found our feet quickly. We managed to check out a lot of points, talked things over, tried out various sail configurations, so this was really a great experience.”
