Vendée Globe

The Juan Kouyoumdjian designed Bahrain Team Pindar which is being campaigned by Brian Thompson is acknowledged as probably the most extreme new IMOCA Open 60.

With a towering wing mast rig believed to be between 1.5 and 2 m taller than most, reckoned to be one of the heaviest of the new generation and the widest, to generate a level of power that has been challenged by some as pushing the physical limits of the solo sailor. But Juan K’s design philosophy is based on the belief that a more stable, powerful boat will require fewer sail changes, and while the loads are higher, Bahrain Team Pindar will prove quicker.

He is no stranger to controversy. His ABN AMRO 1 won the last Volvo Race, and his current Ericsson design has just set a new 24 hours monohull speed record. The boat has sailed less than 10,000 miles and had rig problems which severely limited her build up but could Pindar simply leave the new IMOCA Open 60’s behind? 

“The Vendée Globe is a very special race, a race which is about solo sailing, the contribution of the boat is a lot smaller in the overall performance than in something like the Volvo race.” Cautions Juan K, “ I am still very positive about what Pindar and Brian Thompson can do. I think there is a really good symbiosis between the two and I think the boat certainly has shown some interesting performances here and there, so I am actually very confident that from an Open 60 design point of view, I am very confident that the boat represents a good spectrum of the rule, and it will be fast in many conditions which are representative on the Vendée Globe.”

“But then there are a lot of other parameters that influence the race, that are completely beyond the scope of the boat, or myself and everything else.” He reminds us, 

“ I think in some conditions that it will be that much quicker, in some conditions it is just going to be a couple of knots faster than others. In other conditions it will be slower, and so but that depends so much on what percentage of the performance the skipper wants to sail the boat. If you have, for example Brian in Pindar being very conservative, next to Michel Desjoyeaux really pushing the boat, then it would not be representative, so it is a solo race and that is very conditional.”

He reaffirms that reliability is always a concern in this race, and with the Pindar he is no more or less worried:

“ I think it would be naive for me or any designer to not be concerned at all about reliability prior to a Vendée Globe start. I don’t think I am that naïve and so for sure of the 30 boats that will start hopefully 15 will get to the end, and I know that there will be a lot of breakages, some in the middle of the race. So, yes the Pindar programme is not as prepared as other programmes, but then I remind you that prior to the other events the Open 60 and the crew who had sailed the most was Vincent Riou and so far he has not finished one single race that he has done (with the current PRB), so it is also very relative.”

He underlines what the boat’s strengths are:

“This boat will be strongest in reaching conditions, close hauled reaching or reaching in anything between 12 and 16-18 knots, and then she will not be any worse above that. And when it is light close hauled and upwind she will be just fine, and VMG downwind she will be slow.”

And of the reports that his design has many of the top French sailors concerned, Juan K responds:

“I think if that is true it is flattering, because I have respect and admiration for a lot of these French sailors, Michel Desjoyeaux Vincent Riou, Loick Peyron some of these people I got to know personally I lived in France as well, and I have huge respect for these people, to the best of my eyes they are the best solo sailors in the world, if not the best offshore sailors in the world.”

But they has regularly pointed out that they consider such a big, powerful boat will be take too much out of the skipper:

“This is where there is a bit of a difference of opinion.” He reiterates,  “I take very seriously their position and that fact that they say it makes me even consider that I am wrong, but I can only base myself on the calculations that I have done, and when I speak with the sailors. We can calculate, and estimate and it has actually been proven over the 9,000 miles that Pindar has done, that through the additional stability you certainly do less sail changes, and therefore when  these people tell you that the most physically demanding, time consuming and stressful times, when something can go wrong, is actually when changing sails – I am only putting 1 and 1 together – but I am not experienced enough to add anything else, but I can certainly confirm that the sails of Pindar are heavier, and so it is more of a job to move them inside of the boat. I can also confirm that the loads on the sheet are going to be higher, and therefore to trim them is going to be harder, but the sailors themselves tell me that is not where they spend their energy, they spent their energies on sail changes. I am only just making, call it a mathematical fact, but I am not experienced enough to make the final call. But if a Jean le Cam or Mich Desj, say ‘oh no I’d rather have a light boat, because it is much easier managed’  I can only believe them.”

Another issue which has been highlighted is that the boat may be harder to de-power effectively or comfortably:

“ This boat de-powers through reduction of sail area, whether it is through a reef or changing sails, but de-powering is not necessarily the problem. In relation to de-powering it is to keep the boat balanced, and therefore fast through a big range of de-powered sail sets. So the performance comes from having a properly balanced boat, not just with a full main and a masthead (Code) Zero, but also with three reefs and a little storm jib, if you manage to play with your hydrodynamics and your appendages in a way that the balance of the boat is more or less correct in both of those, and in the middle, then you are always going to be fast. And if you say Pindar has a problem de-powering at the very least you end up with a mast alone.”

“ For sure in anything less than eight or 10 knots in VMG mode there are faster boats out there, but no one has won an around the world race VMG running in less than ten knots.”  

He explains the role of Mike Sanderson in the conception of the boat, as with other projects:

“Moose (Mike Sanderson) is very close to this office and we have had a very close relationship with him over many, many projects already and he understands the way we work, and he has always given us very good info. This boat was his boat originally and so he was directly involved in the inputs that we were given to make her as fast as possible. Our job when we work with Moose is to look at different options, and then put them on the table and we make decisions together. What is important about his role is that his experience allows you to make the decisions.”

It has been said also that Bahrain Team Pindar is simply not a Vendée Globe boat, but one more suited to Transat and shorter races:

“ This was never designed as a pure Vendée Globe boat and with the best of my knowledge now there are a lot of things I would do differently for a Vendée Globe boat but they are mostly related to he cockpit and life inside the boat, and mechanisms to stack, but I certainly would not go in the direction of low stability and light. I think there are ways of making the Pindar boat, or a new Open 60 boat, lighter through carbon fibre fins and things like that, but as a concept of what the boat represents in terms of the rule, I think it is definitely is in the right spot.”

Juan K has also helped with modifications to Roland ‘Bilou’ Jourdain’s Veolia:

“ Bilou was very interesting because he had a very clear idea of building a new boat, and so he cam to us. We had a few very good conversations, we really admired him here at the office, and so the connection was very good, and so he asked what could be done with this boat.. We did a series of meeting and took a lot of pictures to re-constitute the hulls shape. I think there is still an ongoing conflict with him and the boat’s designer and we did not want to get involved in the middle. We told him we did not have that level of detail for what we were being asked to do. We did several representations and then convinced ourselves that one particular one was the closest, We called that ‘our Veolia’ and we started to some candidates around that in terms of balance and appendages, primarily because it was clear from the beginning that we would not have the time to change the hull shape, so we purely confined ourself to looking at the balance of the boat, and the stability and our philosophy was always to maximise the stability of the boat. Coming from the ‘school’ that he comes from and so forth, he was reluctant to make the boat slightly heavier to make the boat more stable was the right thing to do, but he bought into it, we did it and he has been sailing for a while and so far we have nor heard anything bad about it, if anything he feels in some conditions that the boat is quite a lot quicker, in other conditions it is about the same as before, and so overall it has been an improvement overall. And in the Barcelona Race he broke the mast when he was second, and just when he was catching up, before he had to abandon.”

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