Every step in building an IMOCA

Step 1. Time to think

At the start of 2024, while preparing for the last Vendée Globe, the Paprec team was already thinking about its next boat. It analysed data from its boat at the time, Paprec Arkéa, as a starting point. Alongside this, it worked with the design office and Antoine Koch’s naval architecture firm.

The aim was to explore the main options and lay the foundations for the future IMOCA. The IMOCA is a 60-foot (18.28-metre) monohull, the class raced in the Vendée Globe.

Step 2. Putting the pieces together

In early 2025, having just finished the Vendée Globe in second place, Yoann Richomme saw preliminary work begin on the new boat. The team checked that the yard was available and contacted subcontractors to make sure the next stages were feasible. It also drew up a detailed schedule, working back from the launch date.

“It’s important to think about how everything fits together,” says Gautier Levisse, head of the Paprec team’s design office. “We think about the hull shape, the structure, the bulkheads, where the mast goes, the foils…” This groundwork took up the whole of 2025.

Step 3. Construction begins

By early 2026, the design was frozen. Using a full-scale wooden mock-up and a virtual reality headset, the team finalised the cockpit layout, the helm station and the winches.

In the spring, the Multiplast yard began shaping the hull shell, “the first piece of the puzzle,” according to Yoann Richomme. Next, the structure was stiffened, “like a cake you take out of the oven and then have to get out of the tin,” he adds

The yard then moved on to the heavy structural work: bulkheads, ballast tanks, the transom and foil cases.

Step 4. From closing the deck to the finishing touches

September marked the start of another stage: closing the deck. This involves fitting the coachroof and the elements that protect the cockpit, completing the boat’s entire shell.

Closing the deck seals off the inside of the boat, so space inevitably shrinks. This is not a design choice, but a direct consequence of this stage. It makes the job much harder for the technicians, who have to install the last onboard systems in what is now an enclosed space.

Next comes painting, a process that takes several weeks and is currently under way on the Paprec IMOCA. In December, the boat will be moved from Vannes to the team’s base in Lorient. That is when the foils, key to the boat’s performance, will be fitted. They were designed in Lorient by Avel Robotics.

Step 5. From launch to the first races

Then comes always a milestone moment: the launch, scheduled by the Paprec team for March. The boat leaves the shed and is carefully transported until it is lowered into the water. For the whole team, it marks the culmination of two years of thinking and building.

A new challenge then begins: getting to know the boat, fine-tuning its settings and ironing out any teething problems. The boat will soon be out on the water regularly. At first, only the technical team will sail it, before Yoann Richomme joins his first training sessions alongside other IMOCAs.

“This is where we enter the operational phase, with the idea of gradually ramping up,” the skipper explains. He will compete in his first race in June 2027: the Course des Caps. This crewed race starts and finishes in Boulogne-sur-Mer, on a 2,000-nautical-mile course (about 3,700 km) around the British Isles.

Racing with a crew will allow him to keep learning aboard Paprec, build up offshore experience and earn a few points towards qualifying for the Vendée Globe 2028. Time will already be short, with less than two years to go until the start of the next Vendée Globe.

IMOCAs currently under construction:

• Paprec (Yoann Richomme)

• 4Cad (Benjamin Dutreux)

• Banque Populaire 14 (Loïs Berrehar)

• Teamwork – Team Snef (Justine Mettraux)

• Macif (Sam Goodchild)