{"id":156689,"date":"2025-02-10T06:17:11","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T06:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/?p=156689"},"modified":"2025-02-10T06:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T06:18:09","slug":"why-the-vendee-globe-fleet-is-right-to-reject-a-full-foiling-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/vendee-globe\/why-the-vendee-globe-fleet-is-right-to-reject-a-full-foiling-rule-156689","title":{"rendered":"Why the Vend\u00e9e Globe fleet is right to reject a full foiling rule"},"content":"The Vend\u00e9e Globe<\/a> leaders are locked into near-perfect conditions, riding the leading edge of a low pressure system in the South Atlantic on a direct fast train towards Cape Town.\r\n\r\nCombined with a relatively manageable sea state, particularly for the latest generation IMOCAs<\/a> which have improved wave handling capability, this has seen the front pack hit record speeds over the past 24 hours.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_155502\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"630\"]\"\" The Antoine Koch\/Finot Conq-designed IMOCA Paprec Ark\u00e9a has broken its own speed record within a week in the Vend\u00e9e Globe. Photo: Eloit Stichebaut\/Polaryse\/VG2024[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThe current 24 hour solo sailing record was recorded at this morning\u2019s, Monday 25 November, 0300hrs ranking, with Yoann Richomme<\/a> on Paprec Ark\u00e9a<\/em> covering a phenomenal 579.86 (1073kms) nautical miles, maintaining an average speed of 24.2 knots.\r\n\r\nOver the previous day several of the lead boats took turns to set a new 24 hour record, the most recent benchmark having been established just four days previously by Richomme at 551.84 miles<\/a> on a 'crazy horse' ride in the North Atlantic.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_155559\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"630\"]\"\" Thomas Ruyant's Koch\/Finot Cong Vulnerable, a sistership of Paprec Ark\u00e9a, has also set a new speed record in the Vend\u00e9e Globe, though it was immediately broken. Photo: Eloi Stichelbaut\/Polaryse\/VG2024[\/caption]\r\n\r\nFirst, Richmome bettered his own record by covering 574.41nm in the previous race ranking, then Thomas Ruyant on Vulnerable<\/em>, which is a Antoine Koch\/Finot-Conq designed sistership, covered 568.35 nm, then 571.6 miles. Richomme then set the 579 mile benchmark.\r\n\r\nMany of the top boats were easily covering over 550 miles in 24 hours, with last week's record holder Nicolas Lunven<\/a> (Holcim-PRB<\/a>)<\/em> at 554.55 miles, leader Charlie Dalin (Macif<\/em>) with 558.82 miles, J\u00e9r\u00e9mie Beyou (Charal)\u00a0<\/em>at 551.5 and S\u00e9bastien Simon (Groupe Dubreuil<\/em>) at 551.\r\n\r\nWhile the solo skippers are progressively adding 20-30 miles to the 24hr record, Richomme believes that the crewed IMOCA record, which stands at 641.13 miles, is even within reach.\r\n

Living like animals<\/h2>\r\nThomas Ruyant reported to the Vend\u00e9e Raace team this morning: \u201cIt's flying along, we have the right boats for this.\r\n\r\n\"We're not going fast just to break the record but especially to try to keep the best position with this depression, we don't know what the rest will bring but in any case if we can keep it as long as possible, it's good.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_155560\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"630\"]\"\" Fast speeds for 2nd placed Vend\u00e9e Globe skipper Thomas Ruyant on Vulnerable. Photo: Pierre Bouras\/VG2024[\/caption]\r\n\r\n\"On a downwind course, I think I have a good machine, I'm getting used to it well, after Charlie and Yoann continue to go very fast, the rest of the fleet too, in the end there are still a bunch of boats quite close.\u201d\r\n\r\n\u201cWe're all here within a hundred miles, so in IMOCA it's nothing! So the match is super tight, everyone is going fast, the fleet is really so impressive! I just had a spell at 32 knots there.\r\n\r\n\u201cBut we live a life a little crouched, holding on, sitting, lying down, being extremely careful because the boat sometimes has movements and reactions that are a little bit unexpected because of the sea state, I feel like a small animal surviving in this hull that goes at Mach 12!\u201d\r\n

New boats to the fore<\/h2>\r\nThe huge speeds and mileages have also seen a slight reshuffle at the front of the 39-boat fleet<\/a> with the newer designed IMOCAs coming to the fore in the optimum conditions.\r\n\r\nCharlie Dalin (MACIF Sant\u00e9 Pr\u00e9voyance<\/em>) continues to hold the lead he secured two days ago, though Ruyant is just 50 miles astern.\r\n\r\nYoann Richome has moved up to 3rd, just 10 miles behind on the tracker.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_155557\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"630\"]\"\" After two weeks of racing in the Vend\u00e9e Globe, the leaders are heading on a fast direct route to Cape of Good Hope[\/caption]\r\n\r\nAnother 50 miles back is a small chasing pack, with S\u00e9bastien Simon (Groupe Dubreuil<\/em>) in 4th is, previous record holder Nicolas Lunven (Holcim-PRB<\/em>) in 5th, and J\u00e9r\u00e9mie Beyou (Charal<\/em>) in 6th.\r\n\r\nTop Brit Sam Goodchild<\/a>, who had led for some stages of the North Atlantic and is the only sailor of the group in a previous generation boat (Vulnerable<\/em>) has slipped to 7th, but is still within touch of the chasing pack.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s been a bit of a rough day getting used to a new type of sailing,\u201d Goodchild reported from Vulnerable<\/em> this morning.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe boat\u2019s going fast, doing 27, 28 knots at the moment. There\u2019s a bit of sea state and it\u2019s a bit of nose divy. So it\u2019s not very easy but trying to find a nice balance of what Brian Thompson likes to call fast but not furious! Easier said than done.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_155561\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"630\"]\"\" Wet but fast conditions onboard Sam Goodchild's Vulnerable at the start of Week 3 of the Vend\u00e9e Globe. Photo: Sam Goodchild\/Vulnerable\/VG2024[\/caption]\r\n\r\n\u201cIt was a bit stressful this morning but I'm getting used to it slowly but surely, so it\u2019s something like this for a while now. Losing a bit of miles but there you go it\u2019s part of the game \u2013 try and keep up but try not to take too much risk.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe leaders have around 2,000 miles until they pass south of the Cape of Good Hope. Ruyant explained that he does not expect them to route close to the headland.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe next few days we are just out to stay on this this depression, to reach the Cape of Good Hope, which we are not going to pass very close.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe will stay quite South or even close to the ice zone, but it is still far ahead, so for the moment we are moving towards the objective!\u201d","excerpt":{"rendered":"

That tens of thousands of Vend\u00e9e Globe fans were prepared to get up in the early hours of the morning and camp out on a sea wall in the middle of winter to see a group of boats pass by is truly remarkable. I can\u2019t think of another event in sailing that has this kind of pulling power on this scale. There is no doubt the Vend\u00e9e Globe is an extraordinary phenomenon. Forty years old, now in its 10th edition and with a record entry of 40 boats there\u2019s nothing else like it in sport. The fact 39 boats made it down to the South Atlantic having crossed the Bay of Biscay was also a record. But the success of this event has been no accident. Neither has the fact that the class is stronger than ever. That the Vend\u00e9e Globe was oversubscribed this time around is evidence of that. Yet success hasn\u2019t been without its stresses, especially when it has come to deciding how to allow teams and their designers to continue to evolve and develop their machines at the leading edge of the sport. The recent development of the foiling IMOCAs has been fascinating to watch with speeds that are simply incredible. Article continues below… But to fly the boat using a pair of asymmetric hydrofoils and then balance it fore and aft by dragging the stern around is not the way you\u2019d set out to create a leading edge offshore machine if you started with a blank sheet of paper. Designing an aircraft with asymmetric wings, a lump of lead on one side and no tailplane isn\u2019t a popular approach either. Lifting the stern out of the water with a T-foil rudder would make life easier, quicker and some say safer. But the class voted it out back in November 2023 as it considered what the rules would be, not for this Vend\u00e9e Globe but the next one in 2028. It had been a big topic of conversation with plenty of advocates for making an IMOCA 60 fly properly. But the class is as sensitive to costs as it is to preventing a technical arms race that would fragment the fleet. The class achieves this by acting as a democracy: it\u2019s the sailors and owners themselves who decide the rules. And when it came to defining what an IMOCA would look like for the next Vend\u00e9e Globe they focussed on a different approach. T-foils were voted out, largely based on cost, not just of the foils and control systems but also as a result of the amount it would cost to re-think the next generation of 60-footers. Even for those looking to re-configure their boats rather than build new, (which currently is around \u20ac7million), it was said that the cost could be as much as \u20ac2-3 million for a full facelift. To some this may have looked like the class had frozen in the headlights as it struggled to figure out how to handle a key technical …Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":463,"featured_media":156690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[892],"tags":[173,747,1633,1481],"review_manufacturer":[],"acf":[],"introduction":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156689"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/463"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156692,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156689\/revisions\/156692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156689"},{"taxonomy":"review_manufacturer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review_manufacturer?post=156689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}