Sailing: the Class40, an “easy” boat made for the open sea – Le Monde

When it started in 2004, the Class40 (12-meter monohulls) was considered a class reserved for enlightened amateurs, even semi-professionals, and was sometimes viewed with condescension. Then it experienced a superb shine thanks to the victory of Yoann Richomme during the Route du rhum 2018.

Here was one of the most brilliant professionals of his generation masterfully demonstrated that a simple boat, without foils, built in fiberglass – with the exception of the mast, the boom and the bowsprit in carbon – was also a very fast boat, capable at certain speeds of keeping an average of 18 knots, easy to use, at limited costs and, above all, not requiring a plethora of crew to ensure its operation all year round.

A year later, in 2019, it is the Ian Lipinski-Adrien Hardy duo, aboard Mutual credit, a scow designed by the architect and long-time offshore racer David Raison, a boat with a rounded bow, which won the Transat Jacques Vabre, suddenly opening the eyes of the offshore world. This drawing then signs a ” technological rupture ” that this same Reason, in 2011, had already launched by winning the Mini-Transat on similar lines on his 6.50-meter boat, leaving the observers of the time speechless.

“Boats on a human scale”

While the budgets of the latest Imoca and Ultime are out of reach, the Class40 is keeping away from a technological and financial escalation and is experiencing an acceleration in starts for the next Route du rhum since we are talking today 17 new boats for the 2022 edition. Sunday November 7 at 1:30 pm, there will be 45 Class40 crews on the 79 boats at the start of the fifteenth edition of the Transat Jacques Vabre, a double-handed transatlantic race between Le Havre and, for the first time, Fort-de-France, in Martinique.

This light shed on the Class40 could be explained by the increasingly professional profiles of the participants, certainly always mixing informed amateurs and a few seasoned owners, but above all runners from Olympic, match race and Solitaire sectors. du Figaro and some tour-du-mondists like Kito de Pavant (HBF-Reforest’Action).

“In fact, we find in this class a scent of the great hours of ocean racing, with top level racers and guys who have toured the globe several times. All these profiles have considerably increased the level of performance, but still within relative budgetary accessibility ”, explains Alexis Loison, himself a “figarist”, who will be on this co-skipper edition of Nicolas Jossier (La Manche-Evidence nautique), as is the hegemonic winner of the last edition of Le Figaro, Pierre Quiroga, aboardEdenred.

You have 59.86% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.