Advanced technologies move into the fast cruising market – and at affordable prices

Today at Vismara we are steadily transferring into all our new yachts – racing and cruising – the same technologies developed during more than 30 years of in-house research and development. From regatta racers to fast cruisers, our research is now particularly focused on delivering to cruising sailors the same great strides in performance that have been seen in recent years in the best racing fleets.

We are now offering a wholly new philosophy in the fast cruising sector, maximising a yacht’s abilities in everything from everyday life onboard to performance on the race circuit. This is what we are calling our prêt-a-porter approach… from a shipyard that since 1984 has successfully launched more than 150 custom yachts.

International design team
In Vismara we used to talk about the Open Company, meaning working with as many leading external experts as possible along with close co-operation with the customer. Our latest models were developed by a multinational team led by Alessandro Vismara.

Mark Mills Yacht Design has put immense effort into optimising the naval architecture of both the new Vismara 62 SuperNikka and the forthcoming Vismara 56 (above). Working alongside the Spanish specialists at KND Sailing Performance, Mills made extensive use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) while Hernan Salerno took the lead with the structural calculations (something he has done for many years at Vismara). Last but not least, Lucio Micheletti, who previously worked for both ourselves and the Italian shipyard Solaris, is now in charge of developing the interior design of the Vismara 56 along with other new custom projects.

Open co-operation with the best people in their field and continuous innovation are at the heart of our day-to-day work experience.

Engineering structures
There is no such thing as best design without innovation, and innovation is a risk if there aren’t the solid technical foundations already in place. The aim at Vismara Marine Spa is to engineer all the structures of our yachts in-house to give maximum confidence to the end-user.

Easy handling is ultimately what our clients look for when they come to Vismara. Enjoying the sailing experience is what we would like to ensure for all our customers, and this is possible only by employing good engineering, both in terms of structures and handling systems.

To achieve this Vismara recently invested heavily in engineering and design tools to support the launch of two more prêt-a-porter designs: the Vismara V62 and Vismara V50. The first Vismara V50 launches in July and hull number 2 will launch before the end of this year. Shortly afterwards, Vismara V62 hull number 1 – a fast cruising creation all in advanced composite materials that is descended from the custom SuperNikka – will launch at the beginning of 2016.

SuperNikka is an aggressive 62ft IRC racer-cruiser that showcases the performance solutions developed by Vismara: a carbon high-performance dual-purpose design with an efficient lifting keel, plus removable bow thruster and dinghy stowage door allowing her to change modes quickly and easily.

All of our lightweight carbon fast cruising yachts incorporate the lightest possible integrated furniture, again created in-house. As Alessandro Vismara, founder and now CEO of Vismara Marine, likes to say: ‘Each object onboard has to serve at least three purposes, that’s the only way to control the added weight of the necessary comfort features on luxurious but fast boats such as those that we offer our customers.’
Michele Antonini

Vismara 56 Mills Design summary

Introduction
This report describes the design process used to develop the Vismara 56 Mills hull, appendages and sail plan, including a brief description of the tools (CFD & VPP) used to investigate the hull shape performance.
This has involved the following tasks:

• Set-up of the evaluation loop (CFD & VPP)

• Design and testing of hull shapes

• Evaluation of sail plan

Design outline
The Vismara 56 Mills performance cruising design has been prepared for a well-known Italian owner, to conform to a number of requirements based on his experience with previous boats. The brief described a high-performance cruising boat, capable of being sailed shorthanded or with non-sailing family and friends, with comfortable interior and exterior spaces. The boat would be likely to daysail off Sardinia as well as make longer passages around the Mediterranean. Particular emphasis was laid on performance in higher wind strengths, with a desire to avoid reefing below 20kt and to rely on furling headsails of various sizes to cover the full range of wind speeds.

The extensive interior accommodation developed by Vismara Marine with Lucio Micheletti inevitably occupied a significant percentage of the weight tally, reducing the VCG available for the stable upwind sailing in higher winds desired by the client. To compensate for this and to provide the interior volume desired it was clear that a beamy hull shape was required, with a wide beam waterline to produce the form stability necessary to match a reasonable sail plan.

Candidate evaluation: tools and methods
Hull shapes are assessed using the North Sails VPP, taking in drag data from the Das Boot panel code CFD solver and aero coefficients from the KND library appropriate for a design of this type. These lift and drag inputs are then output as predicted boat speeds across a matrix of wind speeds and angles. The matrix we used weights the four wind angles equally, reflecting the allaround use envisaged for the design: VMG beating, 80° reaching, 120° reaching and VMG running.

CFD
A major component of the R&D programme is the generation of hydro coefficients which the VPP will use to predict the candidate hull shape performance. CFD is now considered the most efficient way of generating these hydro coefficients as it is possible to evaluate a large number of candidates in a limited amount of time and it is not bound by the scaling issues tied to tank testing. Two types of CFD were used in this program:

• Panel Code evaluations, thanks to a simplification of the governing equations (in essence their validity excludes turbulent flows), are able to deliver a solution in a matter of minutes. This allows a wide range of potential solutions to be evaluated quickly. The panel code used is the Das Boot code developed by Michael Richelson, used in conjunction with his North Sails VPP that integrates the lift and drag solutions from Das Boot with the other speed producing factors such as sail area, coefficients, stability etc to produce the final performance output. The Panel Code CFD uses the double rudders developed for this design.
•  3D Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes Equations (RANSE) yield the most accurate solutions at the cost of a large volume of computation (thousands of iterations on million elements grids). In return, one can expect a high-quality assessment of the wave and viscous drag. A new use of RANS in waves has been developed by KND, the Vismara 56 being the second project it has been used on (the original single rudder solution was used for RANS wave modelling to simplify the meshing).

Both solutions must be combined to ensure efficiency and accuracy of the prediction. All candidate hull shapes were evaluated using CFD Panel Code to maximise resources in investigating a wide range of possibilities, while RANS CFD was used to refine the solutions on the final candidate hull to avoid serious pitfalls – for example, panel code is prone to over-predict the performance of powerful solutions such as chine height and stem fullness.

Development of hull shapes
Within the starting parameters of a target length of 17m, target weight in lightship trim initially of 14,800kg (revised after discussions with Vismara to 14,000kg (the weight being saved with the use of an integrated furniture system and carefully minimised cable runs) and the max draft of 2.80m, an initial hull shape was developed to start the process based on the final SuperNikka hull. 112 was a chined-shape drawing from Open Class design where reaching is prioritised with a wide hull shape, mediumheight chines and a reasonably wide waterline beam to produce a stable all-round performer.

Various iterations were tried such as altered Prismatic Coefficient Cp and LCB, narrower beam, more powerful stern and bow shapes, higher and lower chines to identify a hull shape that could perform well across the wind range. As progress was made the improved shapes became the basis of the next iteration to combine the positive attributes. Toward the end of the process a reduction in the target displacement was made to improve performance and reduction in waterline length to reduce fears of transom immersion in light airs, and finally an aftward adjustment to LCB was made to allow the hull to trim correctly based on the preliminary weight study.

The final candidate 130 (above) shows the evolution towards fuller sections forwards, lower chine height (approx 120mm) adding stability when heeled, as well as the raised freeboard to match the Vismara Marine model.
Mark Mills

Click here for more information on Vismara»

And sailboat racing is officially now a six-continent sport...

At the London 2012 Olympics the Laser fleet witnessed 48 sailors in as many nations competing, more than most Olympic sports achieve. The Laser Radial was not far behind with 41 national flags on the startline fighting for medals, a top-10 finish and personal bests.

While gold was taken by Australia’s Tom Slingsby in the Laser and China’s Lijia Xu in the Radial, a glance at the entry lists shows how widespread Olympic sailing has now become. Sailors from the Cook Islands, Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Monaco, Tunisia and Trinidad and Tobago ensured that every continent had an Olympic sailor at London 2012.

And they were not there simply to make up the numbers… the traditional powerhouses of Olympic sailing were upset in many ways as Xu claimed China’s first Olympic gold in a dinghy and Pavlos Kontides made a remarkable breakthrough claiming Cyprus’s first ever Olympic medal, silver, in any sport. Sailing in China and Cyprus found itself on the front pages thanks to the success of their Olympians and this will inspire young sailors everywhere.

As a lifetime participation sport, sailing is very strong in many countries, usually those with a tradition and heritage in the sport, a network of strong healthy sailing clubs, and a long coastline or plentiful inland lakes. A top priority for ISAF now is to strengthen the sport internationally, and help all the newer sailing nations build the infrastructure and lifetime participation that sailors in the strong nations enjoy.

The Olympics help raise the profile of the sport. The success of Pavlos and Lijia Xu can inspire young sailors in all continents. Through ISAF’s Emerging Nations Programme pathways are being created for sailors from all countries into the Olympics and beyond. The more realistic is that end-goal of Olympic participation the more likely that a young athlete from Africa is to choose sailing as their sport.

This is one of the reasons why sailing now has continental Olympic qualification for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. At least one place in every event, and two in the larger fleets, is reserved for the top sailor from each continent. This also means that Olympic qualification regattas will be held on all continents – in Qingdao and Abu Dhabi for Asia, and Algeria and South Africa for Africa.

Sailing provides all nations with three opportunities to qualify. The top countries in each event qualified at the first qualification regatta, the Santander 2014 ISAF Sailing World Championships last September. The next opportunity will be at each Olympic class world championship in 2015. The final continental places will be decided late in 2015 or early in 2016, ensuring the door stays open for every sailor from every country. Looking further ahead, the young Optimist sailor in Africa now knows that he will have a genuine opportunity to qualify for the 2028 Olympics.

ISAF World Sailing Rankings
The ISAF World Sailing Rankings were revamped three years ago so that sailors could measure performance in the Olympic class regattas over a 12-month period.

ISAF and the Olympic classes use this worldwide ranking as the basis for qualification to regattas with restricted entry, such as the ISAF Sailing World Cup regattas; meanwhile, many countries use it as a basis for selection between their sailors. Climbing the world rankings is becoming an essential element of any sailor’s Olympic campaign.

To establish a world ranking sailors count the points from their top-six regattas over the previous 12 months; if a sailor has competed in fewer than six regattas, then he or she is unlikely to be world #1 in their class. Regattas are classified as 200, 100 or 50-pointers. World championships and ISAF Sailing World Cup regattas are 200-pointers. Continental championships and major international regattas are 100-pointers, and other international regattas are 50-pointers.

The winner gains the maximum points while points for finishing halfway down the fleet are half this maximum. This means that a good result at a 100-pointer will score more points than a poor result at a 200-pointer, so top sailors have to keep performing to avoid being overtaken.

Nearly one hundred 50-point regattas are recognised by ISAF in 2015 so entry into the rankings is relatively easy. But next comes the campaign to climb those rankings to receive invitations to restricted entry events like the ISAF Sailing World Cup…
Chris Atkins, ISAF Vice-President

Click here for more information on ISAF Sailing Olympics»

Cowes Week, Centomiglia (Lake Garda), the Blue Ribbon (Balaton) or the Barcolana (Trieste, Italy) share the same philosophy: they are big and popular events, yet they manage to attract some of yacht racing’s greatest names thanks to their prestige

These are among Europe’s biggest and most prestigious sailboat races… the Bol d’Or Mirabaud (500 boats), Cowes Week (1,000 boats), Round the Island (a record 1,908 boats in 2011), Hungary’s Blue Ribbon (550 boats), the Barcolana (1,968 boats in 2002) or Lake Garda’s Centomiglia (300 boats).

They share many things: they are open to true amateurs yet they attract some of the world’s best professionals, for most participants they represent a personal challenge and they all take place in beautiful surroundings.

On 13 June the 77th edition of the Bol d’Or Mirabaud will be the first of those European classics, gathering a mixture of high-tech carbon multihulls skippered by professional sailors alongside true amateurs sailing on all sorts of boats, ranging from classic wooden designs to one-designs and cruising boats.

‘It’s what makes the beauty of this event,’ says Antonio Palma, CEO of Mirabaud & Cie SA, the event’s title sponsor, whose team won their class in last year’s event. ‘It is open to every sailor, no matter if he is competitive or not. I personally try to participate every year, onboard a 7.5m Surprise onedesign; I always find it very special to be on the same starting line as some of the best sailors in the world. Ten minutes after the start they have already disappeared over the horizon, but we are still competing in the same race and that’s what makes it so special.’

Rodolphe Gautier, the new president of the Bol d’Or Mirabaud organising committee, is determined to further enhance this mix and also to make it more international.

‘There is a degree of tourism in yacht racing,’ he observes. ‘Some people put their boat on a trailer and are ready to drive 1,000km to discover a new race. I think it’s a great way to spend your holidays and to discover new sailing grounds, and I hope more people will follow the trend.’

Gautier accepted the role of president of the Bol d’Or Mirabaud under one condition: that he could still participate in the event. Skipper of the high-tech Ventilo M1 catamaran Safram (SUI 50), which won the 2013 Bol d’Or Mirabaud (then skippered by Jean-Philippe Bucher), he is determined to show the way. ‘After this summer’s Bol d’Or Mirabaud we will travel to Lake Balaton and then Lake Garda with Safram. I really look forward to competing in those events, and I hope that many others – with whatever boats – will do the same!’

Spindrift racing in the Tour de France – a good team-building exercise
Dona Bertarelli, Yann Guichard and their team Spindrift Racing will compete in this summer’s Tour de France à la Voile to enhance their competitiveness and keep working away on the water – a choice that might sound surprising considering the team’s intense programme (Jules Verne Trophy, defence of the Bol d’Or Mirabaud, GC32 circuit…). Yann Guichard explains the reasons behind the decision.

‘The DM 24 platform chosen for the Tour de France à la Voile is based on a pretty basic concept that is quite the opposite to today’s usual style, employing simple trimarans that still mainly sail on the central hull… no foils and no wings. However, I see many benefits in racing the TdF; first of all, it will keep us competing throughout the summer on interesting courses – a mix of coastal raids and windwardleeward courses. And most importantly, there are no fewer than 30 teams including most of the big names, so the boats might not be very exciting but the racing will definitely be intense and spectacular.’

The fleet for the next Tour de France will indeed be hugely competitive, with names such as Cammas, Desjoyeaux, Beyou, Riou, Lemonchois, Coville… Guichard and his team’s goal is nevertheless clear and ambitious: ‘We are here to win.’

The one-design aspect of the fleet has undoubtedly set the bar high: ‘It’s quite simple, we are not allowed to do anything to the boats. Even the sails, built by EuropSails, are one-design. It’s therefore really the teams who will make the difference.’

And perhaps the reliability of the boats? ‘It’s true, this is a new class,’ admits Guichard. ‘These boats have been designed to ease access to multihull sailing for amateur sailors. We will sail completely differently, and push quite hard. It will be interesting to see how the boats stand up to a month of intense racing.’

Yann Guichard plans to rotate his crew through the summer to give everyone a chance to race. ‘We want as many team members as possible to be involved. For us it is a good teambuilding exercise. We can’t just take the maxi trimaran Spindrift 2 for a spin; it’s a pretty complex operation… On the other hand, we can go out and train on the Diam 24 for a couple of hours at any time of day. It’s very practical.’

Parallel to the Tour de France à la Voile, Spindrift Racing carry on preparing their monster trimaran for the round-theworld attempt. The team will also compete on Lake Geneva’s Décision 35 circuit, as well as on the GC32 circuit. ‘Sailing in so many different classes will obviously be demanding from a technical point of view, but we believe that the future of yacht racing is in flying multihulls and we want to get up to speed.’

A century-old passion
Mirabaud’s brand is already well known on the pontoons throughout the world, among other things for the banking and financial group’s support of Yann Guichard’s Spindrift offshore maxi trimaran (second in the latest Route du Rhum), sailor Dominique Wavre (seventh in the last Vendée Globe), the Mirabaud LX foiler or the Mirabaud Yacht Racing Image award.

However, it is a less known fact that the group – and its founding family – have been involved in yacht racing for over a century. Since 1888, according to the archives, where you can find a picture of the Seven-Tonner Squaw... (pictured above) the property of Ivan Mirabaud. Squaw was arguably one of Lake Geneva’s first real racing boats.

Born in 1850, Ivan Mirabaud was the great-grandfather of Yves Mirabaud, one of today’s five managing partners of the group that bears the family name and current chairman of the board. He is probably the key figure in terms of generating this long passion for yacht racing.

Ivan’s direct descendants were well known on the shores of the lake for their beautiful raceboats all bearing the name Fly – no fewer than six examples of which were raced actively. Further down the family tree, one also discovers typical lake boats such as the 6.5m Hoccos, the 15m SNS as well as a Two Tonner.

Today Mirabaud perpetuates the family tradition by supporting some of the world’s best sailors and most exciting projects such as Spindrift Racing, alongside the popular Bol d’Or Mirabaud. Indeed a century-old tradition.

Bernard Schopfer

Click here for more information on Mirabaud»

Longtime Seahorse associate Miranda Merron finished a brilliant sixth in the Class40 division in last year’s singlehanded transatlantic classic…

Rhum preparation
The legendary Route du Rhum comes but once every four years. In recent times the size of the fleet has increased considerably, as has the obstacle course that entry involves. I would love to say that it is all about focusing on training for the race, but just getting to the startline is a challenge in itself.

For the past three editions Class40s have represented by far the largest fleet (43 of the 91 entries in the 2014 Route du Rhum) and therefore a lot of competition for boats, as well as the most competition on the water. The class attracts a mix of Corinthian and professional sailors, thanks to its manageable size and relative affordability – not beyond the means of a reasonably successful individual nor beyond the means of small to medium sized companies wanting to sponsor or part-sponsor a boat.

For many sailors finding at least some level of sponsorship has to come before chartering or buying a boat, which then also needs to be insured for solo racing. At least active Class40s have the advantage of spending most of their time on the water and not in the shed, which is not always the case with the bigger, more expensive shorthanded designs.

The Rhum Notice of Race stipulates that entry is by invitation, to ensure that competitors have a sufficient level of experience to race solo across the Atlantic. This should not put off potential competitors who are unknown to the race organisers, as long as they can provide proof of eligibility in terms of experience. In any case, all competitors are required to complete a solo qualifying passage, usually 1,000 nautical miles. The course to be sailed must be agreed with the race organisation at least a week in advance, and each boat must be tracked by Sat C. Last June, 18 Class40s competed in the solo Qualif which counted as a qualifier for the Route du Rhum, and provided a more entertaining and useful way to qualify than sailing alone.