James Boyd looks at Imoca class development under the leadership of Open Sports Management

Phase one of the Open Sports Management plan to internationalise the Imoca class has now taken place with completion of the inaugural Imoca Ocean Masters New York to Barcelona Race in June, won by Pepe Ribes and Ryan Breymaier onboard Hugo Boss.

The doublehanded race between New York and Barcelona was the first event to count towards the new Imoca Ocean Masters World Championship. While there are already main major events for the Imoca class, notably the Vendée Globe and the Barcelona World Race, plus this autumn’s Route du Rhum and the biennial Transat Jacques Vabre, the World Championship intends to lend weight to other events and future events in the expanding Imoca circuit.

Since acquiring the rights to the Imoca 60 class at the end of 2012 Sir Keith Mills’ company OSM has set itself a number of objectives.

First is to help internationalise the predominantly French offshore monohull class, best known for the Vendée Globe singlehanded non-stop round-the-world race. To this end OSM’s first event, the Imoca Ocean Masters New York to Barcelona Race, visited Newport, Rhode Island and then held its build-up week in Manhattan, providing valuable exposure for the Imoca class in the North American market.

The race also included the first Chilean in an Imoca race: José Muñoz, racing with Spanish round-the-world veteran Guillermo Altadill aboard Neutrogena. The duo will be competing together again in the Barcelona World Race that sets sail on 31 December this year.

‘Internationalising the class means that we will not just be having races in Europe and the USA, but we will reach out to Asia, for example,’ says Peter Bayer, CEO of OSM, of his company’s vision for the future. ‘We will have a fleet of, say, 15 teams following a global circuit and they should be from a variety of nations and continents. Once we have reached that stage it will be a global sport and it will become one of the top sports properties worldwide.’

And this comes from a man with a heavyweight background as the former CEO of the 2012 Youth Olympic Games. Before this Bayer spent most of his professional career ‘commercialising’ snowboarding, starting as a junior marketing executive for the Association of Professional Snowboarders and ultimately ending up as its CEO. ‘That was hugely interesting – I learned a lot about host cities, relations, about how to market a sport, how to deal with athletes, how to commercialise it, how to communicate it, what the potential threats are, what the opportunities are, what the usual gaps in the planning are? That gave me a solid education in event organisation and communicating it and so on,’ he says.

Another key objective for OSM is communicating the stories from the high seas where typically a small part sees the light of day publicly.

Bayer remembers soon after taking up his appointment: ‘I had an informal dinner with a couple of skippers and they recounted some of their stories and for three hours my mouth was open! I think if we manage to take those stories, translate them into a media product, the whole world will love it. There is no one who won’t.’

To this end boats in the Imoca Ocean Masters New York to Barcelona Race carried a media crewman, with Neutrogena for example taking Andres Soriano who performed this same role onboard Team Sanya during the last Volvo Ocean Race. During the race the media crewmen provided daily reports, plus photos and video which the already shorthanded crew would have otherwise struggled to find the time to create and transmit back to land.

This content was in addition to that being produced by the media team working on the event, first in New York and then in Barcelona. Their job was to produce daily press releases and stories for the event website, create daily video highlights for the web and packages for television – all in four languages: English, French, Spanish and Catalan. This all received additional marketing support from a social media specialist tasked with increasing public engagement with the race and Imoca /OSM.

Down the line Bayer wants to standardise the communication equipment each of the boats carries, as is done in the Volvo Ocean Race. However, key to developments such as this is acquiring a naming rights partner for the class, for which he, OSM’s commercial director Alex Mills and ex-IMG newly appointed marketing partnerships director Franck Guignery are currently gunning hard.

In the meantime, Imoca has been implementing a new rule aimed at containing costs and improving safety for the newbuild 60s. These include requiring keels and masts of new builds to be one-design. In the latter instance there are different options for ‘conventional’ fixed masts and rotating wing-profile spars, the existing fleet having been evenly divided between the use of these over the last decade.

Additional rules have been introduced such as limiting maximum bulb weight (3,100kg), righting moment (25.5 tonnemetres at 25° heel), use of exotic composite materials, restricting the number of waterballast tanks (down from eight, or more, to four) and their volumes reduced. Gone is one of the ancient cornerstones and typeforming parts of the Imoca rule – the '10 degree rule’, used to limit the amount of movable ballast via a static test where the boat must heel by no more than 10° with all its ballast deployed.

The aim has been to simplify the boats while ensuring that the power-to-weight ratio of new boats remains similar to that of the existing fleet. However, coming up with the right numbers to ensure that new builds are neither slower than the existing fleet, nor too much faster, has caused delays in the final publication of the rule.

Despite this, the latest rules have done little to dampen the appetite of teams choosing to build new boats. Publicly announced teams at present include Banque Populaire, Safran, Gitana, Hugo Boss and St Michel Virbac. While Hugo Boss has yet to announce who will be behind their next boat, the rest are to be designed by VPLP-Verdier, who penned Macif and Banque Populaire, the first two boats home in the last Vendée Globe.

Hungarian Nandor Fa this spring launched the first boat built to the new rule – Spirit of Hungary, the solo round-theworld sailing legend and former Imoca president’s third Imoca 60. This made it to the start of the Imoca Ocean Masters New York to Barcelona Race but, despite arriving in New York, didn’t compete. Unfortunately the boat was found to have suffered delamination in the slamming area of its hull forward during its delivery trip.

At this stage the teams and designers are remaining secret squirrel about how their new boats will look and any developments we’re likely to see in them. The majority of the new-generation boats are set to be launched in 2015 to be ready at least a year ahead of the next Vendée Globe.

Click here for more information on the the IMOCA Ocean Masters »

Marcus Hutchinson delves deeper into the workings of this profoundly productive shorthanded offshore racing programme

Three years ago the French Volvo 70 was not considered by the ‘establishment’ as a serious contender for overall victory in the Volvo Ocean Race, and the first leg to Cape Town didn’t do anything to help as Franck Cammas’s Groupama came last of the finishers by quite a large margin. Things changed quickly from then on, however, and over the following legs the team started performing, collecting points, winning legs and ultimately Groupama won the race. A quick look at their crew roster didn’t show up any ‘big international star names’ but a closer look revealed not only an impressive number of shorthanded offshore sailors, but specifically no fewer than six veteran Figaro skippers.

Fast-forward three years to 2014 and, of the seven entries in this year’s VOR, how many will have Figaro sailors onboard? At the time of writing it would appear there are Figaro sailors on three boats – Sam Davies on SCA, Charles Caudralier, Pascal Bidégorry and Thomas Rouxel on Dongfeng and the likelihood of as many as four onboard the as yet unnamed Spanish team.

When Iker Martínez and Xabi Fernández got the late green light for their project just weeks ago the first person they called to help them get organised was Michel Desjoyeaux, the two-time Vendée Globe and three-time Figaro winner who had helped the Spanish pair prepare their Open 60 for the Barcelona World Race. Other than for his immense range of skills and offshore experience they wanted Desjoyeaux to help them find the right people to crew their new VO65. Desjoyeaux’s immediate advice was to dip into the pool of current Figaro talent, and from there they have recruited Nico Lunven (FRA) as navigator and offered try-outs to Antony Marchand (FRA) and Sam Goodchild (GBR) as two under-30 sailors.

Goodchild is a product of the Artemis Offshore Academy and at the age of just 24 has just completed his fourth Solitaire du Figaro. Some quick research reveals that in the race’s 45-year history there have not even been a handful of sailors who have completed four Figaros by their 24th birthday – among those who have, names like Alan Gautier and Jérémie Beyou immediately come to mind…

Goodchild was part of the first intake of the Academy four years ago and since that time the Artemis-backed initiative has continued to identify and develop young British offshore sailors. In early July this year no fewer than eight of the Academy’s sailors completed the Solitaire du Figaro course, three Rookie first-timers and five alumni from previous years. For the second year in a row Academy sailors have populated the Rookie podium and the Academy’s approach clearly continues to impress the French solo offshore sailing environment.

Since its establishment the Artemis Offshore Academy has evolved every year as it has grown. From its first efforts in an ‘alien’ environment to today’s refined selection process, optimised schedule and training regimes in the UK and France, and this year expanding to start to train young shore support staff to specialise in logistics, boat maintenance and project management, this is no flash in the pan. The Academy is here to stay and this year its sailors represented almost a quarter of the fleet at the Solitaire du Figaro.

Each year the Academy calls for recruits and following a rigorous selection process places suitable candidates into initial training in late summer. From the first basic exercises of getting a 32-footer off the dock and sailing by oneself in 20kt of breeze, to manoeuvring and handling the two extra systems not often found on regular racing yachts – water ballast and sophisticated autopilots – to lining up with sisterships and getting into advanced sail trim and speed tests, the skippers sail across a far wider range of sailing conditions than your average ‘weekend warrior’ gets to experience nowadays. In parallel there are plenty of courses to attend and paperwork to collect such as VHF licences, sea safety, Yachtmasters, along with plenty of classroom training with specialists in subjects as varied as Adrena navigation software, weather strategies, onboard electronics systems, fitness and nutrition, sports psychology and so on.

Last year four new recruits from dinghy and keelboat environments came through selection and got to sail the Academy’s Figaros in the Solent for 45 days. In January this year three of those went on to dodge the major winter storms and deliver their assigned boats two-handed to Lorient to train with Tanguy Leglatin and the Lorient Grand Large group. From here the programme ratchets up a notch or two and speed tests take on a new meaning. Boat-handling exercises with a dozen boats, tacking and gybing duels, short-course racing around navigation marks, and a big emphasis on the main point of sail encountered offshore, reaching all follow. At the end of each week-long session the fleet sets off on a minutely prepared 12-18 hour coastal race.

March rolls around and the first major regatta, the Solo Maître CoQ in Les Sables d’Olonne, swings into view and sets the routine and the rhythm the skippers will live by for the rest of the year – delivery to the venue, a couple of days of official pre-event safety and measurement checks, weather and routeing briefings with the Academy’s consultant, Christian Dumard, the race start, the finish, the initial recovery, the post-race debrief and then delivery back to the Lorient base or on to the next event.

Before the first race of each year the Rookies always ask what is the best way to prepare for sleep depravation, the one obvious difference this part of the sport asks of its competitors. There is no complete answer to this perennial question until the skippers have sailed some of these events and discovered for themselves how to deal with the excitement of racing a big fleet versus the need to slow down the pace early enough so as not to flirt with the redzone before crossing the finish line and safely bringing the boat home!

The most valuable exercise of the pre-Solitaire programme this year was a week-long 12-boat training sortie that saw the entire Lorient-based group of skippers race past most of the key geographic points on this year’s Solitaire race course. For 2014 it comprised a practice race from Lorient around the western tip of Brittany, around Jersey, the Cherbourg Breakwater and then to Plymouth. This was followed by a day of windward-leewards in Plymouth Sound and then another race around the Wolf Rock and back to Lorient via a buoy off Roscoff. A 700-mile round trip with regular restarts at key points to allow the fleet to always race in contact, and all animated by a couple of coaches riding shotgun and rotating across several of the boats. The beauty and value of this exercise are keeping the fleet close, building up fatigue, simulating race conditions, chatting constantly on the VHF, having coaches around to chat with, and give advice without actually sailing the boat.

The pace and complexity continue to accelerate as the weeks go by and the main event, the 2,000-mile four-stage Solitaire du Figaro, comes into view in June. There is less time to recover between events, further to sail on deliveries, the management of life on the road, the arrival of new sails, an ever-growing number of people making up the team to help keep the boats in tip-top shape, manage food, lodgings and general logistics and of course keeping the social media environments topped up with blogs, interviews, pictures and videos.

The Artemis Offshore Academy’s ultimate goal is to get British sailors into a position where they are viable commercial and sporting prospects with regard to tackling the Vendée Globe, the pinnacle of the discipline. With the first Artemis graduate trialling to become crew in the next Volvo Ocean Race another major step has been taken. Goodchild will come back better for it, richer in experience and a perfect British proposition to competitively sail the next Vendée Globe. Meanwhile, the fifth year of recruits are going through their early initiation and the cycle continues…

Vive The Artemis Offshore Academy!

Click here for more information on the Artemis Offshore Academy »

With seven new TP52s already in the pipeline you’d think he’d be satisfied… but there’s so much more to do, says ROB WEILAND

Leg two of the Barclays 52 Super Series, the Audi TP52 Worlds, in the end was three good days of racing out of the five scheduled days. As it is shaping up now racing in the Med this year brings lighter conditions than for the past three years.

But one light year says little about the future. I feel those designing and building new for 2015/2016 surely will go for an all-round concept, also because the 52 Super Series will not just race in the Med. It is very likely that in 2016 we will cross the Atlantic again for Florida or the Caribbean.

Meanwhile, on the Costa Smeralda for the 2014 TP52 Worlds, roles were reversed from Capri between Quantum Racing and Azzurra. Quantum on top and 2014 TP52 World Champion and Azzurra on their home turf nowhere near as confident as during Rolex Capri Sailing Week, just a couple of weeks earlier. Also, great racing from and a well-deserved runner-up slot for the new boat on the block, Phoenix. Tactician Santi Lange is clearly at home on the Porto Cervo waters, with his happy owner-driver Eduardo de Souza Ramos taking home second overall and the World Owner Driver trophy, beating Niklas Zennström and Rán Racing who ended up in third overall.

For the Barclays 52 Super Series trophy this leaves all to play for at the top with Quantum Racing on 33pt, Rán Racing on 37, Azzurra on 38 and runner-up Phoenix on 42. At the worlds we were joined for the first time by the new Italian team led by Marco Serafini and Tomasso Chieffi sailing the 2013 ORCi World Champion Hurakan (ex Powerplay/Oracle). It is always good to see new faces picking up the routine of close racing the 52s so quickly and certainly enjoying it. Nine boats again, as in Capri. Not bad.

As I mentioned last month, Rán is sold and will race as Paprec Recyclage in 2015. Shortly after that Quantum was sold to Manouch Moshayedi of Rio fame, and the interest from Interlodge and Sled to join the Super Series fray in 2015 solidified. Slowly the contours of the fleet that will race in 2015 become visible, with the latest count on new builds at seven… as at 1 July.

It never hurts to relax for a moment. Right now my idea of relaxing is varnishing the wooden rubbing strakes of my tiny open launch, so we look presentable again around the many canals in my home town of Leiden. Varnishing is a constant inner debate about the degree of perfection of the job at hand. Preparation is half the job, they say, more like 90 per cent of the job if you ask me. And as these are rubbing strakes, they are pretty soon going to rub against something less shiny, sure of that.

The degree of control over the running of the TP52 Class or of the 52 Super Series and its events can be put into a nice analogy to the control I have over varnishing my rubbing strakes, but there is a quite a difference between dealing with people and dealing with a rounded piece of wood. The good thing with the people is that you can ask them to kindly co-operate, although it is definitely better to present such a pretty picture that they gladly sign up for the activities on the menu.

The less stressful thing about the piece of wood is that you can get a piece of sandpaper and take whatever hurts the eye down and start again without much drama. It really helps if you enjoy the activity at hand, that’s for sure. Even a piece of wood seems less hostile when you give it some honest care and attention. The 52 Super Series was created by a few people who simply liked what they were doing too much to give it up when the going was tough. I like that, it is one of the principles of yacht racing: never ever give up.

I like too that it was based on analysing what was right and not right about its predecessor, the MedCup, and that we realised and accepted that times had changed. At the time we thought this change was not just for a couple of years and so built the framework of our series around this new reality.

We set off with simple goals such as to go back to the roots of sailing, the private owners and the yacht clubs. We aimed for racing for high-quality trophies in high-quality ‘racing arenas’, as can be found on the doorstep of so many of the world’s best yacht clubs. And we chose to reach out to other yachting communities than just in the Med, like across the Atlantic.

Wherever soulmates can be found, intentionally the 52 Super Series is a global affair. We reached out as well to other classes where synergy could create better events for both. We also soon decided that the pool of pro-teams was too empty to spend much time fishing in on its own, and that the trick would be to bring together the private owners with full pro teams with the private owners with mixed pro-am or even full amateur teams.

Of course we discussed the money it takes to run our organisation and the events. I am still convinced that a circuit sailed, owned and paid for by owners is a mix that is easier to establish and potentially longer lasting than any other mix out there.

Of course there are really dedicated and loyal sponsors in sailing; not to be ignored – besides funding they bring expertise and broaden the horizon, life is not just sailing. The happy mix in which owners and sponsors respect each other and find a good balance between their needs is possible.

So did we achieve all our goals? I feel not yet. Will we get there? Not sure and not sure that would be a good thing. You’ve got to stay on the move. For sure we shall not be tempted to stop pushing for the original goals because of the success that being halfway up the mountain already generates. Relax and enjoy the view can be great short term, but it is not without risk long term…

I am not happy that some of the best trophies in yachting, like the One Ton Cup or the Admiral’s Cup, are not being competed for, gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. We tried to bring them back to life, but somehow the interests we uncovered proved not to be common enough.

I feel quite often the focus is too much on what once was. Times have changed, people have changed, boats have changed.

I think more ground can still be covered to bring us to more highquality clubs and venues. Travelling is expensive, sure. But racing in different places, different venues, meeting new teams, creates new energy. As we found crossing the Atlantic twice with the 52s.

I am happy with how we managed to keep a wide range of sailors interested in our racing, from good amateur to the highest-level pro. And I am happy that we have a mix of owner-driver and pro driver that most of the time and by the drivers themselves is seen as stimulating. Certainly it is not discouraging ownerdrivers, considering that all the new teams joining us so far for 2015 are owner-driver.

With the number of competitors for 2015 now secured at well over 10 teams for all involved the game changes. On-the-water strategy will change as a clear lane is harder to find, or to protect. On the shore we will need more manpower to give the competitors the same attention, simply because there are more of them. We need more space on the dock and in the water for the equipment. The bigger scale requires a new balance. We have to work out how to keep it personal and for sure how to keep it good fun.

Click here for more information on the Barclays 52 Super Series »

That was the task that Hall Spars set themselves...

Conventional halyard locks today require triplines to unlock, one for each locking halyard. In extreme cases this may mean six to eight locks, each with a tripline to go along with the halyard to be locked. Installing them is labour intensive and servicing the spaghetti of lines inside the mast is challenging. Also, conventional halyard locks, especially internally mounted versions, are not easy to service aloft.

About 10 years ago we asked ourselves: could a lock system be devised that eliminated the clutter of triplines and was simple to service aloft?

Concept
We’d have the answer if we could make a lock work like a ballpoint pen: hoist to lock, hoist again to unlock. No triplines required. It was a seductive concept but realising it with no history to fall back on first was another story: it required endless hours of designing, testing, redesigning, and testing again… before the elegant simplicity of the AutoLock system was eventually achieved.

Applications
Today AutoLocks come in a wide variety of applications and sizes. The smallest have a Safe Working Load (SWL) of one ton. Our largest lock to date has a 45-ton SWL. All AutoLocks are also designed to allow use with standard-sized halyards at times when locks are not needed, as with headsails on inshore races on some TP52s and Mini Maxis.

• External jib locks: External jib locks are attached with a pin to a stay-mounted bracket for optimum load alignment and easy removal for service.
• Hanging locks: These locks are masthead strop-mounted for use with spinnakers and Code Zeros.
• Block locks: These turn external halyard blocks for spinnakers into locking blocks. They are also used for Solent applications on offshore multihulls and boom reefing applications.
• Internal locks: These locks, which can be readily installed and removed in place through their own mounting hole, lock headsail and main halyards internally.
• Inner forestay locks for swift inner forestay installation and removal.
• Headboard cars: Headboard cars with AutoLock systems come in two versions:
  1. Cars with locking on the track centreline and
  2. Cars specifically created for boom furling applications with locking ramps outside the track to allow for the centreline boltrope.

Proximity switches
All halyard locks confront the same challenge: especially with the smaller stretchy halyards enabled by locks. Hoisting against the load of, say, a spinnaker on a breezy day, the halyard can stretch considerably before the bullet is lifted to the unlock position. Even with marked halyards, finding the point where the bullet moves into its unlock position can be frustrating guesswork. With proximity switches, a signal (audible, visible or both) indicating the lock is ready to release eliminates the guesswork. Most larger AutoLocks now have built-in provision for proximity switches.

Time tested
AutoLock applications are time tested with many locks now in their seventh year. A Gunboat 90 catamaran rig we 

delivered in 2010 is a veritable AutoLock farm with block locks for spinnaker, Solent, staysail and boom reefs as well as a locking headboard car that features an additional lock in the headboard car toggle for the square-top main, allowing it to be hoisted into place from the deck (no going up in a chair to attach it to the car toggle).This rig has logged upwards of 800 routine hoist/locks on main, reefs, Solent and spinnaker over a four-year period. ‘They're ideal for our three-person crew,' reported Captain Tommy Gonzalez. ‘They are easy to use, work all the time, and show very little wear. The headboard car needs no more servicing than the mainsail sliders. The only things that ever needed replacing were one or two springs.’

Servicing
AutoLock mechanisms are very similar to winch systems. Both are susceptible to dust and salt and need periodic lubrication. With most AutoLocks a shot of WD-40 or similar lubricant every few months into the lock mouth suffices (just be prepared for the grime that might flow out!). Annual disassembly, inspection and lube is recommended, although there are scores of examples of AutoLocks seeing years of service without such inspections…

Latest developments
AutoLocks continue to see new applications. The latest is a headboard car with an integral AutoLock device for hoisting and locking the square-top that takes the Gunboat 90 system mentioned one step further by having both square-top and headboard car work off the same single halyard. Other applications will surely keep appearing. Meanwhile, Hall's carbon composite experts are continually finding areas of AutoLock weight savings where carbon is substituted for metal. Future locks with increasing amounts of carbon promise weight savings of a further 30-40%.

Click here for more information on Hall Spars »