Three new finot-conq Open 60 for the Vendée Globe 2008

Yann Elies' Générali, launched on April 20th 2007
Alex Thompson's Hugo Boss, first navigation on July 16th 2007
Armel Le Cleach 's Britair, launched on July 18th 2007

Built by Multiplast for Armel Le Cleac'h and launched in Vannes on Wednesday 18th July 2007, the new Britair is the third next-generation finot-conq Open 60' to hit the water this year.

Eighteen years ago, our first Open 60, Generali Concorde, was at the start of the first Vendée Globe, with Alain Gautier at the helm. The boat revealed a radical new design, 5.85 m wide, made out of aluminum, a quasi-empty flat deck, carbon mast, bulb keel and lateral water ballasts for a total weight of 13 tons.

After Générali and Hugo Boss, Britair is our 17th IMOCA 60 ' for the Vendee Globe.
Out of a total of 25 Vendee Globe entries registered over the years by these Open 60’, there have been 20 occurrences in which they succeeded in crossing the final line after duly completing the race.
Moreover, a finot-conq designed boat has claimed victory in 4 out of the 5 editions of the Vendee Globe.

Nowadays, everything is built out of carbon composites and honeycomb, except the lead bulb and a few high strength stainless steel or titanium parts. The boats are still wide (width undisclosed), their keels cant to more than 40° and their ballast tanks are even bigger. Their weight is kept below 9 tons.

Towing tank and CFD research

A significant part of the budget has been allocated to tank tests, CFD calculations and meteorological research, data common to all three boats. These studies enabled us to visualize and quantify different types of dynamic behaviour, hence helping us to make a considerable step further in their design. The results were deemed interesting enough for us to follow up with a three-year research campaign, based on Jérémie Raymond’s tests carried out on the site of the Ecole Centrale de Nantes’s towing tank, under the supervision of Jean Michel Kobus”.

All in one place

Two of the boats ( Générali and Hugo Boss) were built at the Multiplast shipyard, just next door from our premises. This situation gave us the opportunity to forge close working links with all the teams and to monitor every stage of the process more extensively than ever before. Hugo Boss, on the other hand, was built by Jason Carrington at Neville Hutton’s Boatyard in Lymington (UK) and its structural design was completed in collaboration with Paolo Manganelli (SP Technologies). Paolo had already been cooperating with us in 1999 by developing and achieving a measurement procedure of the strains sustained by the boat at sea.

photos© b.stichelbaut : www.stichelbaut.com

Impressive figures

The progress assessed in all aspects of the design led us to define a more satisfactory general arrangement of the boat (hull shapes, balance, weight, centre of gravity) which is vastly improved in terms of power, and even more as regards the power/weight ratio, ultimately increasing by more than 30 % !

UHard chine in the hull

Why a chine ?

It is not a goal in itself but rather a means to increase the boat’s power without necessarily raising the bulb weight. The IMOCA rules specify a capsizing angle of 127.5°, thus linking the boat’s width (and therefore its power) to its bulb weight. The idea is then to remove a part that isn’t used too frequently from a wide hull shape in order to keep the boat as light as possible.

Optimized appendages

Slightly thicker and larger than its steel counterpart, the carbon keel fitted on all three of our boats is also 400kg lighter! In our simulations, this weight difference largely offsets the drag difference, thanks to the innovative disposition of the appendages. Its very high strength carbon fibre core and high module torsion box are optimized both in strength and vibratory behaviour. The theoretical values obtained through hundreds of hours of calculations have been confirmed by measurements done at the launch of Britair.

The twin rudders can be lifted to protect them from shocks and to remove drag by lifting the windward rudder.

Different rigs

Whereas Générali and Hugo Boss had decided upon classical 3-spreaders fixed masts, for lightness and simplicity reasons, the Britair team has chosen a wing mast with deck spreaders. This kind of rig, invented by finot-conq for Yves Parlier and first installed on his open 60 Aquitaine Innovations in 1996, generates aerodynamic improvements that are more and more justified as the speed performance of these boats keeps on increasing day after day.

The whole finot-conq team is pleased and proud to wish fair winds to these three talented skippers.

Générali pour Yann Eliès http://www.yannelies.fr/	Hugo Boss pour Alex Thomson http://www.at-racing.co.uk/	Brit Air pour Armel Le Cleach http://www.voile.britair.com