Will the Class 40 launch a global take-over?

10:33 PM Thu 16 Apr 2009 GMT

Until the start of the inaugural Portim?o Global Ocean Race in Portugal late last year, the longest distance race for a Class 40 was 4,300 miles in the 2007 edition of the Transat Jacques Vabre from Le Havre, France, to Salvador de Bahia, Brazil.

In the three legs of the Portim?o Global Ocean Race completed so far, the Class 40s entered have sailed a total of 21,400 miles with the minimum leg distance of 6,900 miles and the maximum of 7,500 miles in the recent Leg 3. Although Class 40s were designed predominantly for transatlantic races, the boats are now proving robust, safe and fast in sea conditions that naval architects had not factored into the design equation.

With the Portim?o Race competitors and pioneers consistently pushing the class parameters and exceptional interest growing for the next edition of this round-the-world event, the class association, the group of designers involved and the class members are keenly following developments after an initial resistance towards the concept of a circumnavigation race in evenly-matched 40-footers.

As a long-time supporter of the Portim?o Global Ocean Race, Guillaume Verdier - designer of Leg 3 winner Desafio Cabo de Hornos - was hugely relieved when the fleet rounded Cape Horn and exited the Southern Ocean, climbing northwards from 56?S. 'When I saw the bad weather coming near Cape Horn I was really concerned,' admits Verdier. As MRCC Punta Arenas in Chile issued increasingly alarming gale warnings, the Portim?o fleet slipped beneath the southern tip of South America and entered the South Atlantic after three weeks in the high latitudes of the Pacific. 'I was very, very happy when they made it round the cape,' says Verdier. Fellow French designer Marc Lombard who drew the lines for the two Akilaria Class 40s in the race - overall race leader Beluga Racer and British double-handed entry, Team Mowgli - was also concerned about the 7,500 mile Leg 3: 'We're very relieved that the boats have completed this difficult leg considering the weather down in the 40s and 50s,' he confirms. 'Originally, we were concerned about the route and the race, but the boats are in very good condition for a round the world trip. We are very pleased with the boats; they're very reliable and very seaworthy.'

Launched in July 2007 and built at FR Nautisme in Lorient as sister-ship to Giovanni Soldini's race-proven boat T?l?com Italia, Desafio Cabo de Hornos is the beamiest Class 40 in the Portim?o Global Ocean Race. 'The beauty of this boat and Giovanni's is that it is capable of more volume in the bow region,' explains Verdier. 'This provides better longitudinal righting moment and you can hold more sail for longer.' With the mast stepped well aft, Verdier's design is a pocket Open 60 adapted to meet the 4.5 tons minimum weight limit. 'Also, the construction of the boat is very light and this gave us the opportunity to play very close to the Class 40 rule.' For Lombard, the evolution in design for his Akilaria version 2 is gradual and less radical than Verdier. 'The new boat is much easier to steer and is an updated version,' explains Lombard. 'There are other improvements,' he adds. 'It is slightly more stable, there's more sail efficiency. They're not big changes, but overall improvements.' However, both designers agree that the performance of the fleet is exceptional. 'I'm confident that the boats will complete a round-the-world trip,' says Lombard. 'It's a big success to have a 100 percent result with boats finishing when you compare it with 30 percent in the Vend?e Globe. Maybe if there were more boats in the Portim?o Race there would be more damage,' he concedes. 'But, nonetheless, the boats are very reliable.'

One fundamental change that has been implemented specifically for the Portim?o Global Ocean Race is converting the boats to Category Zero. For Verdier, the transition was simple. 'Making the boats Category Zero was really nothing,' he explains. 'We just made an existing bulkhead watertight and made the top three metres of the mast watertight and put some foam in there for buoyancy.' Conversely, the conversion of Lombard's Akilarias is not so painless. 'It is not very easy to change to Cat 0,' he admits and is looking forward to the forthcoming reassessment of the overall rule. 'There will be some changes even for the Vend?e Globe boats as the rule is not perfect regarding the major issue of a complete capsize of the boats and the way they right themselves.'

For the event's Race Director, Josh Hall, the issue of adapting Category Zero is very important: 'Category Zero was a rule written originally for much bigger boats to race around the world long before it was imagined that there would be a much smaller, suitable, round-the-world boat such as the Class 40.' Most of the complication arises due to this decrease in overall boat size: 'Some parts of the rule are very difficult to fit into a boat that is just 12 metres,' continues Hall. 'Also, some of the practical elements are quite ambiguous when applied to a Class 40, so we've addressed this with our Notice of Race for the first edition of the event and we're working on an extension to the Class 40 rule that will include the sensible elements of Category Zero for future editions of the race.' However, changing a rule that has been accepted for so long is a complex process. 'It's something that Alan Green, Assistant to the Portim?o Race Organisation, Class 40 and ourselves are working on with the final approval of ISAF,' explains the Race Director.

However, Lombard believes that Category Zero compliance is only part of the safety equation. 'I think more important is the communications so the boats know what weather is ahead,' he explains. Weather routing - meteorological analysis provided to individual teams by a professional router based on shore - is currently prohibited in Class 40 events as is the case in the Vend?e Globe, although the Portim?o Global Ocean Race opted to permit the teams access to routing. The teams are in unanimous approval with the decision to permit the flow of tailor-made weather information to the fleet, but feel that the benefits are limited. 'It really doesn't make any difference,' states Boris Herrmann, skipper of overall race leader, Beluga Racer. 'I don't want to be unfair to our weather guy, but 90 percent of what we do we decide by ourselves from the GRIB files,' he continues. 'Where it is really useful is seeing the potential for squalls or gusts and it's really good if he can send us an email saying there's a temperature layer where there could be gusts of 50 knots which we do not see in the GRIB file. I think if Class 40 doesn't accept routing, there should be a guy working for the race sending information like this to all the boats.'

Despite the concept of 'strategic purity' in disallowing weather routing, the rule is impossible to police and works on general trust between teams: 'I think we all agree that there's very little point in having a rule that can't be policed,' says Hall. 'From an onboard, navigation point of view, the onboard software and GRIB file reception capability is exceptional and the skippers become very good weather routers themselves.' For the Portim?o Global Ocean Race, the warning regime suggested by Boris Herrmann is already in place. 'In the very, very rare situation where there's some weather coming towards the fleet that might be missed on a GRIB file, we're actually organise to issue the boats with a warning that a particularly strong storm is approaching,' says Hall. 'Or possibly we'll advise them that they might want to take care over an area of shallows because of the weather conditions.' Apart from the obvious cost savings for the teams, Hall believes that voluntarily dispensing with personalised routing enhances the overall competition. 'We want to avoid nannying the skippers,' he explains. 'They are racing around the world and they have equipment on board that is easily sophisticated enough to navigate safely and race competitively without the need for routing.'

After 15 weeks and approximately 21,000 miles of racing, it is fair to suppose that the Portim?o skippers are in tune with their boats and - surprisingly - very few changes in overall design have been suggested by the teams. Boris Herrmann has built up a strong relationship with Marc Lombard and co-designer Eric Levet and would always stick with Akilaria. 'As for any design changes, it really depends on the race,' says the German skipper. 'If I was to do a round-the-world race again, I wouldn't change too much.' As for the new generation of boats, Herrmann has yet to sail an example, but has a characteristically practical approach. 'The latest design for transatlantic races is more radical, but I don't see this as an advantage for a round-the-world race. The freeboard is less and so the protection is less.'

He is, however, deeply impressed with many of the general features. 'The cockpit on Beluga is really comfortable with the side benches,' he continues. 'Originally I thought I didn't really want these double-tiered banks and I thought they would get in the way of working the boat.' Internally, Beluga Racer is fit for purpose: 'The nav station looks quite rough and ready, but, in fact, it is really comfortable,' says Herrmann. 'I can sit straight even if the boat is really heeling or turn around and look back through the companionway. It turns out to be just perfect.' Meanwhile, Herrmann's co-skipper, Felix Oehme who was ranked for four years as one of Germany's top five 49er sailors, is focussed on the all-up weight factor: 'I think we're a little bit too heavy,' he adds. 'I don't know where the extra weight is, but the new boats are really close to the minimum weight of 4.5 tons. Two or three years ago it wasn't possible to get close to the minimum weight.'

For the British duo of Jeremy Salvesen and David Thomson on Akilaria Class 40 Team Mowgli, running repairs forced by hard sailing throughout the race have been a major feature. 'The whole electronics thing works well and we have back-ups for nearly everything,' explains Salvesen, who learnt to sail just three years ago. 'There have been problems, but with my steep learning curve over the past three years, we've still coped with every problem we've encountered.' While the British and German teams race Akilarias, the Chilean duo of Felipe Cubillos and Jos? Mu?oz are competing in the new Guillaume Verdier design. 'There are two boats identical in this race and then there's Desafio Cabo de Hornos which is the next generation and at certain points of sail is faster than us,' admits Salvesen. 'But reaching in certain conditions, us and Beluga have been consistently within 0.1-0.2 of a knot of each other and Felipe's been two knots faster than both of us and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it.' Despite this difference, the three Class 40s finished Leg 3 within 11 hours of each other after 7,500 miles and 40 days of racing.

Fortunately, the British team have experienced non-catastrophic gear failure: 'We've lost the masthead wind instruments with amazing regularity,' confirms the British skipper. 'The vertical wand takes the brunt of the whiplash in heavy weather,' he explains. 'Open 60s reinforce these with extra carbon to prevent any weakness. The engine has also had a few problems which we think is due to insufficient air intake, but we always get it going again.' Salvesen's co-skipper, David Thomson, is a professional sailor with extensive experience in offshore mono and multihulls and has identified the root cause of the problems: 'Issues such as chafe are really down to budget,' explains Thomson. 'If you can afford to adapt fittings and systems, you will eliminate the chance of chafe.' Otherwise, he is entirely satisfied with the boat. 'The boat is strong and reliable,' says Thomson. 'Maybe she's slightly heavier due to the nav station and galley area, but in terms of comfort and function, the boat is excellent.' Both Beluga Racer and Team Mowgli are currently on the market for ?230,000: 'You will have to wait for around a year to get a new one as opposed to taking one that has been tried and tested and run-in with all the bells and whistles complete and with all the back-up systems in place and everything doubled-up,' says Salvesen. 'Everybody seems to be after a Category Zero compliant Class 40 and most of our inquiries are from the UK at the moment,' he adds.

Class 40 - stern - Portimao Global Ocean Race

So, Class 40 boats have proved to be more than capable of withstanding the rigours of competitive round-the-world racing and current designs meet with the approval of the Portim?o Global Ocean race skippers. There is also a growing worldwide trend towards the class with builders and distributors springing up around the globe: Verdier's boats are built in France, while Lombard's Akilaria's are produced in MC-TEC's new, sophisticated facility in Tunisia with a USA distributor, Maine Yacht Center, in Portland. Meanwhile, Owen Clarke Design (OCD) are building at Composite Creations in Totnes in the UK and fitting out is underway on a new OCD Class 40 at Jaz Marine in Cape Town, South Africa. Since the Portim?o Global Ocean Race Leg 2 stopover in New Zealand, Hakes Marine in Wellington are seriously researching the production of Class 40s and a new Argentine-Brazilian operation is beginning production in S?o P?ulo. 'I decided to design a Class 40 due to a client from Brazil who liked the class,' explains Buenos Aires-based naval architect, Nestor Volker. 'He was interested in creating a very fast boat which could be sailed shorthanded,' says Volker. 'The idea is not just to make a boat suitable only for long voyages, but also to compete in local races. It is because of this idea that the boat's design is not so extreme as the ones that race around the world.'

The moulds for Volker's design are currently nearing completion at Jacques Chourik's yard in S?o P?ulo. 'The main market will be Brazil and with the success of Felipe Cubillos it is probable that there will be interested people in Chile,' continues the Argentine designer. However, with the notoriously tricky waters of the River Plate on his doorstep, the domestic inshore market is uncertain. 'Here in Buenos Aires we have the problem of the shallow waters,' admits Volker. 'It's something that doesn't help at all. But I've had a positive reaction from a dealer in the USA and we'll be producing a cruiser-racer with the same hull.' With labour costs in Brazil lower than Europe, Volker's design could excite the market.

With the class proving highly popular and finding a good balance between performance, price and reliability; coupled with the increasing competitor and spectator interest in future editions of the Portim?o Global Ocean Race and other Class 40 events, the robust and fast 40-footers are set to make a heavy impact upon the future of offshore racing.

www.portimaoglobaloceanrace.com

by Oliver Dewar

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