DUSSELDORF 2020 NEWS: FIRST 36

No,the picture above is not the new First 36, about that one, that was initially to be a 39ft, very few things are known except that it will be designed by Sam Manuard, the designer of the Class 40 above and one of the most successful racing boat designers in what regards mini racers and Class 40.

Sam Manuard is also a top solo/duo racer that started his career on the mini racers on the 2001 Transat with a boat made and designed by him, finishing 4th. He did it again in 2003 winning  the the first leg and again in 2007 being 2nd on the first leg. He has won many races, among them the 2003 mini-Fastnet and more recently, in 2011, he won with Yves Le Blevec, the Transat Jacques Vabre in Multi 50 and in 2014, on one of his class40, he was 2nd (with Maxime Sorel) on the Transat Jacques Vabre.

But since the first years of the minis his focus is on boat design, mostly racing boats but also cruising ones. One of his boats sailed by Douguet won the 2005 Mini Transat. His mini-racer designs won  over 33 races and the 40 Class designs won more than 20 times, including Transats.

And now a new chapter and the most important one as a designer, an IMOCA for the next Vendee Globe sailed by Armel Tripon, curiously the sailor that he beat on the first leg of the 2003 Mini Transat but that ended up beating him on the 2nd leg and won that race. The IMOCA has a revolutionary design, narrower than all the others but the one with the more rounded and strangely shaped bow, a bit scow like.

In what regards cruising boats he designed a great classic, the Seascape 27, the even faster Seascape 24, the Seascape 18 (all renamed First today), the Match 45, a fast cruiser-racer (more racer than cruiser) that won several races and designed several fast cruisers most of them for amateur boat building.

Looking at his later designs and knowing the way he thinks I would say that the new First would be a kind of more polyvalent Pogo, meaning a light boat with a simple but functional cruising interior, easy to be sailed fast solo, with the ocean potential of the Pogo but more narrow with a better upwind  and light wind potential and able to do better on IRC racing. 

It is good to remember that the Mach45 won on the CK division the 2015 Fastnet and other IRC races so, without being a specialist, he knows how to design winning boats for IRC offshore races and given his tendency to revolutionize, if they give him a free hand, something spectacular may be on the way.

The bow of the new IMOCA with Tripon on top.

I would not be surprised if the new First featured the type of cabin seen on the last class 40 designs (on the cover and above) with  a relatively rounded bow. His more recent designs leave us eager to know more about one of the most awaited boats this year, one that I hope will be as much a success as the First 53 was a flop.