THE FIRST REALLY FLYING IMOCA (OPEN 60)

What a beauty!!!

And I am really happy that the lucky skipper is Jérémie Beyou, a great sailor that in the last years never had a boat that would allow him to fight with the best. Now he has probably the fastest and more modern one.

A VPLP design, this is the first boat designed around the foils, I mean the foils were the central piece in all the design. The boat was designed starting by the foils and all the rest was designed to make them have the best performance. Absolutely incredible the IMOCA evolution in the last 10 years. And it is good to remember that the next Volvo (also IMOCA) will be flying boats too.

SILVERRUDDER 2018 - A VERY HARD SOLO RACE

This edition was very difficult and the majority of the over 100 boats racing did not complete the race. Lot of head winds and 40kn gusts, with strong tides against the wind made it almost impossible for the smaller boats, even if the waves were not big.

The Silverrudder is the biggest European coastal solo race reuniting some of the best amateurs from the North of Europe. It is raced in the Baltic around Funen Island in Denmark and it is innovative since it is not an handicap race but a race by boat sizes, a format that I would like to see expanded to more races. 

The classes are Keel boats: From 18.00 to 25.00 feet incl. From 25.01 to 30.00 feet incl. From 30.01 to 35.00 feet incl. From 35.01 to 40.00 feet incl. From 40.01 feet and upwards. Multihulls: From 18.00 to 28.00 feet incl. From 28.01 feet and upwards.

This is a good place to look at boat performances while being sailed solo and fast on coastal conditions, with upwind and downwind sailing. We can get some interesting facts:

The biggest boat was a fast Wasa 55 (24h42m02s) that seemed well suited to the conditions and solo sailing, narrow, light and not needing much sail. However it was slower than much smaller boats from the two categories below (medium and small). The fastest from the small boats, a Farr 280 was almost 2 hours faster.

We can see that the fastest boats by far (strong winds, small waves) were the Dragonfly Trimarans and again the smaller trimaran was faster (28 - 15h13m28s) than the bigger one, (35 – 17h02m44s) more cruising orientated.

We can see that theoretically faster bigger monohulls were handicapped by the superior difficulty to sail them solo and that only one was effectively faster (not by much) than much smaller boats, but easier to sail solo. The fastest monohull was a XP44 (19h09m59s) followed by a JPK10.80 (20h07m01s) a First 40 (20t35m18s) and by a small JPK 10.10.

We can also note that on average the bigger boats (only one bigger than 50 ft) were not faster than the two classes below, 35.01 to 40.00ft and 30.01 to 35.00ft.

Even more meaningful is that the abandon rate is much bigger in classes over 35ft (70%) than in between 30 and 35ft (54%).

This reinforces my opinion that smaller boats (over 30ft) in coastal conditions, sailed solo by an average sailor can be faster and safer than bigger boats solo sailed. The better the sailor the bigger the boat it can sail solo but as you can see here there was only a boat over 55ft, that was far from being the fastest among the big boats and that the average size on the unlimited class was about 43/44ft. And remember, most of the ones that are racing here are considerably better than the average sailor.

BAVARIA IS BACK

Almost too good to be true: no layout, all jobs and all factories will be maintained. After a bankruptcy and difficult negotiations with several interested parties it was a Berlin investment group that made the deal (CMP). Bavaria is not only back but it is German again.

They went down after having managed to modernize most of its fleet but without time to produce, much less sell the boats. The new line of C boats (45, 50, 57 and 65) is among the most interesting offers on the market and probably they will be one of the best deals on next Dusseldorf boat show since they have to take an aggressive price policy to survive, at least till production returns to normal figures.

I saw the new C-line at last Dusseldorf boat show and I liked what I saw.
http://interestingsailboats.blogspot.com/2017/12/all-about-beautiful-new-bavaria-c45.html

Here a C45 detailed video test by the sailing magazine yacht: they are also positive about the boat.

BENETEAU FIRST SERIES REBORN

I know, I am sailing, now at Iraklio, Crete, after several days sailing upwind, coming from Rhodes and I should not be posting but how can I resist the best news this year so far, in what concerns sailing boats?

As many know the success of Beneteau was linked to the success of the First series that from being popular sailboats have become less and less of a commercial success to become practically only used as cruiser racers with emphasis in racing.

Nothing wrong with the designs, maybe one or other detail that made them less suited for cruising than their predecessors but nothing major, more a sign of the times and the type of boats cruisers want: almost all of them motor upwind and the boats are designed accordingly.

Selling less and less First, Beneteau simply finished with the line and it seemed that it was the end of a nice sailing story and the end of a great line of sailing boats.

But then surprise, surprise, Beneteau just bought Seascape, one of the most interesting lines of sailboats around, by concept and design, even if the biggest boat has only 27ft. It seems that concept will be the backbone of the new First line and they are already working on a bigger boat. I hope they keep the designer, Sam Manuard, who was the man behind that concept.

So, big and interesting news. A much bigger production will make possible to make less expensive boats with a better finish and Beneteau never ceases to surprise refusing to become as conformist as most of their clients LOL. 

CLOSED FOR SAILING

Not really closed, you can post comments and I will do my best to reply but I will be too busy having fun to post...except if I have to take shelter from the Meltemi (I hope not).

If you want to follow my voyage you can do that on my facebook page where I post photos of the places where I stay (normally at anchor). That's in Portuguese but the Facebook translator is pretty good.

https://web.facebook.com/paulo.pernao

Don't ask me where I plan to sail to because I do not really have a plan. I sail accordingly to the conditions to where sailing is nicer and the wind is not too strong or too weak. Lots of great choices on the Aegean and almost any direction has interesting places and nice anchorages.

I sail out of Nea Peramos (photo below) where Stavros Manitsas has a great shipyard. He is a very nice guy, I like the ambiance and the only thing fixed about this trip is the endpoint, at Nea Peramos (Makedonia, Greece) again, sometime in October.

AG2R, GREAT RACING ON THE 32ft TRANSAT

For the ones that are not following, a strong recommendation, don't miss it, the race has been great. Now for the first time the leaders, the duo  Hardy/ Ruyant, have managed some advance (18.5 miles) and are pursued by Simon/Lagraviere that have Marchand/Loison at 28 miles.

These are all top young sailors and we all remember on last Vendee the great performance of Thomas Ruyant sailing his very broken IMOCA to safety: he did not want to lose the boat because he knew he would have difficulty in finding another sponsor or another boat. Remember that great story here:
http://interestingsailboats.blogspot.gr/2016/12/what-do-you-call-drama-with-happy-end.html

The ladies, on Team work, are sailing at 10th place at about 110 miles from the leader. They are also great sailors and the best women solo sailors from the new generation. Clarisse is also racing but she has yet a lot to learn to reach the level of Justine and Isabelle. Clarisse is teaming with a man, a good sailor, Le Turquais and is 14th at 155 miles.

The tracker: http://player.georacing.com/player_ag2r2018/

THE UNKNOWN TOP TRANSAT IN 32ft RACERS

Well, it is not really unknown but out of France and out of those sailors that really like duo or solo racing, it is pretty much confidential. How I do know that? Just look at the number of views on the videos: pretty much ridiculous. How do I know it is a great race? I have followed it for many years but if you don’t believe me, just look at the sailors that have won or have finished on the first positions:

In 1992 on the winner duo was a certain Michel Desjoyeaux ( before winning two times the Vendee Globe), in 1994 the winners where Le Cam and Roulain Jourdain, in 1996 Gautier was part of the duo that won and Franck Cammas was on the duo that finished 3rd. In 1998 two of the best sailors ever, the duo Cammas/Desjoyeaux finished only in 8th place, Lionel Lemonchois was part of the duo that won in 2000 and Yan Ellies was on the team that finished 7th. In 2004 Le Cleach was part of the winning team and he would win again in 2010, before winning the last Vendee Globe.

You get my drift: on the list of winners of this Transat we can find most of the best solo sailors, the ones that today race IMOCAS or have won the VOR and the quality of the participants is very, very high, most of them coming from the minis and having already sailed the Figaro championship for some years. Some that race already on IMOCAS.

Most have been professional sailors for a long time and some of the participants have already a contract and will have a brand new IMOCA for racing the next Vendee Globe, among them the ones that lead for several days and are now 2nd, Simon/Lagraviere. I mean Lagraviere has already an IMOCA and raced the last Vendee, Simon will have a brand new boat designed by JK.

You have also some of the best women sailors, Justine Mettraux that has left the VOR Dongfeng to make it, teaming with Isabel Joschke and Clarisse (the one that finished 2nd on the last mini transat –series) teaming with Le Turquais.

As usual the race is very interesting with lots of different routing options. I will not be following it here since I am going to sail away and don’t have time to post anymore but the important thing is to draw your attention to this race.

You can follow it on your own and if you like sail racing you are going to love it: great sailors, small one class fast boats, lots of them (20) and to make things more interesting, they have already had bad seas and over 30k winds off the Portuguese coast and probably more will be on the way. Two boats retired with broken masts and one with a broken boom…and the race is just beginning. Enjoy the AG2R: http://player.georacing.com/player_ag2r2018/