IMOCA-Open 60s - where are they now?

We list all the boats built

Following on from our equivalent article on the Whitbread/Volvo Ocean Race boats, so today we publish our chronology of all the Open 60/IMOCA 60s that have ever been built (to our knowledge). Readers are welcome to add their contributions and sighting by emailling us here.

While Warren Luhr's ground breaking Thursday's Child is generally held up as being the 'first Open 60', It could be argued that Philippe Jeantot's first Credit Agricole, winner of the inaugural BOC Challenge in 1983 was the boat that started the trend in bespoke 60ish footers for singlehanded offshore racing, particularly those with movable ballast, initially in the form of water, then canting keels, the first 60 to have one being Isabelle Autissier's briefly very successful Ecureuil Poitou Charentes (that demolished the opposition on leg one of the 1995 BOC). Although obviously there were boats before designed and built for solo offshore racing, dating all the way back to Eric Tabarly's 1964 OSTAR winning Pen Duick II, it was only in the 1980s with the 60ft length limited imposed for boats in the OSTAR and subsequently the second BOC Challenge in 1986-7, that the 60ft size range was finally settled upon.

For the 1986-7 BOC Challenge more rules were added beyond just mere overall length, in the form of mandatory watertight bulkheads. Perhaps most significant was the introduction of the famous 10 degree rule to limit the amount of moveable ballast carried (a boat must heel by no more than this at the dock with all her movable ballast deployed either side). This latter rule was unquestionably the most type-forming, leading the surfboard-shaped, twin rudder ultra-sleds that the Open 60 and then the IMOCA 60 has since become. 

Perhaps appropriately the Open 60 became the IMOCA 60 as more rules were introduced in the 1990s following an embarrassing spate of boats capsizing and remaining inverted (thanks to their surfboard shape), particularly during the 1996 Vendee Globe, when Jerry Roufs was lost in the Pacific aboard his Groupe LG (later found upside down off Chile) and subsequently in the 1998-9 Bwhen Giovanni Soldini famously rescued Isabelle Autissier from the upturned hull of PRB mid-Pacific.

After this, the fledgling IMOCA class implimented some severe stability requirements beyond the mere 10deg rule (that some argued had caused the problem from the outset), including a minimum Angle of Vanishing stability requirement. Skippers also had to prove that they could right the boat from a full inversion without the rig, hence why IMOCA 60s from this period on sprouted cabintops. It also signalling the death knell for water ballast being used as the sole means of providing lateral stability in favour of canting keels. Although modern IMOCA 60s still carry vast quantities of water ballast, today this is primarily used for altering displacement to suit conditions and for fore and aft trim.

The rules have continued to develop and in recent years cost saving measures have been introduced limiting draft, mast height, number of sails, carried, etc. Unfortunately these new rules have largely failed to prevent the inevitable escalation of costs and as a result the IMOCA class is now seriously contemplating turning the sailing world's only remaining big boat offshore development class into a one design.

We've included boats whenever they've taken part in their first round the world race.

If we've missed any or got anything wrong, let us know... 

Clicking on some of the boat names brings up photos of them...