Armour piercing Swiss

James Boyd caught up with Around Alone leg one winner Bernard Stamm

Of his competition in Around Alone Stamm says it is very close. Thierry Dubois’ Solidaires he thinks is better in light winds, but his boat a better all-rounder, better with its fuller more powerful hull shape in strong conditions and especially since he has had a new lighter weight carbon fibre rig installed and changed to a 7/8 fractional headstay configuration. This allows him more variation in the size of spinnakers and gennikers he can fly. In total with storm sails, he carries 10 sails on board now.

“Ships like Hexagon and Tiscali are very fast, but it is better to make good analysis with the weather and go to the right place,” he confides.

When I spoke to him Stamm seemed very pleased to be taking part in Around Alone. A majority of his colleagues in France, where he lives, will be racing in next month’s Route du Rhum. This is not for him, he says – at least in this boat. “I think Route du Rhum is perfect to race in multihulls. And I think Around Alone or Vendee Globe is a perfect race to race with our ships, to surf the big waves. Around Alone, I think it is a very very big race.”

He also says that he prefers Around Alone to the non-stop Vendee Globe. “They are two different things. Something I don’t like in the Vendee is that when something happens you are eliminated. It is finished. It is over. Then you are very very careful with the materials and you don’t push the ship and it is more like a marathon. I think in Around Alone you can push the ship very very far.”

It will be interesting over the next weeks and month to see if Stamm and his ship can maintain their performance and whether or not some of the newer boats with possibly less experienced skippers will start to make their presence felt as the race unfolds.

Bobst Group-Armor Lux with her canting keel swung hard up to weather