Three handed Transat Jacques Vabre

Emma Richards and Mike Sanderson explain why Pindar is the most talked about Open 60 on the dock

Aside from the unconventional rig on Mike Golding's new Ecover, the most talked about boat on the Open 60 dock here in Le Havre is Emma Richards and Mike Sanderson's new Pindar.

Compared to the other boats here, Pindar is unique in that unlike all the other Open 60s here she is not moded to do the Vendee Globe. However she is moded to do the Transat Jacques Vabre (in fact when she was originally Graham Dalton's Hexagon she was designed specifically for Around Alone rather than the non-stop Vendee Globe).

"We’ve done a lot of work to get the boat lighter and make sure we have the right sails for the right jobs and we have done work to make sure it is faster, and that will mean we have to work harder," Emma Richards told thedailysail.

A majority of the input for this work has come form Richards' other half Sanderson, who is a sailmaker by trade and has an extensive background in the America's Cup and Whitbread/Volvo. Because of Sanderson's trade and because the former Hexagon was purchased in dismasted state by Richards' Scarborough-based print and internet company sponsor, a majority of the difference is most evident in the rig.

The principle difference between her and the other boats along the dock is that they will not sail with furled sails aloft. The Pindar has three forestays - the outer for the genoa, the middle one for the Solent and then the babystay. The Solent is the only one of the foresails that will be run off a furler and this will be hoisted and locked off at the masthead with a halyard lock and dropped furled when it is not required. "It saves permanently having 30-40kg of sail permanently up that stay in the wrong place with ridiculous windage," explains Richards.

Their approach, says Sanderson, is that they want to approach the Transat Jacques Vabre as if they were a full crew trying to sail doublehanded rather than being overcrewed on a singlehanded boat. "I guess we have flipped it around a little bit and said we would rather struggle with a fully crewed style baot two handed rather than over-crewing a singlehanded boat."

The downside of this is that because of these choices over sail configuration within the foretriangle and because they carry 12 sails rather than the 8 or 9 carried on most of the other 60s, they will have to expend considerably more energy making sail changes than the other crews. "It will be interesting to see how it goes," says Sanderson. "A lot of it will depend upon the weather and things like that. If we get long passages of steady conditions I don’t think anyone will dispute that our set up could be the way to go, but if we have to do a heap of manoeuvring then it is going to be pretty tough."

Sanderson adds that most of the 60s change down from their genoas in 12-14 knots of wind. "So from 14-50 knots you are carrying that thing rolled up there the whole time. Having just spent three years in the America’s Cup where it is all about windage, windage, windage it just doesn’t make zero sense to me. It is all about weight and windage."

As a result their genoa is on soft hanks. At the top end of the genoa they hoist the furled Solent and drop the genoa. "It is a nice change, it happens pretty smoothly. Then if you think it is going to build again you can start putting the genoa in a bag, you have plenty of time, there is no rush, the boat is still going at full speed. You can drag that back on the rail. If you think it is still going to build you can go up there and hank on what we call a no.4."

This is another difference in their sail configuration - changing down from the Solent this no4 jib, the same size as an ORC sail and made in Cuben fibre/carbon, is hoisted on the forestay. Beyond this the storm jib can also be hoisted on the forward forestay.

"One thing which I don’t believe in is in the inventory coming back towards the mast," says Sanderson. "They do it for lots of reasons, for the ease of changing - you have the genoa on the front furler, then you are on the Solent and then you are on the staysail. The problem you have got though is that as the wind increases you want to sheet wider, but the problem is that 10degrees of sheeting angle for example on the inner forestay or babystay is physically only a metre [of slot]. 10 degrees on the headstay is 3m [of slot]. So you can talk about degrees of sheeting angle all you like, but in matter of fact it is actually a physical measurement which is as crucial. So that makes no sense to me."

So hoisting the smaller sails on the outer forestay creates a better slot, there is better tension in the stay. Another reason not to hoist the small jibs aft is because of the boat's balance - the Open 60's lifting keel (the foil which prevents leeway on a swing keel boat) is forward of the mast. "The last thing you want to do in theory is to start bring the jibs back from the bow as it gets windier. Ideally you keep it where it is or go the other way," says Sanderson.

All these changes reduce both windage and weight aloft, improving upwind performance. "There is no doubt that a boat goes faster upwind if you don’t have a roller furled sail," says Sanderson. "That is not contested. The boat will go faster if you get the weight out of the rig. There is not risky about what we have done."

Aside from this they have fitted a conventional boom with the gooseneck attached to the mast rather than the deck. "On the conventional rig we have more control - we are able to flatten the main more. Having the tack angle at 90 degrees is a big deal in my opinion. The problem having with the boom down on the deck is that as soon as you ease the mainsheet the clew is getting near to the mast and the sail is getting fuller which is the last you want to happen."

Sanderson says that because of the lack of rules governing the rig in the Open 60 class Southern Spars were able to go super hi-tech in terms of the construction of the mast and boom but have been forced to do this in order to make the best of the Open 60 class' 10deg inclination rule. "A boat with a 50kg heavier rig is probably about a 200kg heavier boat, so it is a massive deal and it is probably one thing the class needs to look at, because these boats are getting expensive. The Pindar rig is probably in total the most expensive Open 60 rig put on the water. It is because it is made from the highest modulus carbon used in yacht masts – it is higher than what is used in the America’s Cup and the Volvo. In the Open 60 class there is no modulus limit, no minimum weight, no autoclave limit. So it is the lightest mast."

He says that one piece of technology where the Open 60 class is behind the times is in using halyard locks. This is particularly down to a fear of them being unreliable when sailing singlehanded. Sanderson says that if they were doing the mast again they would use more halyard locks. At present they only have one and this is on the furling solent jib. (Mike Golding's Ecover has more halyard locks).

While their rig should be the best in the fleet upwind, they are also the only Open 60 in this fleet to have a conventional vang arrangement and so are able to ease the sail out while maintaining the same twist profile when reaching or running.

In addition they are one of the few boats to have a 3DL mainsail made using carbon fibre. Most Open 60 sails are Kevlar 3DL in order to be transparent for the radar and satcoms

Sanderson also has an interesting fresh perspective on Open 60 rigs generally coming from the America's Cup and Volvo arenas. "I always think that on boats like this which are high performance boats, your big sails need to be big and your little sails need to be little. It is quite simple - it either needs to get planning or if it is planning then you just want to get rid of drag. It is drag which kills these boats. It is a multihull and Whitbread 60 thing. We’ve known for a long time that little sails are fast, so I’m surprised at a lot of the rig set-ups. So we have our big sails going to the top of the rig and we’ve brought our little sails as far down the rig as we can. I’m not sure why these guys are kicking around with 7/8 or ¾ or whatever rigs."

Sanderson adds that this is very evident when you test sails in a wind tunnel. "If you look at illbruck, the inventories are based on the big being big and the little being little."

He is also a fan of wingmasts. "We have just spent three years in the America’s Cup trying to get 2-3deg of twist. If you were allowed to rotate the mast in the America’s Cup - everyone would do it. They were trying to get rotation out of twist and there you think it is a massive deal. This class [the Open 60] lets you have a wingmast or just a rotating mast. The biggest advantage in a rotating spar is when you are reefed. It is what is above the masthead. At full hoist there is very little in it, but when you have got just mast sticking up there it is a big deal." The top of the mast has high drag when reefed.

In addition to this they have optimised the boat's measurement trim, taking 100kg off the bulb weight and going to maximum cant angle. "We have worked pretty hard on the foils being fair and the bottom being far.

Third man

Sanderson says he has done some two handed racing such as the Round North Island Race in New Zealand, but says on this considerably longer race he is going to have to rely on Emma Richards' experience to regulate him. "My problem is going to be more about keeping it under control and managing our time and not pushing too hard and all those sort of things. Unless we are leading Emma is probably going to have to tie me to the bunk, because we are used to having pretty high expectations and standards. We are just going to go full noise and we’ll just take turns at sleeping. Hopefully we can dig it in pretty hard and sail the boat well through the storm which we are going to start in and keep it in one piece."

While Sanderson thinks the choices they have made with the rig are 'no brainers', there is another aspect to their campaign which he feels is far more radical...

For the Transat Jacques Vabre they have employed legendary navigator Mike Quilter to effectively be their third crew. "The easiest way for us to get an extra person on the boat is to delegate the navigating out. We can’t delegate any other task on the boat. Emma will have to get us around the tricky points, but he is going to talk us through our tacking and our gybing angles. He is going to do all our positioning of the fleet - he is going to do everything. I think that is probably the gruntiest thing we’ve done. We are paying him the same daily rate as if he were on the boat. We are definitely going into this race three up. If that is not an advantage then I don’t know what is."

Quilter has tremendous experience navigating in this stretch of water. "The first thing e did was pull out was this chart at the first meeting we had. And there it had got the courses for Lion New Zealand, Steinlager II, New Zealand Endeavour, Merit Cup, Club Med [all of which Quilter sailed on]. How much more data do you need and how many more good results down that stretch of water do you need?" says Sanderson. In addition to this Quilter spent a week working with Richards and Sanderson on the potential routing options.

So Quliter willl effectively be telling Richards and Sanderson when or at least on what wind shift, to alter course, tack and gybe. "People normally make their dumb decisions when they are tired," says Sanderson. "One of the big things everyone talks about in this race is ‘keep yourself well rested in the first few days, don’t get too tired or you’ll make a dumb call’. Well we’re not going to make the call. He [Quilter] has moved from his bedroom down into his office. They have bought a single bed for him to put in there. It is full on. He is going to use Clouds [expert meteorologist Roger Badham] and Meteo France.

To date Richards and Sanderson haven't sailed as many miles on the new boat as they might like to have had. Sanderson says they are very cool boats, "but they go ridiculously slow upwind. A Volvo 60 is probably going a knot and a half quicker upwind, but then they do go very fast reaching and running."

The problem is that if the alterations made to the new Pindar do prove to be fast rather than the conventional (mostly French) wisdom, then the Open 60 class is likely to take a first step in the direction of the 60ft trimarans with boats becoming a compromise between offshore and inshore/Atlantic/fully crewed configurations. This will not only dilute the class, but will massively increase the expense of Open 60 campaigns and is something IMOCA is known to looking to nip in the bud.