A tour of Solidaires

Thierry Dubois takes us on a guided tour of his Open 60

One of the joys of the singlehanded offshore racing community is some of the larger than life characters you meet. One of the most gregarious is undoubtedly Frenchman Thierry Dubois, who in the last 24 hours has taken over the lead in Around Alone.

Around Alone is Thierry's third singlehanded round the world race, following his graduating up to the Open 60 class after his win in the Mini Transat in 1993. Dubois is best known for very nearly losing his life in the 1996 Vendee Globe, when during a terrible storm in the Southern Ocean more than 1,000 miles south of Australia his Open 60 capsized - and stayed that way.

A Royal Australian Air Force plane dropped liferafts to him and incredibly Dubois jumped into the Southern Ocean and swam to one. He inflated it and clambered in only to find, as his upturned craft drifted out of sight, that the liferaft was punctured and sinking. Thankfully Dubois tugged on the line attached to the liferaft and found another at the other end. He was eventually rescued by the Australian navy at the same time as Tony Bullimore.

Rather than be put off sailing, Dubois built another boat again using designer Bernard Nivelt, but this time paying considerable attention to safety. His new Open 60 Solidaires has a lot of tumblehome to prevent her tripping over her deck. Dubois says she has more stability than the minimum stipulated in the class rules. She has a swing keel too, a feature which certainly would have helped Dubois right his old boat in the Vendee, had she been fitted with one.

Most impressive though is the number of bulkheads she has - 12 in total, five of them full bulkheads. In addition to these, like Bernard Stamm's Bobst Group-Armor Lux, she also has full height fore and aft bulkheads. Aside from providing great longitudinal stiffness in the hull they also act as a strong mounting point for the runners. "It is not so heavy," says Dubois, compared to the structure of the Groupe Finot boats like Emma Richards' Pindar which have no fore and aft bulkheads, relying more on stringers. "The bulkheads are only 900g/sqm each side."

Solidaires is largely a glass boat, only about 20% of the fibres used in her are carbon - mainly bulkheads and areas of reinforcement says Dubois - whereas Stamm's flying machine has a similar structure in carbon (both boats were engineered by Herve Devaux).

Solidaires' deck is in 40mm foam/glass while her hull is in 30mm. The only structural problems she has experienced to date says Dubois have been in areas where there was a 2m stretch without a bulkhead. "It happened in the Vendee Globe and during the big storm on leg two," he admits. "We had a little problem on the starboard side, so we put in a little stringer. Bernard had exactly the same problem."

The criss-cross lattice of bulkheads forms 15 separate compartments - including port and starboard sections in the bow - any of which Dubois can seal off in the event of the boat being holed.

Remarkably despite all her bulkheads and her largely glass construction Dubois says that the only Open 60 in Around Alone that is lighter than her is Bobst Group-Armor Lux and this includes Graham Dalton's new Hexagon.

Compared to Stamm's boat Dubois says Solidaires is fast when it is light and as she is relatively underpowered generally prefers running rather than reaching conditions. "I know my boat, so I don’t have to fight. If we have strong sidewinds I choose another course to have the wind more astern. But when we have the same angle at the back we have the same speed," he says of when he is racing Stamm's machine. Dubois says that the most vital thing is to know your boat and knowing when to push and when not to push.

In Around Alone Dubois' tactic of playing a waiting game now seems to be paying off as he has moved into pole position. Recent versions of this race have had a high attriction race. Four years ago Giovanni Soldini won largely because he made it round the world without breaking or destroying his boat. Right now with race leader Bernard Stamm's Open 60 suffering keel damage Dubois is in a similar situation.

"I didn’t build this boat for records," says Dubois. "I built this boat for sailing around the world with a high average speed. When Bernard [Stamm] pushes his boat, he destroys his boat - but he pushes. I don’t push like Bernard, it is not my way to sail. I want to keep a high average speed. The first part of the Indian Ocean I could follow Bernard, but I knew he was pushing more. He spends time at the edge - I never touch the edge. But I remember in the first leg, I made more than 400 miles in one day without pushing."

His last passage across the Southern Ocean on leg three was no so fortunate. During this he broke all his downwind sails and also snapped a rudder. Most costly of these losses was unquestionably his new Spectra reacher. "I destroyed the first reacher because of the f**king sail cloth. It was bad Spectra. But it was not a question of the choice [of Spectra], it was just a roll that was bad." The reacher simply delaminated.

"Most of the time we have the conditions for this sail. I destroyed this sail, so what happens?" Fortunately he had a spare, albeit a rather old one. In fact, he admits, it was originally from Jean Maurel's trimaran Elf Aquitaine III, and last used in anger in the late 1980s. It is a museum piece! "I used it after I broke the main one. But I destroyed it totally! It didn't just split, it exploded! It was part Kevlar and part Spectra. The Spectra stayed but the Kevlar just exploded."

So he had no more small genniker, yet was still in the hunt with Bernard Stamm. "We were between Crozet and Kerguelen. There was 50 miles difference [between us]. So I made the same mistake as a young guy. I put up the big gennaker and pushed and the wind was going up and up above 30 knots and after Crozet I had to gybe. And I thought I am not new to this - I can do this. So of course the genniker came down and it turned into a wine glass then there was a cut in it. And it was new from the start of the race but there was too much wind and it cut 25m along the leech."

Being on a tight budget Dubois says he scrambled to retrieve all the pieces, but at this point he had no more downwind sails. With the Tasman Sea still to cross he set about repairing his main reacher. "I started to repair it with pieces of the spare reacher, with twine, needle, Sikaflex, sticky Dacron, anything... because I had an 8m cut to repair. And I could never do it on deck because there was too much wind and waves. So I spent one week with the reacher everywhere down below and whenever I could I worked on it." By the time Solidaires reached the Tasman Sea, he had a heavily lashed up, but just about usable reacher again.

One of the reasons he and Bernard Stamm have constantly been ahead of Emma Richards he says is because of one thing - their boats both have fractional rigs.

"Since the Mini I have known that masthead rigs are not good for solo navigation," he explains. "You have to have really different sails. When you are singlehanded, you don’t have to think all the time. You are not on the Volvo where you have two knots difference [in wind speed] and you change. So you have not a lot of sails but a big difference between the headsails - the gennikers, a Solent on the furler, the staysail and storm jib.
Below: a fractional rig is imperative for a winning Open 60, believes Dubois.



Below: the bowsprit, showing the furling drums for the gennikers and the Solent



"But the thing is that you have two choices for downwind sails – masthead and fractional. So you have two sizes of genniker, the small fractional one - I call it a reacher as it has a different cut - and masthead and fractional spinnakers - like a Mini. This has been my choice for a long time - I was one of the first to fit a fractional mast on my old boat - and no question, it was much better."

Dubois says that the fraction rig really comes into its own in the Southern Ocean. "When you have more than 25-30 knots of wind you don’t use masthead sails. It is better because you have a reef and you go down from there. The problem with a masthead boat is that you have two reefs in the mainsail and a masthead spinnaker and it’s dangerous for the mast and it’s not good for the steering. So for me it is one reef with masthead genniker, but after, it is reacher with one reef and reacher with two reefs and like that I can sail in 40 knots of wind sometimes, with big power."

He cites the example of the end of leg two when he was effectively match racing Emma Richards. "There was one knot of difference between us. We were together but on the last days, it was not because I was pushing to the maximum. I used the reacher and the autopilot, and had 16 knots average speed and Emma has no choice, because she can go up with the Solent or down with the genniker, but can’t go straight."

One of the stories of reasonable success of Solidaires is its rudder system. The boat, like Michel Desjoyeaux Vendee winner PRB, has twin kick up rudders, but these are integral to the boat and not transom-hung. Both are fitted with a fuse (a sacrificial stick of glass rod) so that in the event of them colliding with something solid, the fuse breaks allowing the rudder simply to kick up.

Below - transom showing the twin kick up rudders



Unfortunately on the second leg one of the rudders still broke. "This is the second one like this," admits Dubois. "We are sure now we have a problem of structural calculation in the rudder. But it breaks not when you touch something. It breaks in normal use after about 15,000 miles. So we think it is too light. We use the same shape and the same calculations from the old boat because we have the mould, but I think what the engineer didn’t reckon on was that with a canting keel boat you have more pressure on the rudders."

Fortunately losing the rudder was not a problem for Dubois as Solidaires carries a spare. It took him an hour to haul the replacement rudder out of the aft compartment and fit it in place before he was up to speed again. In Tauranga he fitted a new rudder, again built completely in carbon fibre, but this time built stronger.

While security conscious Dubois doesn't carry a short spare mast, as Giovanni Soldini used to in the race last time to use in the event of a dismasting. "In my case I could use the boom, because I have the longest boom with the expection of Ocean Planet. And my gooseneck is ready. That is why I never put a gooseneck on the mast."

Below: The boom is connected to the deck to prevent it being lost should the boat dismast



Looking around Solidaires, the boat is similar conceptually in many ways to Bobst Group-Armor Lux. The hull shape and deck is different with the cockpit a bit further aft.

Below: the cockpit - well protected with deck chairs either side



Down below the cabin is a little larger, and like Stamm, Dubois has to clamber through an opening in the fore and aft bulkheads either side to get into his bulk. His chart table, like Stamm's is offset to port but deeper and there is also an inside wheel with which to steer.

Below: the nav table



Solidaires has a swing keel and a single daggerboard. Unlike most of the other swing keel boats though, the keel is driven by a block and tackle arrangement rather than a large hydraulic ram. The keel compartment is between two full bulkheads and the top of the keel extends to just below deck level. A 10:1 purchase is fitted to each side of the top of the keel and exits on the aft side of the rear bulkhead to a winch. Normally Dubois drops the keel down before tacks - and he says the system is suitably free of friction to allow this.

Below: water comes into the keelbox at the point where the keel pivots and exits the hull



"We don’t have hydraulics, it is too heavy," explains Dubois. "And there is a difference of cost. It is not great for a grand prix boat but for a singlehanded round the world boat, it works all the time, there are no hydraulics and no problem with the electrical engine."

He continues that the canting keel arrangement is obligatory for modern Open 60s. "For this type of hull a canting keel is compulsory. If you have ballast each side - a problem we had with the old boat - your boat is in the water too much and reaching your boat is no good."

A distinct belt and braces type sailor, Dubois discussed with me this fabulous new thing called email. Since the start of Around Alone he has been sending them from his standard C satcoms, but he sent his first email from land only the week before the restart in Tauranga! He announced proudly that he has been trying to send data through his Iridium phone but his PC had not been installed with the correct software.

Following Around Alone Dubois plans to take a bit of a back seat. The boat is up for sale and he has had several offers, but would most like to sell her to Patrice Carpentier ("he likes this boat and he sails in the same spirit. It will be his third Vendee - he’s a crazy guy") while staying on the program as technical director. "I don’t want to race the next Vendee Globe. I have done three round the worlds singlehanded. It is time to do something else. Perhaps one day again."

Dubois says that he will probably sail as crew on one of the 60ft trimarans. "No problems with sponsors, communications...journalists," he teases. "Only use winch handle when they say use winch handle and beers after…"

However if he wins Around Alone...