Transat - Open 60 form guide

Odds and our comments on the monohull competition in Monday's race

Line-up

Odds to win	Boat	Skipper	Nat	Age	Designer	Launch	VG	Previously known as
5:1	Ecover	Golding Mike	GB	43	Owen Clarke	Jul-03	Y
7:1	PRB	Riou Vincent	Fr	32	Groupe Finot	May-00	Y
8:1	VMI	Josse Sebastien	Fr	29	Groupe Finot	Oct-98	Y	Sodebo
9:1	Virbac	Dick Jean-Pierre	Fr	38	Farr Yacht Design	Apr-03	N
10:1	Pindar Alphagraphics	Sanderson Mike	NZ	33	Owen Clarke	Feb-02		Hexagon
11:1	Pro Am	Thiercelin Marc	Fr	43	Lombard	1998	Y	Whirlpool, Tiscali
12:1	Cheminées Poujoulat / Armor Lux	Stamm Bernard	Swi	39	Pierre Rolland	2000	Y
15:1	Skandia	Moloney Nick	Aus	36	Kingfisher Design Group	Feb-00	Y	Kingfisher
20:1	Hellomoto	Humphreys Conrad	GB	31	Groupe Finot	Apr-98	N	Team Group 4, Ecover
25:1	UUDS	Laurent Herve	Fr	46	Groupe Finot	Jun-94	Y	Sceta Calberson, Geodis, voila
30:1	Temenos	Wavre Dominique	Swi	48	Groupe Finot	Sep-99	Y	Union Banque Privee
50:1	Objectif 3	Hedrich Charles	Fr	46	Groupe Finot	May-98	N	Gartmore
70:1	Austria One	Sedlacek Norbert	Austria	42	Joubert Nivelt	1995	N	Zen
100:1	QuickSilver Edition	Liardet Anne	Fr	43	Briand / Lombard	1989	N	ex Fleury Michon/Uunet
200:1	Atlantica	Leibovici Karen	Fr	33	Harle Mortain	Jun-91	N	Vendee Entreprises, Sofap-Helvim, Whirlpool (too many)

The race between the Open 60s in The Transat will not be straightforward. For many of the skippers the critical issue in competing is to qualify for November's Vendee Globe. With the exception of Mike Sanderson on Pindar Alphagraphics all the Open 60 skippers taking part in the Transat are hoping to compete in the Vendee. Many have already completed their obligatory singlehanded race miles either by having raced previously in the Vendee Globe (Mike Golding, Herve Laurent, Marc Thiercelin and Dominique Wavre) or Around Alone (Bernard Stamm) or last year's Defi Atlantic race (Sebastien Josse, Nick Moloney, Vincent Riou). For the other seven they must reach the finish of The Transat in Boston if they are to sail in the Vendee Globe.

That the priority of many of the skippers is to qualify for the Vendee Globe rather than taking on The Transat in its own right without an ulterior motive is a shame as inevitably it will detract from the competition. For example in the Europe 1 New Man STAR four years ago Michel Desjoyeaux pedalled back when he experienced technical problems in order to ensure he reached the finish and qualified.

Quite how this will pan out in the race itself this time remains to be seen. While the Vendee-qualified competitors may be going hell for leather they will be equally loath to risk damage to their boats prior to the all-important Vendee - so the difference in pace may not be that great. Equally they all have fast boats, this is a yacht race and it is hard to see how anyone will throttle back, especially as over the last few years has seen a significant change in the Open 60 class. As Mike Golding puts it "before it was about 80% reliability and 20% performance. Now it is 20% reliability and 80% performance."

As our odds in the table above indicate we and a number of other race pundits we have consulted believe there to be around 10 boats capable of winning line honours. This figure would have been 12 had the new Lombard Open 60s Sill and Bonduelle not withdrawn from the race due to teething trouble with their keels.

The two remaining new boats - Mike Golding's Ecover and Jean-Pierre Dick's Virbac - are surefire favourites. At the start of last year's Transat Jacques Vabre both boats showed phenominal upwind pace in similar big conditions to those the boats are likely to experience in The Transat. This is a significant progression in Open 60 design, as these boats in the past have been mostly reaching and running machines with little upwind pace.

Aside from having a new boat Golding has previously taken part in this race on two occasions before, once in an Open 60, and knows the course well. In comparison Jean-Pierre Dick won last year's Transat Jacques Vabre but lacks Golding's extensive singlehanded track record. He did deliver his new Farr Yacht Design Open 60 up the Atlantic on the trip back from her builders in Auckland singlehanded and last year competed in the singlehanded Le Defi Atlantic in which he dismasted.

Sebastien Josse on VMI and Vincent Riou on PRB are also potential winners. They may not be sailing new boats, but both have been heavily modified and are still on the money, have shown winning form in the last 12 months. In 2003 PRB won the Calais Round Britain Race while VMI won the Open 60 division of the Rolex Fastnet Race. Josse in particular is a well seasoned Figaro sailor.

An unknown quantity is Mike Sanderson on Pindar Alphagraphics. In a fully crewed environment Sanderson would unquestionably be king with his experience of the Volvo Ocean Race with Grant Dalton on New Zealand Endeavour and then Merit Cup and most recently as main sheet trimmer on Oracle BMW Racing. However this will be his first ever singlehanded race. After Emma Richards competed in Around Alone, Pindar acquired Graham Dalton's Hexagon which they put a new mast in. Under Sanderson's influence the mast has been set up more like a conventional rig from a fully crewed boat with a proper vang and no furlers on the headsails (to read about Sanderson's reasoning about this - click here).

The boat's first race was last autumn's Transat Jacques Vabre when Sanderson and Emma Richards retired after the aft compartment on the boat filled up with water. With no furlers, it will take all Sanderson's Kiwi brawn to keep the boat going to the max. "If it were an 18 hour race he’d stay awake, drive the whole way and kick all our butts," says Skandia skipper Nick Moloney of Sanderson. "But he’s never done this before. The fatigue does funny things to your mind and how your body operates and the decisions you make, so it will be interesting to see how we go after five or six days. It doesn’t take too many mistakes to break things and then you fall behind as you have downtime fixing things."

Discreetly Moloney and Sanderson have been out training together. "We’ve been doing some testing together and he’s fast, really really fast," continues Moloney. "And he’s a very smart sailor and well supported. You can’t underestimate his capability."

Moloney is certainly playing down his prospects, but doesn't appear to rate his chances that highly in The Transat against the newer and more powerful boats. However his boat does have the track record of having won the race in the talented hands of Ellen MacArthur four years ago and has since won the Route du Rhum's monohull division. Certainly four years ago the boat was one of the quickest upwind in the fleet, but today this side of the performance envelope has been covered on the new Open 60s. Moloney has upped the horsepower of the boat - his kites are masthead and the genoa tack is now mounted on the spinnaker pole (see to more about this - click here).

The highly experienced Marc Thiercelin has returned to the Open 60 class after a break following the sale of his Group Finot-designed Somehere to Joe Seeten. Thiercelin has two Vendee Globes under his belt including a second place in 1996 and a fourth in 2000 and was second in the 1999 Around Alone. Earlier this year he acquired the former Whirlpool/ Tiscali, the Marc Lombard-designed sistership to the original Sill Open 60. While the old Sill has blistering pace, and has won many races Whirpool/ Tiscali has had a more checkered career - for example she is now on her sixth rig... The new rig is a conventional affair (if such a thing in the Open 60 class exists) with long, swept-back spreaders on a carbon fibre mast.

A similarly seasoned sailor to Thiercelin is Swiss sailor Bernard Stamm winner of last year's Around Alone, singlehanded round the world race with stops. Formerly in the merchant navy Stamm is a tough seaman and thus well equipped for the rigours of the Transat, but his boat has not showed great potential upwind. In Around Alone Stamm lacked competition from the top Open 60s in the class and his results outside of Around Alone have never shone.

Conrad Humphreys on Hellomoto (formerly Mike Golding's original Ecover) is another sailor who has a potential winning machine even though he will supposedly being taking it more gently in order to qualify for the Vendee. Despite winning the Open 50 class in the last Transat Jacques Vabre the former BT Global Challenge winner has yet to complete a singlehanded offshore race.

Our odds on Herve Laurent could be on the long side. Having taken over the UUDS sponsorship from Eric Dumont and then Miranda Merron, Laurent comes with a long and impressive track record in both the Figaro, on 60ft trimarans and in Open 60s. Despite sailing the ancient boat Groupe LG I Open 60, he finished third in the 1996-7 Vendee Globe. Significantly he also won the 2000 Transat AG2R. Laurent is now sailing a boat with one of the most impressive track records of any Open 60. As Sceta Calberson, in the hands of Christophe Auguin, his Groupe Finot design won the 1994-5 BOC Challenge and then the Vendee Globe as Geodis. The boat was completely refitted prior to the last Vendee Globe by Bernard Galley and appears to have been similarly breathed on on this occasion by Laurent.

Dominique Wavre's Temenos is a boat which we feel has never realised its potential. Wavre is a veteran of four Whitbreads (three with Pierre Fehlmann and the last on Intrum Justitia), numerous Figaros and came fifth in the last Vendee Globe. His boat should also be on the pace being fourth sistership of Group 4 ( Hellomoto), Gartmore ( Objective 3) and Somewhere ( Arcelor Dunkerque). However she is the classic example of boat where the rig is too tall and Wavre seems to have suffered because of this.

Of the final four entries all are experienced sailors with the exception of Objectif 3 skipper Charles Hedrich, who has taken on the Vendee as one of his three objectives (the others being the Paris-Dakar rally and scaling Mount Everest). But none of the boats are expected to make much of an impression on the leaderboard.