All change at IMOCA

Open 60 Class President Dominique Wavre talks us through the new rules

With 20 new boats built over the four years leading up to the start of the last Vendee Globe, you might be forgiven for thinking that the IMOCA Open 60 class was in good shape and it would be a case of ‘if it ain’t broke - why fix it?’

However the huge attrition rate from the last Vendee Globe, combined with the boats returning in the middle of a global economic meltdown has meant that the class collectively has had to put its thinking cap on to work out ways to protect itself in these uncertain times.

The issues were made following a number of presentations and discussions before the class voted on them at their AGM. This all took place over several days at the end of last week. The end result – having followed this class closely for about two and half decades – seems to have been some very sensible decisions made. Traditionally taking collective action within the IMOCA class association has been about as easy as herding cats, with all the teams and skippers holding different viewpoints. We were not at the meeting, but it has been confirmed by several people who were, that on this occasion IMOCA was finally showing some solidarity, with everyone in agreement firstly that action was needed and secondly the direction this action should take.



Newly re-elected Class President, Temenos 2 skipper Dominique Wavre took time to fill us in with some details.

Unfortunately unlike the problems the class had with boats capsizing and remaining inverted during the mid-late 1990s, on this occasion there has been little common threads other than boats primarily suffering keel or rig/fitting breakage. Delving any deeper into the actual reasons why these problems occurred and it quickly becomes apparent that they were all, pretty much, from different causes.

Thankfully the class have realised that with 20 existing and potentially still competitive boats, that in these tough economic times the current fleet is strong and needs to be protected and to some extent future-proofed. For this reason the majority of the decisions agreed at the AGM were directed at the new builds over this next four year cycle - already for example Jean-Pierre Dick’s Virbac Paprec team have announced they are to build new, while Vincent Riou/PRB are too and there are said to be at least two new Spanish boats being planned for the next Barcelona World Race.

“The general idea is to have a grandfather rule to keep the existing fleet competitive, technically up to date and to maintain their value and to try to make a frame around the new boats, to prevent them making a big leap in performance compared to the existing fleet with the idea to bring all the fleet together for the next Vendee Globe,” says Wavre of their protectionist policy. “It was also done because of the economic crisis. Obviously we cannot have too much cost increase or some of the existing boats will not be able to race because they are not fast enough any more or need a lot of money to stay fast enough. So we are trying to limit cost in that way.”

Thus sails will be limited to 10 for all, but as an example of a rule which will be applied only to the new builds and will be grandfathered on the existing fleet the number of appendages is to be limited to five (two rudders, keel, two daggerboards).

“The reason is to avoid cost and increase the simplicity of the boats,” continues Wavre. “The general idea of this point is that we have noticed that the public interest in the Vendee Globe was more about the human aspect, the skippers, and not the technical aspects of the boats. The second point is that we are aiming for the new fleet to be less sophisticated than the previous one to increase the reliability. The more simple the mechanical things you have on board, the more you have to go wrong. It is common sense.”

Obviously among the present generation, boats such as Paprec-Virbac and Gitana had trim tabs/planning wedges beneath their transoms while others featured what Mike Golding calls a Platex, also known within the motorboating world as an interceptor – both features designed to alter fore and aft trim without having to resort to using water ballast. In short a very interesting development for the sailing world in general. Sadly Wavre says these are likely to be prohibited on the new builds.

“Trim tabs will be difficult because all the rudders now have to be inside the 60ft [LOA] of the boats,” says Wavre of the new builds. “Some boats have transom-hung rudders and we would like to keep the kick-up rudders for the people who want it, but it must be within the 60ft of the boat. So it would make trim tabs not relevant because it would be hard to fit them around the rudders.”

That is assuming of course that they span the entire breadth of the transom as they do on Gitana 80 and Virbac Paprec at present.

The general consensus within the class is that they don’t like the direction teams like Bahrain Team Pindar and Artemis have gone with their boats – ie down the route of increased displacement and much much greater power.

As Wavre puts it: “It makes the boats very heavy and that also means that the risk of breakage or breaking a keel if you hit something, etc increases by a lot. To have that power correctly trimmed in light winds you need a very very high mast and you get into a loop, increasing weight and increasing power almost indefinitely. So the general feeling is that we have to stop this progression. We think that the boats are powerful enough for the moment. They are already quite hard to manage them on your own, so we prefer to lock the power a little bit.”

So once again only applying to the new builds, a mast height restriction of around 29m off the water is likely to be enforced. Looking at the mean mast height of the 2008 generation boats, this is towards the upper end, although Artemis 2’s mast is believed to be around 30m and Pindar’s approaching 32…So expect some large flat top mains on the new builds (as happened in the ORMA 60 class when they introduced a 30m mast height limitation). However again Wavre reckons that they may also introduce a restriction on the head of the main on new builds. “It is also an idea to control the big roach, maybe something like 3m,” he says. “But we have already seen in the Vendee Globe that already some of the boats like Michel Desjoyeaux’s or mine, we radiused the roach because in the Southern Ocean it is not very nice to have the big roach downwind – it pushes the boat on the nose. It is better in the Mediterranean definitely!”

More complex is that they are also likely to set more restrictions on righting moment. At present the Open 60 is governed by five features relating to stability.

- the ancient ‘10deg rule’ introduced in the very early days of the BOC Challenge during the 1980s (ie a boat at rest must heel by no more than 10degrees in either direction with all movable ballast deployed)

and subsequently in the late 1990s…

- AVS of 127.5deg or more.
- AVS worst case (with all movable ballast on the wrong side) of 108deg or more.
- Stability curve ratio where the area of positive stability (under the curve) must be five times greater than the negative area.
- Boats must be self-righting from a full inversion without their rig.

With the new builds the AVS worst case has been increased by 2 deg to 110, but most significant is that whereas in the past the first three of these last points have come from designers declarations, class measurer Rene Boulaire has recently come up with an inclination test to measure AVS worst case. “That means we can determine the righting moment. So we say 32 tonne metres will be the maximum righting moment,” says Wavre. Again this is only applicable to the new builds.

Last year there was a move to limit the amount of water ballast the boats could carry, but thankfully this doesn’t seem to have come to pass as there was an equally strong move to prevent this from being applied to existing boats for reasons of cost.

“It is something we would like,” says Wavre. “With the AVS Worse case being increased for the new boats, that is only two degrees, but it will limit the power of the water ballast. So it is a small change, but we realise that at the moment we have a lot of water inside the boats - some boats can almost double the displacement with the water inside. From a philosophical point of view it is a bit stupid to build a very light boat and make it heavier by bringing water on board. So we are trying to limit this tendency.”

A significant issue demonstrated during the Vendee Globe was when VM Materiaux’s bulb dropped off leaving her upside down off Cape Horn. An issue with this was that when the boat flipped she remained very stern down to the extent that the transom was submerged making it very difficult for skipper Jean le Cam to get out through the escape hatch in the transom (another mandatory piece of equipment introduced after the capsizes of the mid-1990s).

At present the class are looking at what can be done about this. “One study is how to communicate through the hull – maybe a little place with polyester so you can radio or Iridium through the hull or have a special antenna. The other most important study is how to keep the transom out of the water so that you have a good escape hatch. Also with Jean there was no time for him to close the main companionway hatch, so the water got inside the main compartment. So we would like a study from the designers with the goal to have the transom out of the water even if water is in the main compartment. But the good thing is that a new boat is being built by the team Virbac Paprec and they agreed to ask their architects to do a study about it. So we will have some answers about that.”

We assumed that VM Materiaux had remained transom down in the water because her bulb had come off and before she flipped was set up for downwind sailing - fully water ballasted and stacked aft. However Wavre points out that in the event of a capsize the water ballast should fall out of the boat, but this assumes that the water inlets are not airtight and that the ballast tanks aren’t already submerged.

Obviously preventing water coming into the main cabin would require a water tight companionway hatch (Giovanni Soldini’s Open 50 and Open 60 for example used to have a watertight Lewmar hatch over his companionway). Perhaps the class should make it mandatory for this hatch to be water tight. However Wavre reckons it is as much down to sound seamanship. “It a watertight hatch] is not bulletproof if you have some ropes coming in it. If a capsize is completely an accident then you don’t have time, but my way of sailing is that if I feel that the weather is very bad and the waves are big and I have a risk of capsizing, I will close the door definitely. But if it is only 20 knots of wind and the spinnaker is up, I will have the door open so I can ease the sheet very quickly. If I hit something and the keel drops off – if, if, if - it is impossible to cover everything.”

However another relatively cheap amendment to the rules will be the addition of a system that will dump the keel in the event of the boat heeling to more than 70 degrees. It is felt that this would greatly increase the effective stability and could help avoid a complete roll-over. It might even help prevent broaches. “It is possible technically, it is not so expensive and it seems easy to install. We asked the teams not to do that this year, but next year, before the Barcelona World Race so they have some time to study efficient systems,” says Wavre.





As mentioned earlier the most significant general areas of breakage in the last Vendee Globe were rigs and keels. At the meeting it was decided in both cases that rather than introducing potentially draconian measures that would definitely first end up limiting a supposedly open class and secondly would almost certainly come with a significant price tag attached, that instead the class and teams would resort to a mandatory and much more rigorous test program.

“The reason is that finding a solution is not so easy," explains Wavre. "Statistically we have seen that some problems are maybe slightly more on some types of mast [than others], but it is nothing we can identify. We get the feeling that the engineers have reduced their safety factors on the masts over the last years, but that is something which each team has to investigate to find their own solution, because that is not something we can quantify and make rules to govern. So the good way to control it is to do regular testing and also that should show if something is going wrong.”

In the case of the masts this will include a program of non-destructive testing carried out each year. “We were thinking about ultrasound or infrared. It depends upon the type of mast – if it is a conventional mast or a wingmast the method may be a little different,” continues Wavre. “You have some good tapping tests to check for the delamination on wingmasts and you need some infrared on specific places like where the spreaders attach. So that will be adapted to the type of mast.”

Wavre envisages that the IMOCA would come to a class-wide deal with a specialist company to carry out these test.

With the keel foils this will include a much more rigorous set of tests examining bending, vibration (flutter), etc.

Another rule to be introduced following the dismastings is over the gooseneck attachments. Over the recent evolution of the class, booms have gone from being attached to the deck to returning to the boom, but the result of this was that when Delta Dore dismasted during the Barcelona World Race both mast and boom had to sent to Davy Jones. As result they had nothing with which to erect a jury rig. Instead boats must now have a way of easily and quickly separating the boom from the mast. This is likely to take the form of a quick release pin.

A new rule introduced following the incident when Yann Elies broke his leg will be it now being mandatory to have the first aid kit fixed in some easy to access place such as around the companionway or the chart table. Previously the first aid kit could be stacked but under the new rules it will be fixed along with some other items of safety equipment such as the anchor and chain and separate mooring line.

The class is also looking into ways of embracing alternative energy and making themselves greener. It is possible for example that the next Vendee Globe could be done with only a supply of diesel on board for emergency use, in the event of having to rescue someone in the Pacific for example. At present there are significant improvements being made in fuel cell technology, solar panel, wind and hydro generator technology (in the last Vendee Globe several boats, such as Michel Desjoyeaux’s, were carrying hydro generators where a line is towed out of the back of the boat, like an old fashioned trailing log) and famously Francis Joyon carried out his record breaking non-stop circumnavigation on board IDEC 2 without fossil fuels. This comes at a time when some of the most power hungry equipment on board – the sat com gear – is also going through a transition. The new generation gear like Iridium Open Port will not only be substantially smaller than the present Fleet 77 gear, but it will draw much less juice.

“We are opening the rules to this new concept and we will see how it progresses,” says Wavre.

Aside from this there have been a number of small details - such as making it mandatory for the engine controls to be in the cockpit and also compliance with the ColRegs, some boats for example at present don’t have steaming lights on their masts.

So – all smart moves at a time when Wavre reckons that around 15-20 of the IMOCA campaign have managed to retain their sponsorships despite the hard economic times. However he admits that some of these have slowed down their programs in the short term.

As to himself personally, Wavre laughs when we ask him if he plans to compete in the Vendee Globe again. “You are a joker!” before calming down. “The reality is that I didn’t feel I finished my story with Temenos 2. Because of the breakage of the keel it is a big frustration. I would like to complete the next Vendee Globe for sure, but it is not only my decision, it is also a sponsor and a team decision. So I don’t want to talk for anyone in this matter.”