Vendee Globe carnage - 2
Thursday March 5th 2009, Author: James Boyd, Location: United Kingdom
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So what can be done?
There is obviously some pressure on IMOCA to do something, but is the onus on them to put their house in order or is it down to the teams? The general feeling in the class is that a solution to this cannot be left to the teams - IMOCA must act. “I don’t think letting the teams get on with it is even an option,” says Mike Golding. “Everyone universally agrees that there needs to be action, but the interesting thing is that the action may be somewhat different to the actions that were being discussed as a matter of urgency last year.”  He is referring to a move by the class in 2008 to dramatically limit the amount of water ballast they carry to 1 tonnes forward and 2 tonnes aft (a good idea certainly, but one which would incur vast expense). And this may have proven unnecessary, as Golding observes: “This race certainly doesn’t validate the discussions we had last year about radically altering the boats, about reducing the power. Power seems to be your friend in this situation and I’ll cite there Dominique Wavre, who completely changed his mind about water ballast, because he suddenly realised that he could never have sailed between the Kerguelen and Perth if he hadn’t had so much ballast on board. And as this race has proved - it is not a unique thing. If you have a lot of ballast on board it is a safety net.” Other such as Roland Jourdain and Marc Guillemot will no doubt be nodding in agreement. “A lot of boats remained upright when we thought they might not. So stability-wise we seem to have got a lot of things right.”
Over the next weeks IMOCA and the Open 60 teams will be evaluating exactly what broke in the Vendee Globe, looking at each individual incident, case by case, to see if anything can be put into the rule that might prevent it from reoccurring. To spearhead this, a new technical committee has been formed led by Golding and including Alex Thomson, Jean le Cam, Bernard Stamm and the class’ Rene Boulaire to examine these issues. Boulaire is having meetings with all the IMOCA teams to collate their opinions to build-up a picture of what should be done. However Golding says the committee already have some clear ideas. “We need to target keels, rudders and masts in direct response to the failures and the reliability problems of the Vendee Globe. And there were several safety things coming from the Vendee Globe.” These include issues such as the escape hatch on Jean le Cam’s VM Materiaux. Under the rule escape hatches must be on the transom, but with the aft water ballast tanks full in the case of VM Materiaux the transom was underwater when she lost her keel and flipped. There is also a rule about having the liferaft mounted in the transom too, but on some boats this seems to have slipped forward into the cockpit. A problem with getting such rules passed is that like so many class associations, IMOCA is a democratic organisation and, as Golding puts it, with so many members there are an equal number of differing opinions about what should be done. “It is invariably a compromise, but some things we can compromise on and other things we cannot afford to. For example you might be able to compromise on a choice for your mast, but not your keel.” As to what the changes to the rule might be, it is at present too early to tell. Golding hopes they won’t be wholescale. “You also have to respect the fact that when we went away and we came back from the Vendee, we came back to a very different economic environment. Also there’s been a massive investment in boats over the last two years and we have to respect that. So somehow we have to meld a change in that respects the fleet that is there, that addresses the fleet that isn’t there, that will come [ie new builds], and improves the overall reliability of both, all along the way without incurring ridiculous expense.” As to a timescale, Golding reckons the changes may happen in two phases. The first will be the big issues covering masts, keels and rudders and a proposal is likely to conjured up ready to be voted on at the IMOCA AGM at the end of April. This will probably be followed by more detailed points later that won’t affect the new builds or existing boats in the short term. One hopes that there is an over-riding philosophy of adding rules only where they are felt to be absolutely necessary. Yes, rules could be written to make the boats stronger, particularly in the rig and appendage areas, but then the class becomes increasingly less open, defeating one of its basic premises. In creating more rules, in reality so often this can be compared to a balloon - squeeze it in one place and another problem can bulge out somewhere else. Numerous ideas are being mooted: one skipper who experienced rig problems in this race is known to be proposing a limit on mast height and inertia. Others are proposing one design keels or maximum bulb weights or limiting the materials keel foils can be made from - but which one? In the last race it was fabricated steel foils that broke - this time it has been carbon fibre keels. If you fit a one design keel, there is the real worry that there could be a problem with it and you end up with 30 boats with keel problems. It also doesn’t drive teams to finding a solution to this - for example some of the French boats were fitted with fabricated steel keels where the outer skin, instead of being bent into shape was milled into shape, removing stress from the structure. Even a moratorium on building new boats for this next cycle has also been mooted. There is a strong lobby to limit the power of the boats, to prevent reoccurrence of the Bahrain Team Pindar-style giant rig, but Golding hopes that that this will prove to be self-limiting. “The answer is you need a good strong light boat that is relatively easily driven. The power thing is going to go away naturally, because people will realise that you can’t win a Vendee in too powerful a boat. You have to look at Brian’s situation…” While there has been considerable carnage in this Vendee Globe and one severe mid-ocean injury, Golding points out that no one actually died as they did in the 1996 and 1992 races. “I personally think we should be celebrating the successes of this race, of both the organisation and the rule changes that were made, to allow Jean to be rescued so promptly, that kept him alive in his upturned boat, that allowed him to initiate a rescue procedure [by inserting an EPIRB through a skin fitting in the hull - a new innovation for this race]. He was alright. He was in a terrible place on the planet and in terrible conditions and despite all the carnage all the rescues have been self-rescues with the exception of Yann [Elies] and quite honestly Yann could have been Korean fisherman. It is just one of those things. Yann was the closest shave by far even though Jean’s rescue was more daring. Yann’s rescue was very skilful on the part of the Australian navy. He was pretty badly injured.” In fact in this Vendee Globe the fleet have done an admirable job of looking after themselves, whether it was Vincent Riou rescuing Jean le Cam or Marc Guillemot standing by Safran, with the sole exception being Elies. 
Another ORMA? Among the sailing public who follow such matters, comparisons are obviously being made between the IMOCA class and the ORMA 60s which after a high point in the 2002 Route du Rhum, when 18 boats started and just three finished, went into terminal decline. The fear is that the sizable IMOCA fleet will go the same way. However compared to where ORMA were at the time, IMOCA is in a far better place. Only two boats have been lost in this race ( Generali and VM Materiaux, although after running on to the rocks off Kerguelen, Bernard Stamm’s Cheminees Poujoulat is all but a write-off too). Other damaged boats have safely made it to port and are repairable. So compared to the decimation of the trimaran fleet in the 2002 Route du Rhum and subsequent Transat Jacques Vabre, the IMOCA 60s in this Vendee Globe have come off lightly. As Golding says, with the present economic crisis on, there is already a strong and large fleet of new boats more than capable of being competitive in the 2012-3 Vendee Globe. “The first thing we should do is try and not spend too much money. We have a great stock of boats, which have another Vendee in them. One thing to have come out of this Vendee Globe is that you don’t need a new boat. Jean [le Cam] and Bilou [Roland Jourdain] have proven that demonstrably. We are in a bad economic climate now, but if any class can survive this recession it has to be IMOCA. I think we are in a really strong place to do.” Also significant in terms of its survival is that while ORMA was a uniquely Breton affair, IMOCA is very much more international with, in some cases, substantially bigger sponsors involved such as Hugo Boss, Veolia, Aviva, etc, who’s interests lay beyond just France. Where there is cause for concern is that like the ORMA class, two types of IMOCA 60s are developing, or more specifically individual boats are trying to be made to perform two functions. In the case of the 60ft tris it was attempting to create one boat optimised for both fully crewed inshore and shorthanded offshore racing. In the case of the IMOCA 60s already the boats typically have two modes, one for racing across the Atlantic and around Europe, the other for non-stop around the world. Bahrain Team Pindar is cited as an example of boat designed primarily for the former, that has subsequently been modified to go around the world (but, hey, she made it right?) Already we are seeing most of the top IMOCA boats having two rig and two keel options to suit these modes. This is certainly an issue IMOCA are already monitoring and will certainly leap on if teams start looking to take this to another level. There also seem to be some measurement issues that need to be tightened up or modified such as the rule about the overhang – that you can have the boom extending beyond the transom by 0.2m, and transom hung rudders, that have allowed some boats to be longer than 60ft. All the liferafts were sealed in place down below, however on some of the Farr designs fitted with ‘satellites’ ie Gitana Eighty and Paprec Virbac 2, the liferafts were sealed to the satellite and could be hauled up to weather. Clever - but legal? Oddly on this occasion the anchor wasn’t sealed in place and proved not only a pain in the derriere to tack, but also potentially dangerous on a bucking boat. We hope that the IMOCA membership remember is that the beauty of the Open 60 is that is it is indeed a development class with a (relatively) open rule. And with this has sprung up some fascinating developments that we might never have seen. This time around for example Artemis, Aviva and Ecover 3 were fitted with interceptors and planning boards while Gitana Eighty and Virbac Paprec 2 had planning boards/trim tabs. They don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water. |
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