Race favourite's perspective

Artemis Transat winner Loick Peyron updates us on his Gitana 80 Vendee Globe campaign

Having won the Artemis Transat this year along with the shorter fully crewed Trophee SNSM plus the Transat Ecover BtoB singlehanded race back from the end of the 2007 Transat Jacques Vabre, Loick Peyron has had the most successful track record in this open 60 four year cycle making one of the favourites for line honours in this year’s Vendee Globe.

His Gitana 80 is a Farr design, built by Southern Ocean Marine and is sistership to Jean-Pierre Dick’s Barcelona World Race winner Paprec Virbac 2. While both boats share the same hull and the unique drop down planing wedge beneath their transom, the boats have a significance difference - Gitana 80 has a lightweight conventional fixed rig (odd considering Peyron’s multihull background) while Paprec Virbac 2 has a small section rotating mast and single diamond arrangement, similar to Mike Golding’s Ecover. At the dock here in Les Sables d’Olonne, Gitana 80 has had perhaps the least activity on board of all the thirty Open 60s here - apart from loading some fresh food on, she is simply ready to roll on Sunday.



Since returning from the end of the Artemis Transat, Gitana 80 has been in refit at the Gitana team’s impressive base in St Philibert, close to La Trinite-sur-Mer. Unfortunately on the delivery, which Peyron sailed singlehanded, the boat suffered two collisions. “There were no apparent problems, but when we lifted the boat after I arrived in the middle of June we discovered that the keel was twisted and that the bulb was bent. It was impressive since there had been no shock! Fortunately we had decided before to make a new keel for the Vendee Globe, so we swapped.”

According to Peyron the new keel is much the same as the old one, made in solid steel but with a minor modification to the shape. A new mast had already been fitted prior to the Artemis Transat, which is lighter and stronger longitudinally at the first spreaders. “That is the part of the boat were took the biggest risk and pushed the game to the maximum,” says Peyron. “All the other parts are quite conservative - up to date but conservative.”

Another difference between Gitana 80 and Virbac Paprec 2 is that Peyron has chosen not to add the ‘moustache’, the reaching strakes that many of the Farr designs have retrofitted around their bow. While Jean-Pierre Dick has felt the need to add these, Peyron doesn’t as he says when they were designing the boat with Farr they had already asked to have “bigger cheeks” (ie more volume in the forward sections) than the standard Farr Open 60 design. However he admits that he is unsure of if this was the right decision or not…

So having raced his boat for a year now, what are his observations about the relative performance between the boats from the different designers? “I think everyone is trying to make a boat with no holes [in their performance]. That is the spirit of all the boats, even the old ones: To try and never be the slowest. That is funny because we were all a bit afraid about the light airs possibilities and that is why there is quite a lot of sail area on all these boats.”

Despite the significant difference between the new designs, Peyron reckons their performance is similar, but stresses the fastest boat will not necessarily be the winner. “As you can see in Formula 1, it is not about the fastest car, it is how you try to reduce the period when you are slow.”

He plays down his pre-race favourite status saying that the Vendee Globe is not a race where you can have favourites because there are so many variables out of a skipper’s control out on the race course. “You can hit something an hour after the start. That is the worst part of the game. And it is worse than in previous years because there is a bigger effort on the part of all the teams, and a lot more money.”

Peyron wasn’t involved with the race four years ago, but reckons that Vendee Globe/Open 60 campaign budgets may have increased by as much as 50% over this last cycle. “To be serious in a project like this you need to have two masts, two keels at least. And two sets of sails, although we didn’t make too many sails: We only had one set and we used quite a lot of old ORMA 60 sails, because we had a lot on the shelves. So in terms of budget with Gitana 80 we did well, plus we built in New Zealand. So I am sure we are not the most expensive and we may be the most efficient in the ratio between budget and the results.” Peyron reckons the Gitana 80 budget to date has been around 2.4 million Euros including the boat.

However it should be remembered that the set-up behind Gitana 80 is not like any of the other boats in the Vendee Globe. Gitana 80 is one within Baron Benjamin de Rothschild’s stable of race boats and this year she has been operating alongside Lionel Lemonchois’ record breaking attempts on their maxi-cat Gitana 13, while one of their ORMA 60s, Gitana 11 has been corporate chartering. As a result Gitana Team employ around 18-20 and share resources between boats. Each boat has its own boat captain (as well as a skipper) but typically there is one electronics guy, one rigger, etc who is shared around between all the boats.

Peyron campaign is also unique in being privately backed. “The Baron very enthusiastic,” states Peyron. “I don’t know if he will come to the start, but on the last week of the Transat he was calling a lot. He was very interested by the race, probably helped by Lionel winning the Route du Rhum and my winning the Transat.”

So with so many new, highly competitive boats with hungry skippers - what can we expect to happen on the race course? “Everyone has the same weather information [in fact Vendee Globe skippers do not get weather information emailed through to them as boats do in the Volvo, but are allowed to access any publicly available weather sites - the same arrangement as the 2001-2 Volvo]. The bizarre thing is that at the end of the game you have only one winner! So the best way to finish a race is to win it, but the only way to win a race is to finish it, so you have to aim between those two. Then it gets very complex. On a monohull it isn’t such a big problem to aim to get 100% from the boat. On a multi it is harder. These boats are made for that. The only time we are not at 100% is in manoeuvres, compared to a full crew. So it is only in that small area where you are inefficient.”

Given the massive performance increase in the boat speed this time, there has been talk of a substantial reduction in the race record on this occasion. At present Vincent Riou’s time from the last race stands at 87 days. The most optimistic estimate we have heard on the pontoons to date has been 75 days!

Peyron is more realistic: “Maybe five days faster, maybe five days slower. In the second Vendee Globe Alain Gautier was slower than Titouan was in the first Vendee Globe. 80 days could be interesting for somebody. To think that [just a few years ago] I was working with all the guys and we were asking if it was possible at all to sail around the world in 80 days on multihulls with crew! Now we are looking at monohulls doing the same.”

To date he says that the top speed in Gitana 80 has been 27 knots, but that was on a wave, when he was sailing double handed with on the 2007 Transat Jacques Vabre qualifier with Jean-Baptiste Levaillon. “You feel that there is no problem to go faster than that, but not for an average speed…”

So Peyron is one of the favourites for this year's Vendee Globe but as he says there is no such thing as an odds on favourite in this event.

More pics on the following pages...