King of the Open 60

James Boyd spoke to Sill skipper Roland Jourdain about why he's so fast and what its like racing under IMS...

At the Giraglia Rolex Cup in St Tropez last week there was the somewhat incongruous sight amid the heavily buffed Mediterranean IMS fleet of a bright red yacht with trawler-style deck spreaders, a heavily raked wingmast and covered in sponsorship stickers. While the tanned crews of the neighbouring boats sport the latest sunglasses, her crew seemed to be an altogether more pasty, down to earth bunch. For those in the know this was Sill Plein Fruit, which with victories in the two handed Transat Jacques Vabre last year and more recently the Regate de Rubicon, is the boat which is proving itself to be the fastest on the Open 60 circuit at the moment.

For her skipper Roland Jourdain, know globally as 'Bilou', he is enjoying being 'on holiday', away from his home in the Vallees des Fous, the Figaro class' Breton stronghold of Port la Foret. "The Pen Duick society [the organisers of the Regate de Rubicon] said we were invited here [to the Giraglia], so we said 'why not?'" Bilou told madfor sailing. "We didn't think about it before, but with the program of the boat - the Regate de Rubicon [ending in Italy] and the Trophy de Marseilles - it was a good opportunity to come and for my sponsor to bring clients. It's what we've been doing here since last Saturday."

Looking around him at the multi-million dollar IMS hardware also parked alonside him stern to the quay in St Tropez he added. "It's a pleasure to compare the boat to the maxi boats, because we are on two different planets. We have a lot of things to learn from them and maybe we give some ideas to some owners to make an Open 60?"

At the Giraglia Rolex Cup, Sill Plein Fruit and fellow Open 60 Jean-Pierre Dick's Virbac were both racing under IMS, a rule about as alien to the Open 60 class as could be - quite how the IMS number crunching deals with rotating wingmasts and deck spreaders is hard to fathom. "Yesterday we didn't have any rating because the measurers came on Sunday for 10 minutes. So I phoned my sailmakers..." he trails off. Clearly IMS is not his boat's cup of tea and there for a corporate jolly he is not about to rejig his race winner to make it go slower. He is still fascinated when we show him the list of ratings which have Sill rating faster than a Swan 80.

But in the Open 60 world, Sill is top dog at present, which Bilou puts down to familiarisation with his steed and a continuous program of tweaking. "I think there is no secret. The boat is three seasons old now and we know the boat. What we did with the team is to work to improve its all round performance. We knew it could go very well upwind, but it was a little bit stuck in the light weather because of the wetted area, so we worked on the sails and it is like football, sometimes it is okay - and sometimes, it's not." Unlike the French national side, for Jourdain it has all be going right recently.

Since the Vendee Globe, the crews of the Open 60s which took part and have continued their programs have spent much time developing their boats, largely with the aim of making them lighter and de-Vendeeising them. "I think Kingfisher was better than Sill during the first two seasons. Even in the Vendee Globe she was lighter," he admits of the race in which he finished third behind Ellen. "But after the Vendee last year, we took 100kg out of the whole rig. There's PBO rigging now, instead of Kevlar and stainless steel fittings for the Vendee. That and two or three new sails that are different from the beginning, because I knew the boat better. So we tried some new things. But the boats are really close. We have a bit of luck too!"

Currently in Sill's sail wardrobe they carry a mainsail, genoa, trinquette, a little ORC jib, two spinnakers and two gennikers one which Bilou describes as "a little genoa for light weather, like a genniker".

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