Ocean race for midgets

Today 60 21ft ocean going skiffs will set off across the Atlantic from France to Brazil

The boats
Another great aspect of the Mini Transat are the design developments. The class no longer limited solely in keeping their LOA beneath 21ft and there are a number of rules governing stability and limiting the cost involved in building and equipping the boats. However the net result is still the equivalent of a 21ft ocean going skiff, where the light weight boats are able to fly enormous spinnakers and gennikers from their fold out bowsprit/spinnaker poles. They are simply fantastic boats to sail, with all the exhilaration of a high performance dinghy.

But it is the design ideas that competitors and architects alike put into practice in this fleet that is remarkable. Over the years what appears to be a fiendishly complex spinnaker arrangement has been developed involving a massive stayed pole that folds back within the deck area of the boat and that needs a secondary bowsprit to provide the leverage to swing the pole out forward. Most competitors have systems involving Spectra strops to tack their large downwind and reaching headsails at some point along their spinnaker pole.

Water ballast is still popular, but passe in this class (as it is now in the Open 60 class). Canting keels are in, operated by a block and tackle system (the Open 60s use hydraulics) and the real pioneers in this class have models which cant, can be moved fore and aft (in various different ways) and can be trimmed or any combination of these things.

Although gear is limited to the bear essentials, autopilots are obviously vital equipment, but few other mod cons are allowed such as the large chart plotters that are used for navigation when short handing Figaro boats.

The fleet is divided in two between a 'Proto' class, effectively one-off designs and 'Series' production boats such as the Pogo and the older Coco. The Brits taking part are all in the Proto class, where there are vessels from many of the top names in the Open 60 class, like Groupe Finot, Marc Lombard and Pierre Rolland (who designed Bernard Stamm's Bobst Group). Rolland is the most profilic designer in this class, but the most credible is Sebastien Magnen, who aside from being a talented naval architect has also won the last two races.