Jeremy, what state of mind are you in?
It's really nice to see the boat as a whole, because you follow the yard, but you see it one step at a time. This day - the workshop outing - is the day of the people who built this boat, who designed it, imagined it, calculated it. Especially the CDK people who implemented it. It is an important day for them when the site is empty. It's the end of a long story! It's still a year spent in the CDK workshops!
For them it's going to be a new boat that will go behind and for us it's going to be about sailing with this new mount. It's a day of transition and it's an opportunity to say that behind these boats, on which we sail alone, there are a lot of people who get involved, who give a lot... They are experts, people who love boats and work as a team. Between Charal Sailing Team and CDK Technologies worked hand in hand for 12 months daily and it went really well. We are all proud to bring out this magnificent boat.
What are the main features of the IMOCA Charal?
What really stands out is the size of the foils and then it's a boat that's pretty round behind. The shape of the cockpit changes a little bit from what we used to see in IMOCA. Until now they were quite square boats really U-shaped, there we find more rounded hull shapes to have a little less hull drag. The idea being to try with fairly large foils to fly as quickly as possible.
Everything has been a little imagined and optimized around that: the structure inside, the frigatage of the boat at the front, a hull that is rather narrow and many small developments around the cockpit, around the living area, around the electronics, the foil system. It's less obvious, but it's really a lot of optimization and development at all levels.
At what speed should it fly?
We have a boat that should start pushing on its foils quickly from a dozen knots of wind when we disengage. We have figures thanks to the final weight of the boat, the volumes of ballast tanks and bulb weights, we have received all the VPPs of the boat and the figures are quite nice with quite high speeds, especially in medium to strong winds. It was our objective to make the boat go fast and fast on its foils. At 12/13 knots of wind, this is a boat that will go quickly to 15/16 knots of wind. These are the numbers we're waiting for.
What is the upcoming program?
We're going to go to Lorient to mast the boat and perform the static and 90° tests. There is still a good week of work to be done and then we can finally go sailing.
