In view of the Vendée Globe 2020, the highlight of the IMOCA circuit, the IMOCA Charal will improve its performance. During three and a half months of winter work, about twenty people will work on four major projects: foils, ergonomics, energy and sails.
Foils for the Vendée Globe
Charal will therefore be equipped with a new pair of foils for the solo round the world race, which will start in November 2020. These foils have mainly been developed for this course, 80% of which is run downwind.
Version 1 of the foils corresponded more to the conditions encountered on the Route du Rhum 2018 and the Transat Jacques Vabre 2019, which are mainly raced reaching with upwind conditions and some fronts at the beginning of the course.
"Our V2 foils are more Vendée Globe style, but are also the result of a year and a half of experience feedback from our V1 foils. We started thinking about it over a year ago. We could have decided to install them for the Transat Jacques Vabre, which would have allowed us to gain a little in performance, but we preferred to gain 6 more months of studies for even more optimization. It's certain that with the conditions encountered on this Jacques Vabre - a lot of downwind sailing without front passage - we would have been faster" explains Pierre-François Dargnies, Technical Director of the Charal Sailing Team.
Performance gains
"We have compiled weather statistics to find out what conditions we will encounter in the Vendée Globe, but our foils are also suitable for upwind sailing, otherwise it would complicate the climb up the Atlantic. We know that we will have very significant performance gains on the Vendée Globe track, but also at all speeds" adds Pierre-François.
We will not know more about the shape of these foils, "which will be quite different from the V1 foils. It's a huge advantage to be the first boat to be launched, but we also know that we can be copied." pierre-François explains. It will therefore be necessary to wait until April 2020 and the launch of the silver monohull to discover them.
Adapt the foils to the weather conditions
If the Charal Sailing Team keeps the V1 of its foils, it is only "in case", as Pierre-François explains: "Version 1 foils have evolved a little and become "spare" foils and will be reused if the V2 foils break, unfortunately."
But would it be possible to keep them for reuse in the Transat Jacques Vabre 2021, for example, since they are perfectly suited to the conditions encountered on this course??
"The foils are interchangeable from one race to the next and do not require any structural modifications on the boat, only a change of bearing. With less complication, we can switch from one version to the other." explains Vincent Lauriot-Prévot, from the architectural firm VPLP, who designed the IMOCA Charal and worked on the design of these new foils.
If Charal will keep his version 2, the result of a long work of experience, for the rest of the season, it is not absurd to consider adapting the foils according to the conditions encountered on the races. Certainly, this is a significant financial cost when we know that a pair of foils (design, manufacturing, installation) is around 500?000 to 600?000 euros.
"On The Ocean Race, they're thinking of having two pairs of foils - upwind and downwind - to be installed depending on the stages and conditions, but on the Vendée Globe, it's hard to afford this kind of thing" concludes Pierre-François.
