The spectacular finish of Leg 2 in The Ocean Race demonstrates that you don’t need more than five boats to make a classic, and this one is already showing signs of being just that.After nearly 18 days at sea, it was Kevin Escoffier and the crew of Team Holcim-PRB who pulled out all the stops […]
11th Hour Racing Team, sailing onboard its 60-foot IMOCA race boat Mālama, has finished Leg 1 of The Ocean Race 2022-23 in second place. The opening leg of the grueling 31,700 nautical miles (36,500 miles, 58,700 kilometers) around-the-world race took the fleet from Alicante, Spain, to the Cabo Verde island of São Vicente. Crossing the […]
French skipper Kevin Escoffier led his Swiss-flagged Team Holcim-PRB to victory in leg one of The Ocean Race in the early hours of Saturday morning. It marked the end of an intense and challenging opening to The Ocean Race – from storm force headwinds in the Mediterranean to fast downwind conditions in the Atlantic with […]
Maxime Sorel: The big step from being one of the pack to becoming a performer You only have to look at Maxime Sorel’s impressive Class 40 career to know that this 35-year Frenchman is a highly competitive sailor who is more than capable of reaching the podium in major IMOCA races. So far he has […]
Some childhood dreams can become realities, others remain just that- dreams. For a 10-year-old boy growing up in Bendigo Australia, his childhood dream was to go faster than anyone else had done, powered by the wind. Speed has always been at the centre of Glenn Ashby’s existence, on yachts, motorbikes- or land yachts. The quest […]
The 30.48m (100ft) VPLP Design/Verdier Maxi Comanche, skippered by Mitch Booth, has taken Monohull Line Honours in the 2022 RORC Transatlantic Race, winning the magnificent IMA Trophy. Comanche has set a new race record for the 3,000nm race from Lanzarote to Grenada of 7 days 22 hours 1 minute 4 seconds. Comanche’s new Monohull Race […]
After a tough duel in the Atlantic, Giovanni Soldini’s team caught and overtook their rivals Argo and PowerPlay and closed the race with a real time of 6 days 18 hours 51 minutes 41 seconds. At 01:51:41 local time (05:51:41 UTC, 06:51:41 Italian time), Maserati Multi70 was the first to cross the finish line […]
On a beautiful morning off Fort de France in Martinique, the blue and white Guillaume Verdier-designed IMOCA LinkedOut, sailed by Thomas Ruyant and Morgan Lagravière completed a comprehensive victory in the fifteenth Transat Jacques Vabre today. The two Frenchmen enjoyed every minute of their triumph as they crossed the finish line after 18 days, one […]
Guillaume Verdier is one of the leading naval architects in the IMOCA class. He gives us his analysis of the evolution of the class, since its beginnings in the circuit in 1997, but also his opinion on the forces at work. How has the classroom evolved and what architectural changes have we seen since the […]
From the hull shape, to the dynamic foils, durable sails and advanced systems of 11th Hour Racing’s IMOCA 60, every area of this around-the-world machine has been optimized. Now it’s up to the sailors to get it to its full potential. “The marine environment is harsher than any other, even outer space; the salt, wind, […]
Once again Emirates Team New Zealand has entered the history books and won the America’s Cup for New Zealand for the fourth time. On day 7 of the 36th America’s Cup presented by PRADA, the Kiwis scored the 7th point they needed to raise the Auld Mug in front of thousands of spectators. A spectacular […]
The Pogo Foiler is a production prototype, designed to create an off-the-shelf Mini 6.50 that can compete in the experimental prototype class. François Tregouet reports Since the Pogo 1 was launched in 1997, the Pogo Structures yard in Brittany has won ten out of the last 12 Mini Transat 6.50 races (the single-handed transatlantic race […]
On the 2016 race Thomas Ruyant was lying eighth when his IMOCA60 memorably hit a floating object hard while he was west of New Zealand. With his boat progressively splitting in half he nursed it into Bluff, New Zealand. Now Ruyant is back armed with a well sorted Verdier design LinkedOut which has proven highly potent. Third […]
Guillaume Verdier’s work at the moment seems to span everything from the America’s Cup, where he continues to innovate as a key naval architect with Emirates Team New Zealand, to IMOCA where he has contributed foil design for Sam Davies and others, there are two freshly launched Vendée Globe boats for Thomas Ruyant and Charlie Dalin preparing to take on […]
25 knots in the Strait of Bonifacio. Flat sea. Perfect conditions. Time to sail. Fast. Designed on a new generation hull derived from the Imoca 60 by Guillaume Verdier and Axel de Beaufort, this state-of-the-art ship is halfway between racing and cruising, combining a bespoke elegant design with sailing performances. The hull is […]
Transat Jacques Vabres 2019 Le Havre-Rio. First race and first success for Apivia, the latest IMOCA Designed by Guillaume Verdier and his Team. Congratulation to Charlie Dalin, Yann Elies and the Mer Concept team. ADvens takes the 4th place after an amazing come back during the race. A great performance, only 8 weeks after launching. […]
2 Renowned Naval Architects To create this high-performance sailboat, which is to be sailed either fully crewed or short handed, Jeanneau enlisted not one, but two renowned naval architects: Daniel Andrieu and Guillaume Verdier. Daniel Andrieu, the naval architect behind the Sun Fast line since its inception, is a proven expert in optimizing for the […]
The Rolex Sydney Hobart Race, the last major yacht race of 2017, is set to begin on Tuesday, and this already has been Guillaume Verdier’s year. Verdier, a velvet-voiced Frenchman who likes his desk messy and his conscience clear, remains eager to deflect credit elsewhere, but his creative streak has contributed to quite a winning […]
“I’m sure if there are things that are not going to work, we will fix it with the time we have.” So says Guillaume Verdier, when the New York Times asks the Team New Zealand boat designer if the new America’s Cup boats will actually work. The Frenchman has led the America’s Cup in such […]
Comanche, the innovative record-breaking 100 foot maxi yacht designed by VPLP and Guillaume Verdier and launched in 2014 for Jim and Kristy Clark, has been sold to Australian Jim Cooney. ©Sailingscuttlebutt