VIDEO AND PHOTO Interview with Andrea Mura: “At the Vendée to vi… play it out.”

The new IMOCA 60 on which Andrea Mura will compete at the 2016 Vendée Globe (the nonstop, unassisted solo round-the-world race) has taken shape at the Persico Marine shipyards in Nembro (BG), an Italian excellence in the international shipbuilding scene: around the beginning of August it will be launched in Lorient to immediately face the commitment of the Transat Jacques Vabre (from Le Havre to Itajaì, departing next October 25). Together with the Sardinian sailor, we visited the shipyard to get a closer look at the boat, an all-carbon bolide. Let’s hear what Mura told us, who is certainly not going to the Vendée to “make up the numbers,” but to play on an equal footing with the world’s greatest oceanicists:

OUR INTERVIEW WITH ANDREA MURA

THE THREE STRENGTHS OF THE BOAT
Paolo Bordogna, one of the engineers behind Guillaume Verdier’s design in collaboration with the VPLP studio (we are talking about “top” names in ocean boat design), has identified three design solutions that make the 60-footer truly innovative and–touching iron–competitive. The bow characterized by a round shape and the flat-bottomed hull, with a maximum arrow of 22 centimeters from bow to stern; the very backward tree, which makes it possible to reduce the surface area of the mainsail to the advantage of that of the headsails, and increase performance at the carriers (during a round-the-world voyage most of the time, statistically, you go slack); finally foils, which although they do not allow the boat to rise in the air exert an upward thrust of about 3,000 kilograms (we are talking about a hull that will weigh about 7,000, very little).

SEE PHOTOS OF THE BOAT IN THE YARD

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A PACKED SCHEDULE BETWEEN NOW AND 2018

Here is Andrea Mura’s competitive schedule from here to 2018

2015
TRANSAT JACQUES VABRE: Le Havre (France) – Itajai (Brazil), Oct. 25
BTOB: Saint-Barthelemy-Roscoff (France), Dec. 5

2016
TRANSAT: New York (USA) – Les Sables d’Olonne (France), May 29
VENDÉE-GLOBE: Les Sables D’Olonne (France), Nov. 6

2017
ROLEX FASTNET RACE: Isle of Wight – Plymouth (UK), Aug. 13
TRANSAT JACQUES VABRE: Le Havre (France), Nov. 5

2018
BARCELONA WORLD RACE: Barcelona (Spain), January.
ROUTE DU RHUM: Saint-Malo – Point-à-pitre (France), November.

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