Class 40 revolution: Vincent Riou launches a boat with a single rudder and trim tab

The Italians involved in the Class 40s have a formidable opponent on the horizon, Vincent Riou in fact (winner of the 2004 Vendée Globe) is ready to return to ocean racing and will do so with a brand new design. A revolutionary Class 40, designed by Riou himself and built by Pogo Structures, that promises to give more than a headache to our Beccaria, Bona, Fornaro, Riva, Luciani.

Riou has ended his experience as skipper in the Imoca 60 Class where he was one of the leaders for several seasons, and has decided to focus on the Class 40s where the projects are easier to implement, the boat less tiring for a skipper who is no longer very young, and the technical level still very high.

Class 40 Pierreval – What will be revolutionary about it

Vincent Riou’s Class 40 Pierreval is boat number 203 in the class ( Beccaria’s Allagrande Pirelli is 181, to be clear), and before now the previous 202 were all made with double rudder blades. Riou displaces everyone and now comes up with a single-bladed boat, something practically unheard of, at least not in modern ocean sailing where boats are all equipped with a double-bladed.

The news, however, does not end there, because Pierreval’s keel drift blade is equipped with a trim tab: basically, the keel exit profile is adjustable as if it were an airplane flap, allowing the blade to become asymmetric and increase its lift when necessary. The boat at the moment has still been shown very little by Riou himself, but he has carried out the first sailing tests and declared himself satisfied.

A Class 40 designed for upwind?

A boat with such an appendage configuration seems to be able to be designed to optimize performance especially upwind: one less blade in the water reduces hydrodynamic drag, and the trim on the drift blade could further improve the boat’s performance especially at narrow gaits where the drift component is more important. In reality, double-bladed boats can still sail with only one submerged (from heeling or with the upwind one pulled up), however, the narrow, long profile of a single blade, upwind can be much more effective than the generally shorter, wider profile of double blades.

Ocean races after all, especially the transatlantic ones of recent years, are also won upwind, a gait where the difference can often be made. Just think of how much upwind there was at the last Rum Route, where the fleet for more than half the course sailed at a tight pace. Riou’s boat could thus follow a very interesting path, although the first date where we will see it at work, the Transat CIC, which will depart from Lorient on April 28 bound for New York City, comes quite early when presumably the new Class 40 will not be at its full potential.

Mauro Giuffrè