Professor Michel Desjoyeaux’s return: the guru starts over from the Class 40s

At the age of 60, “Professor” Michel Desjoyeaux, a two-time winner of the Vendée Globe (2000 and 20008) and one of the sailors who has most influenced modern ocean sailing, has decided to give himself a gift: a return to ocean racing with a new sports project and a new boat built from scratch, a Class 40.

Involving him was French skipper Alexandre Le Gallais, who first engaged him as a consultant on his old Class 40, then proposed that he start from scratch with a new boat. The Professor himself was personally involved in the design of the Class 40, with input from naval architect Olivier Mousselon, and involved Mer Forte, the company he founded in 2009 with Denis Juhel that specializes in optimizing ocean-going boats and was acquired by the Spanish group CT Engineering in late 2020. The hull was built in Port-la-Forêt by Mer Agitée, the shipyard that was founded by the Desjoyeaux family.

Desjoyeaux with Alexandre Le Gallais will be at the start of the Transat Cafe l’Or on Oct. 26, an exceptional return to a transatlantic for the Professor, who has been away from racing for more than 10 years now, but has always remained a point of reference in the ocean racing world for his enormous technical background.

The new Class 40 is still being broken in, and from a design point of view, it has different volumes from the rest of the fleet, especially in the bow.

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Michel Desjoyeaux. A Myth Called The Professor

Michel Desjoyeaux was a great innovator and one who literally revolutionized the world of ocean sailing. His two Vendée Globe victories, the only one in the history of sailing to have succeeded, are the fruit of a journey that started from afar, always seeking the frontier of innovation and performance.

It was running in the 1980s when in Port La Foret, along with the likes of Yann Eliès, Roland Jourdain, Jean Le Cam and Christian Le Pape, the Professor was animating what was nicknamed as the “Vellée des fous” the valley of the fools, the embryo of the Pôle Finistère Course au large training center that in the years to follow would become the focal point of French ocean racing, and not only.
Desjoyeaux was one of the first to realize how important it was, as design progressed as applied to the ocean Open, for sailors to also become a bit of an engineer and technician, to know every detail of their boat and give designers input on technical solutions.

Not only that, Desjoyeaux also changed in the 1990s the way of approaching ocean racing: he shifted the skipper’s focus from adventure to the sporting project and performance, without being afraid to state “I race to win.” It was a radical change in philosophy that “shook up” the world of French ocean sailing and beyond, and brought it into the contemporary dimension we know today, certainly less romantic than in the past, but with much more technically complete sailors and top-level competition on the water.

He has launched sailors of the caliber of François Gabart, who in turn is doing the same thing with the younger generation through his Mer Concept stable, from which, for example, Charlie Dalin, the latest Vendée Globe winner, also emerged. For all this, and more, we love, so much, to see the Professor back on the water.

Mauro Giuffrè

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How well Zorzi and Gamenara did at the Mini Transat! And meanwhile, the Class 40s at the Transat Café l’Or…