All change at IMOCA

With 20 new boats built over the four years leading up to the start of the last Vendee Globe, you might be forgiven for thinking that the IMOCA Open 60 class was in good shape and it would be a case of ‘if it ain’t broke - why fix it?’ However the huge attrition rate from the last Vendee Globe, combined with the boats returning in the middle of a global economic meltdown has meant that the class collectively has had to put its thinking cap on to work out ways to protect itself in these uncertain times. The issues were made following a number of presentations and discussions before the class voted on them at their AGM. This all took place over several days at the end of last week. The end result – having followed this class closely for about two and half decades – seems to have been some very sensible decisions made. Traditionally taking collective action within the IMOCA class association has been about as easy as herding cats, with all the teams and skippers holding different viewpoints. We were not at the meeting, but it has been confirmed by several people who were, that on this occasion IMOCA was finally showing some solidarity, with everyone in agreement firstly that action was needed and secondly the direction this action should take. Newly re-elected Class President, Temenos 2 skipper Dominique Wavre took time to fill us in with some details. Unfortunately unlike the problems the class had with boats capsizing and remaining inverted during the mid-late 1990s, on this occasion there has been little common threads other than boats primarily suffering keel or rig/fitting breakage. Delving any deeper into the actual reasons why these problems occurred and it quickly becomes apparent that they were all, pretty much, from