Les Sables-d'Olonne (France) (AFP)

Keenly awaited on the Vendée Globe, the 'flying' boats, or foilers, have not kept all their promises even if they have monopolized the podium, and must review their copy to be faster.

"The foil has been around for a long time, Eric Tabarly was already working on the foils. We opened up a new path by making our boats fly or semi-fly, I think we can go even further," assures AFP the winner of the Vendée Globe 2020, Yannick Bestaven (Maître Coq IV), equipped with foils.

The foiler is equipped with foils, these lateral appendages which raise the hull above the water to make the boat spin at high speed.

There are the latest generation foilers and the first generation foilers, including Bestaven's one.

The foilers struggled in the rough seas of the deep south and didn't make a difference as much as some thought.

On his classic boat (known as a straight drift), the dean of the race Jean Le Cam (Yes We Cam!) Has long stood up to the foilers, sometimes even taking the lead.

And he protested: "The flying boats, they did not fly very well. We have to stop the bullshit. Between the guys who said they were going to do 69 days in the Vendée Globe and in the end they are not even going to go. faster than Armel (Le Cléac'h) the last time. It reframes things a bit ", he had launched after the difficulties of the two big favorites, Alex Thomson (abandonment) and Jérémie Beyou (13th), who did not were not tied to their foils.

- 'Interrogated' -

Bestaven took 80 days and 3 hours, six days more than Le Cléac'h, winner of the previous edition.

And no record has been broken on the various parts of the world tour.

It was the weather conditions that mainly put the brakes on the accelerators of the foilers.

"Me the first, I expected that we break speed records, that we turn around the planet quickly. The situations that we encountered made that the right drifts could return", explains Charlie Dalin (Apivia), second in the race on a latest generation foiler.

For one of the craftsmen of foilers, "the behavior of large-foil boats has not been tamed in the Indian Ocean".

"The boat accelerated violently at 30 knots and stumbled in the front wave and slowed down quite violently. Today we have to understand the dynamic behavior of the boat in a different way. We have to reduce the difference in speed. It's going to be a new approach which puts us face to face with the paradox of not necessarily designing the same boat to win a Transat as to win the Vendée Globe ", remarks the naval architect Quentin Lucet," challenged "by the fact that the foilers last generation did not necessarily go faster than the first generation.

- The scow concept -

Among the grievances raised by some skippers like Jean Le Cam are the high costs of these foilers.

A brand new foiler costs 5 to 6 million euros, a pair of large foils can go up to 400,000 euros.

So to make the foilers move faster, some are turning to the concept of scow hulls.

"Basically, these are spatulated fronts like powder skis for example, it allows passage to the sea which is different from more conventional or pointed boats which tend to split the sea while scow type boats tend surfing the waves ", comments the naval architect Sam Manuard, designer of the boat of this type skippered by Armel Tripon (L'Occitane), which has caused a lot of envy.

Manuard said he had already been asked to design new models.

Of the 33 starters in this Vendée Globe, 19 were foilers, including 8 of the latest generation.

Of the first 10 classified, there are 6 foilers.

In the 2016 edition, where foilers made their appearance, 7 out of 29 boats were foilers.

According to the Imoca class, 3 foiler construction projects have already been launched.

© 2021 AFP