Is This Crazy Race Even Possible?!?!? Arkea ULTIM Challenge!!!
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- Опубліковано 20 січ 2024
- On January 7, 2024, six of the largest and fastest sailing yachts ever constructed departed Brest on the west coast of France for a sailing challenge so extreme it has only been accomplished by four people in the history of mankind - to sail a multihull around the world, nonstop, alone in the Arkea ULTIM Challenge.
And these aren’t just any multihulls, but the biggest and fastest ever built, fully foiling, 32 metres long, 23 metres wide, weighting about 15 tons, and able to reach speeds approaching 50 knots on the open ocean.
In this video we talk about the challenges these skippers will face as they not only chase the blistering record of Francois Gabart of 42 days, 3 hours, but just try to survive without destroying their foils.
Arkea ULTIM Challenge: www.arkeaultimchallengebrest....
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This is one of the most interesting offshore races I've followed since the last Vendee Globe. It will be an incredible achievement for any of the skippers to complete it. So far, the only one who hasn't encountered significant damage or failures is the leader, Charles Caudrelier (Gitana). Everyone else suffered setbacks due to some sort of damage. Three teams are currently at Cape Town for repairs. Armel on Banque Populaire was the first to stop early in the race. Thomas Coville of Sodebo was able to find a solution to his problem at sea if I understood him correctly. With a total of six appendages, four of which are in the water at any given time makes many targets for floating objects to hit. Add the insane speeds these yachts are capable of and it's almost inevitable something bad will occur to most of the teams, unfortunately. The race committee already anticipated this and allowed stopovers for repairs.
SVR Lazartigue's damage is very severe. It's looking increasingly unlikely they will not resume the race with each passing day. If they do, it will be at reduced speeds and they've lost so much time already. I think they should retire to save the boat and send it back to France for a full repair job. It's an enormous disappointment to see this happen to them. They had completed a previous major repair to the yacht just before this race and arrived in Brest at the 11th hour only to have this happen to them after an amazing run in the Atlantic. Terrible turn of events.
Yes I believe Charles C on Gitana has now sailed further than anybody else in history on a fully-foiling ULTIM without breaking down! In previous Jules Verne attempts (crewed) on fully-foiling ULTIMs pretty much everybody has broken down before making it much further than Cape Town. And you’re right the SVR Lazartigue team must be completely gutted by their previous 11th hour repair, then doing so well, then another collision.
Didn't even know about this ultimate challenge race going on. Thank you for the heads up and the explanation of the history behind it.
Thanks - glad it was informative!
Thanks for a great summary! There is so much crap on YT about sailing, because it's just so "clicky" to have these beautiful beasts on the thumbnail. Thus it's nice to find some good information now and then, like this one or planet sail for example.
Thanks - glad you liked it!
It's insane that no one in the entire history of sailing has ever circumnavigated the world in a fully flying hydrofoil boat, so the winner will be both the winner, and the first man to have completed a circumnavigation of the world in a flying boat…
Yes I believe Francois Gabart’s Macif was upgraded to full-foiling the year following his record. There have been a number of Jules Verne Trophy attempts with fully foiling boats but they have all turned back due to damage.
@@robertcain3426where can we learn about your design?
@@guywhitworth5764
I'd like to give you my email address but it seems like I'm unable to. Sorry
I once sailed at 28 knts for 1 & 1/2 hours on a 55 ft try with a huge wing mast , These guys are on another planet mind the money getting pumped into these machines is mind boggling & now the kiwis with these AC boats sailing 4+ times faster than the wind , Truly amazing .
That must have been an exciting ride! I think even Jimmy Spithill thinks these guys are on another planet and he’s used to sailing ridiculously fast boats!!!
and they are all french boat, french skipper, french team, french sponsorship ... amazing... (and you can anderstand how strong had to be helen Macarthur to do what she does solo round the world on a multihull)...
Yes Ellen McArthur broke out of the traditional French mold in pretty much every way so truly a remarkable achievement!!!
@@SailingTipsCa Credit due Nigel Irens too.
@@dancarter482 Yes he’s an amazing designer too!
@@SailingTipsCa ua-cam.com/video/bHjBgvbePms/v-deo.html
@@SailingTipsCa Helen speaks very well french due years of training with french sailers in Brittany, she learnt a lot from the French mold...But I must admit that her achievement is remarkable
I have never ever turned on notifications for a UA-cam channel... until now.
Wow I’m flattered!!!
Very Impressive! But whilst the commentary mentioned the dangers of hitting floating debris, it neglected to mention the catastrophic results to be expected from hitting a whale, both to the boat and to the whale.
Yes you’re absolutely right that hitting a whale would be catastrophic for both! Thankfully the foils make an incredible amount of underwater noise which tends to alert whales of the danger so whale collisions are much more rare than floating debris!
I do think Gitana could (easily) break the 24h distance record between the 17th and 21th January (24h distance above 800nm during several days) but the team strategy was probably to save the boat, to increase chances to finish the race. Above 35knots, foils can suffer from cavitation. It was too early in the race to take any risk of damaging the foils. During one video, Charles, the skipper said he was slowing down on purpose. The priority is to finish the race.
Yes if he finishes he'll be the first to do so on a fully-foiling multihull so that alone is a great achievement!
Living in Lorient France where most of these boats are based I see them very often when they are at the dock but they spend a lot of time in their buildings, out of sight, to be repaired afetr a race and above all, to be improved. When they are at the dock, you can go and touch them, not climb without authorization, it's impressiveto see the overall size and especialy the size of the mecanical parts like the hydraulic cylinder controlling the mast located in the floats which are at least 2 meters long.
That must be really cool to be able to walk around them like that!!!
What a great video, thanks
Thanks - glad you liked it!
I don't know why these machines are essentially totally unknown in the US. Way more impressive than the AC boats in my view, which would break up in any real off-shore conditions.
I think it’s because most of the major players, sponsors, sailors etcetera are French and they don’t do a good job of promoting to the English-speaking world.
Thanks for the video, I really enjoyed your commentary, factual without being the usual over the top rubbish. Am I allowed to say "over the top" whilst talking about multihulls 🤷♂😂😂
Thanks - I try to make my videos rubbish-free wherever possible! And “over the top” is allowed…just need to be mindful of what gets you there and avoid it!
Just saw one of them pulled up in Hobart having its sails repaired
Cool - did you get a good look? Huge machines!
I think you should mention that sailing and circumnavigating the globe in the Southern Ocean is alone the MOST DANGEROUS sailing you can do, I forget the name of the race but when monohull boats raced there it was not unusual for 1/2 the boats to break badly for one or more sailors to die and usually only 20% of those that started that race finished.
Yes you’re right I should have been more clear on that point!
Are you referring to the 1998 Sydney to Hobart? That was a freak storm, so not the usual southern hemisphere summer weather.
Very impressive. But I have a question. What is downward lift?
Think of downward lift like downforce on a race car. In heavy wind the ray foil can pull the centre hull down to keep the boat from flipping while the leeward foil would lift the boat out of the water.
Svr lazartige was fully foiling today in its way to cape town for repairs after hitting something at 20 knots, show how tough the ultims are.
I suspect there may have been less water ingress into the main hull following the damage if the main hull was out of the water, but definitely a fine balancing act to not make the damage worse!
@@SailingTipsCa I think Tom Laperche said there were 8 tons of water in the main hull unless I misheard. It's a large vessel but that's a lot of water if indeed the case.
@@jamesaron1967 Definitely possible! There are supposed to be watertight bulkheads at defined intervals per the Offshore Special Regulations but these are huge boats and the weight of water adds up fast!!! The ULTIM class rules also require at least 200% buoyancy in the floats so they can definitely still stay afloat with the main hull completely flooded.
@@SailingTipsCa Yes, Tom mentioned the amas were the only thing keeping him afloat. Very scary. Surprisingly, he was still managing relatively good speeds on his way to Cape Town. A testament to how incredibly efficient these trimarans are despite their vulnerabilities.
@@jamesaron1967 Yes the long skinny hulls are VERY efficient, and perhaps ironically it’s Francis Joyon’s non-foiling IDEC SPORT that holds the current circumnavigation record (crewed) of just over 40 days.
Thx for reporting this in English!
You’re welcome - it’s hard to find info in English on this event!
Gary, I would like to see anything from your 2024 Swiftsure race?
Pretty lumpy out there especially with wind against tide! We started with a double-reefed main and jib and were still hitting well into the teens of boat speed without any more good options to depower and still sail upwind. Plus we had a couple of new multihull sailors on board who are learning the boat and very easy for things to get out of hand when it’s so hectic. We were cold and soaked after the first hour with buckets of seawater pouring over us and the conditions forecast to worsen so we retired before we broke something or became hypothermic!
Good idea glad you were ok. It blew hard all day here on Pender Island.
The Rothchild sponsor is wild
Yes and their graphics are intriguing to say the least!
Non stop? Are they resupplied at sea? How are batteries charged? Waste water and black tanks?
Yes nonstop, like the Vendee Globe. They are not resupplied at sea, but carry all the food and fuel they need for the trip from the start. Batteries are typically charged with solar or the engine, but they don’t use much power because the only boat control that is electric is the autopilot that steers, while everything else is human powered. Waste is generally pumped overboard which is typically allowed more than 3-12 nautical miles from shore, and there isn’t much of that with only one person on board.
If sailing solo around the world, how do they safely sleep?
They sleep in short shifts from 15 minutes to an hour while the autopilot steers the boat and AIS, radar, and camera-based proximity alarms keep an eye out for shipping and other things to crash into.
Well, ever since the '68 golden globe race it's been possible
In a monohull yes, but not quite a multihull at that time, let alone a fully-foiling multihull!
In Australia we saw people as solos, and part of a race, come adrift in the Indian Ocean. Down in the Roaring 40's they had to be rescued by our Navy. This exercise cost $3 million dollars, because no other craft could do it. Warnings were sent to all the Navies on Earth, about this foolhardiness. Now these adventurers must have their own Tenders who follow.
Yes Australia does have somewhat of an unfair burden of rescue in the Indian and Southern Oceans. Commercial vessels help sometimes but there isn’t much shipping in the area either.
Automatic subtitsels are weird. They departed Breast.
LOL yes they did absolutely depart Brest!
Whilst this is an exciting race in amazing flying machines it does not seem like real sailing when encassed in a digitally enhanced cockpit not even having to change a sail 😅😮
Certainly different that the typical experience of helming in the open wearing foulies! We’re typically going a bit slower though and not constantly exposed to 80-100kph winds…
@@SailingTipsCa enjoy
4 years ago, there was a race with these boats and with a mediaman onboard. In the following video, you can see that it is still sailing but another way of sailing. Trimming a sail does not look not easy. I do think they have two change sails as cumulated area of sails is changing significantly, depending on where the wind comes from (between 450m² to 650m² and probably less during the windy start). ua-cam.com/video/KM04K19NalY/v-deo.htmlfeature=shared
@@xg9898 Those are absolutely huge sails!!!
No sleep
Definitely very short sleep shifts - I don’t know how they do it for so long!
So it's finished now. None of them went round the world non-stop. And it really wasn't much of a race. Was it.
I once sailed to Ireland with a very experienced ocean sailing skipper and he emphasized the trade-off between safety and speed in yacht design. These yachts are only sailable singlehanded because of all the external meteo and routing input, that enables them to avoid severe storms, and the advanced autopilots that keep them on track and enable the sailors to get some rest. The foils are super vulnerable to foreign object damage sailing across open ocean at 30 knots. Obviously if your boat disintegrates in the depths of the Southern Ocean far from land you will be very fortunate to be rescued by helicopter. Maybe these yachts are 'a bridge too far'.
Yes once SVR Lazartigue dropped out it became much less of a race. After that Charles C sailed quite conservatively to preserve the boat, and I suppose it paid off in some ways given that in previous Jules Verne attempts no fully-foiling boat made it much further than South Africa. So making it all the way around was an accomplishment despite being a fair bit off Francois Gabart's record pace. To be fair Francois was able to pick his weather window...
Are you blocking my comments or is it yt?
I have a new multihull hullshape which is so unique that no one can believe its capabilities. It's been ten years of development frustrated by doubters. Give me a break please.
I haven’t blocked any of your comments. UA-cam automatically blocks comments with links or language that it considers “vitriolic”. I’d love to learn more about your hull shape.
@@SailingTipsCa Thanks for you reply. I suppose I have been naive in regard to this new hullshape by not realising that it is largely foreign to the thinking of designers who have learnt traditionional boat design. Also, this shape could only come about except that it is a multihull and multihulls haven't been around long enough in the Western design world to be fully explored.
Multihulls benefit from being able to have inner and outer hulls dedicated to separate functions. And, though this has been explored to some degree with asymmetrical hull shapes, it hasn't reached it full potential. Though, this new hull doesn't need to asymmetrical above the keel/waterline, it is symmetrical below the w/l. Something of a hybred perhaps.
To sum it up it could be described as a full keel design, with all its positive sea keeping abilities combined with high speed efficiency, not found with traditional full keel designs.
I've come to the conclusion I will have to produce a vessel other than the 5m beach cats I've been using as proof of concept and go it alone in every aspect of design through to marketing. Cheers and thanks for you interest.
@@robertcain3426 The normal methods of making a hull go faster are to 1) reduce surface friction and/or 2) reduce wave friction. Does your design rely on these or is there something else that makes it go faster?
We can’t stand Jimi