The 30-metre boat has been altered considerably and given new appendages withperformance in mind. It is now at its home port, Port-la-Forêt, where François Gabart and his team are all set to prepare for the Route du Rhum-Destination Guadeloupe.
The MACIF trimaran entered the CDK Keroman boatyard on 10 January 2018, and left it six months and a half later in Lorient, practically three years after the boat was first launched on 18 August 2015. All through the summer, François Gabart and the MACIF team continued to develop and enhance the reliability of the Ultim, designed with passion by the architects of VPLP, as the succession of wins show: double handed in the Transat Jacques Vabre in 2015, single-handed in The Transat Bakerly in 2016, with a crew in The Bridge in early July 2017, before a fantastic Single-handed Round the World Record between 4 November and 17 December last year (42 days, 16 hours, 40 minutes, and 35 seconds). Alterations to Enhance Performance However, this success did not encourage the team working with the skipper to rest on its laurels, since, before MACIF was even launched in 2015, the project to enhance it following a first phase of sailing had already been planned and became concrete in spring 2017:
“We already knew that we would carry out significant modifications in the winter of 2017 to 2018, first because we were only just beginning to understand how flight works on trimarans this size, when we designed MACIF, and then because we knew that we would have strong contenders as of summer 2017,” said François Gabart, who was referring to the Edmond de Rothschild and Banque Populaire IX Maxis.
So in spring 2017, studies were carried out with the design office, alongside Antoine Gautier, the VPLP architects and Gsea Design, specializing in structural calculations, with clear specifications:
”The goal was to boost MACIF’s performance. After spending nearly 2 years mostly working on enhancing her reliability, we focused on performance, and therefore flight, the major performance challenge of the moment”, explained François Gabart.
Tackling flight meant new appendages, and version 2 of the trimaran was launched on 31 July with longer thinner foils, but also lifting T-rudders. Particular attention was paid to the aerodynamics of MACIF, with new sails and a whole load of small details aimed at reducing the aerodynamic drag of the boat at full speed. They also developed an autopilot, especially tailored to the skipper’s needs. “Fly Earlier, Higher and Faster”
What do these developments hope to achieve?
“The 2018 version of the MACIF trimaran will clearly be a very different one to the boat we have known up until now. She will fly earlier, higher, and faster,” said François Gabart. “We hope that all this work will help us compete with other boats in the Route du Rhum-Destination Guadeloupe, and then, of course, in the round the world in 2019. We will find out in the Route du Rhum, since it will be the first time that our Ultims meet.”
Between now and then, François Gabart and his team have lots of work to do, specifically two and a half months in which they will need to sail regularly, so that the skipper get to know MACIF again, which he sees as “a new boat”. ”I will need
to be good and make quick progress to understand how to get the very best from her,” he said.
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