IMOCAs in the Rolex Fastnet Race: ocean racing's state of the art
by James Boyd / RORC 16 Jul 11:27 PDT
26 July 2025
IMOCA fleet including monohull record holder MACIF at the 2023 Rolex Fastnet Race start 2023 © Paul Wyeth /
www.pwpictures.com
One of the most historic and eternally ground-breaking oceanic racing yacht classes is the IMOCA. These 60 footers are the world's most advanced offshore racing monohulls, the class used in the Vendée Globe since its inception in 1989/90 and, more recently, in the fully crewed Ocean Race. Today the IMOCA class regularly includes the Rolex Fastnet Race in its annual championships.
IMOCAs date back to 1980 when the Royal Western Yacht Club imposed a 56ft maximum length limit for their singlehanded transatlantic race (OSTAR), a length also adopted for the first BOC Challenge singlehanded round the world race in 1982/83. This was increased to 60ft for the 1984 OSTAR and subsequent BOC Challenges. Thus the 'Open 60' was born, initially an 'anything goes' class limited only by length, although extra requirements were quickly introduced including a '10° rule' (ie an Open 60 should heel by no more than 10° with movable ballast deployed) and mandatory watertight bulkheads.
The IMOCA class was formally established in 1991 and further important rules governing stability were added in the late 1990s to fix the issue at this time of designs capsizing and remained inverted, as they did notably during the 1996 Vendée Globe. Since then many more rules have been added and refined to the extent that many key parts of modern IMOCAs are one-design, including the mast, boom, canting keel mechanism and keel fin.
Over the last decade IMOCAs have been undergoing a technological and performance renaissance, fitted with foils enabling them to 'fly', technology that has since evolved, lowering take-off speeds and improving airborne stability. Far from this rarifying the class, it has never been more popular with a record 40 entries competing in the last Vendée Globe.
While largely unrestricted, early Open 60s were the nemesis of the heavily rules-based IOR racers championed by the RORC at this time, but the advent of the IRC rating rule in the late 1990s enabled these boats to compete alongside conventional racers. And so the Open 60 Whirlpool-Europe 2, skippered by Catherine Chabaud won the 1999 Fastnet Race outright on IRC corrected time. Since the 2005 Rolex Fastnet Race, the IMOCAs have competed in their own class, with the most capped winner being 2004 Vendée Globe victor Vincent Riou and his PRBs in 2007/11/15.
The performance of the latest generation IMOCAs is staggering. In the last Rolex Fastnet Race eventual Vendée Globe winner Charlie Dalin and his IMOCA MACIF not only won class but also claimed monohull line honours ahead of substantially larger non-foiling monohulls, establishing the present monohull record of 2 days 7 hours 16 minutes 26 seconds. However this translated to an average speed of just 12.57 knots - pedestrian compared to the 15.37 knots Dalin and MACIF averaged on the Vendée Globe's 'theoretical' 23,905 mile course last winter.
Sadly, after winning the last two editions of the Rolex Fastnet Race, Dalin has had to stand down from IMOCA racing temporarily for health reasons, thereby opening up the field.
In his absence, favourite must be Yoann Richomme and Paprec Arkéa. A two time winner of both the Solitaire du Figaro and Route du Rhum, Richomme was runner-up to Dalin in both the last Vendée Globe and the 2023 Rolex Fastnet Race (finishing less than four minutes astern). He continues to campaign his 2023 design by Antoine Koch and Finot-Conq.
Also to watch is Association Petits Princes-Queguiner, a new sistership to MACIF, launched only in February, designed by Guillaume Verdier and with strong input from François Gabart's company MerConcept. Skipper Elodie Bonafous, 29, is a former J/80 World Champion who has managed top-eight finishes in the last three Solitaire du Figaros. She is supported by a world class crew including two past Solitaire winners, Pascal Bidegorry and Yann Eliès, who have gone on to great things in the maxi-multihull/Volvo Ocean Race and IMOCA classes respectively. Association Petits Princes-Queguiner finished a welcome second on her first outing - June's Course des Caps race around Britain.
Bonafous says of the Rolex Fastnet Race: "It's a monument in maritime history that gives us an international dimension and the opportunity to compete against the greatest sailors. It's also an iconic event that brings together the most beautiful boats in the world, from the smallest to the very largest. And symbolically, when we think of the Rolex Fastnet Race, we think of those photos of boats in the Solent and off the Needles.
"From a sporting perspective, the course is classic and well known. The Fastnet is like our Cape Horn of the Northern Hemisphere. And I'm very happy to be doing this race as part of a crew, because the competition is sure to be intense, with a very high level of racing."
Never to be discounted is Jérémie Beyou, a three time Solitaire winner, returning with his Manuard-designed Charal. Beyou, 49, has been campaigning IMOCAs for more than two decades, although Vendée Globe victory still eludes him, his best result to date having been third in 2016/17. Beyou won the Rolex Fastnet Race in 2019 and returns with his 2022 generation Manuard design, aboard which he finished fourth in the last Vendée Globe. Among his crew is successful Irish Figaro sailor Tom Dolan, winner of the 2024 Solitaire du Figaro.
Britain's Sam Davies has been in the IMOCA class for a similar time to Beyou after finishing fourth in the 2008-09 Vendée Globe. Her Initiatives-Coeur 4 is another Manuard design of a similar vintage to Beyou's. Davies is racing with a largely female crew including Violette Dorange and Italian Vittoria Ripa di Meana. Very much an inspiration, Dorange, in 2018, aged 18, became the Mini Transat's youngest ever entrant. She followed this up with three seasons honing her skills in the Figaro class and then a low budget 2024-25 Vendée Globe campaign, when aged 23 she was also the race's youngest ever competitor (a year younger than Ellen MacArthur was in 2000-01), her Devenir-McDonalds coming home 25th of 32 finishers.
All eight IMOCAs have female crew but three have female skippers. In addition to Bonefous and Davies is Davies' former Team SCA crew, Switzerland's Justine Mettraux, who earlier this year was eighth and first female home in the Vendée Globe aboard Teamwork.net. This is the 2018/19 VPLP-designed former Charal, which Jeremie Beyou sailed to victory in the 2019 Rolex Fastnet Race and second two years later. Since the Vendée Globe Mettraux has joined forces with leading Mini/Figaro/Class40 sailor Xavier Macaire and his Team SNEF. The duo have a new Teamwork-Team SNCF II in build, a Verdier design due for launch next year.
For Canadian Scott Shawyer, the Rolex Fastnet Race is a case of unfinished business, having started in 2023 only to break a vital stay forcing their retirement. "I am very much looking forward to it - it is an absolutely historic race," says Shawyer. "We sailed on the Solent for a couple of years, and even around the Fastnet Rock a couple of times, but I haven't put it together in a race format yet." Since then Shawyer has acquired a more modern foiling IMOCA, the Ocean Race winner 11th Hour Racing, that then finished third in the last Vendée Globe as Sébastien Simon's Groupe Dubreuil.
Shawyer spent 26 years as owner/CEO of JMP Solutions, an industrial technology company providing engineering services and turnkey solutions. His Canada Ocean Racing - Be Water Positive team is managed by ex-IMOCA skipper Nick Moloney and has a new crew including Britain's Pip Hare and Brian Thompson and France's Christpher Pratt and Sébastien Marsset (both Hare and Marsset competed in the last Vendée Globe.)
Meanwhile Shawyer is getting to grips with his new foiling machine. "The power in this boat and the speed potential is unbelievable. When it gets up on the foils - it goes! The ride is more comfortable on some points of sail and more violent on others so it is a matter of taming the beast to be fast but liveable. You don't want to break stuff and it can't be completely violent all the time so it is a case of picking your spots."
Also on the start line will be two older boats - Manuel Cousin's Coup de Pouce and Louis Duc's Fives Group-Lantana Environnement, which finished 31st and 26th respectively in the last Vendée Globe. Launched in 2010, Coup de Pouce was originally Michel Desjoyeaux's Foncia II but finished second in the 2012-13 Vendée Globe as Banque Populaire. Fives Group-Lantana Environnement was built as Vincent Riou's Farr-designed 2006 vintage PRB, which finished third in the 2008/09 solo round the world race.