Ultim : les dernières infos Tip & Shaft

Four Ultims set off on Saturday from Lorient for the 24H Ultim, a solo race of around 500 miles, which is designed to serve as a dress rehearsal at just over a month before the start of the Route du Rhum-Destination Guadeloupe. Among these starters will be Banque Populaire XI, whose skipper Armel Le Cléac’h took time out to answer questions from Tip & Shaft.

Yves Le Blevec is the Deputy Mayor of La Trinité-sur-Mer in charge of water sports and tourism, he is race director of the Mini en Mai which starts on May 17 and of course is also the skipper of Actual Ultim (which was runner up on the last Route du Rhum as Francois Gabart’s Macif 100) which has just been relaunched.  And so clearly Yves Le Blevec is something of a busy man. Before his solo training started he took the time to talk to Tip & Shaft.

François Gabart opened up on the dispute between his team and the Ultim 32/23 class – in effect made up of Sodebo, Banque Populaire, Actual, and more recently Gitana Team – regarding the rules compliance of the trimaran SVR Lazartigue. Since then the parties have stuck to their guns. Tip & Shaft runs back over the chain of events which now finds a deadlock situation.

Last Tuesday at the Paris Boat Show, the Nautic, OC Sport Pen Duick confirmed that Brest will host the start and finish of the Single-handed Ultim Round the World Race in 2023. It is a race which a lot more details will become known over the coming months, as also will the program for the seasons 2022 and 2023 the full details of which are not fully formalized.

The Maxi Edmond de Rothschild, considered by many to be the favourite in the Ultim class on the upcoming Transat Jacques Vabre, suffered foil damage during training last week out of Port-la-Forêt. This setback does not seem to worry Franck Cammas, co-skipper with Charles Caudrelier, as Tip & Shaft’s discovers when we caught up with him.

A little over a month after the launch in Concarneau, of his new Ultim SVR Lazartigue François Gabart takes stock of his first sails aboard the giant trimaran on which the emphasis was focused heavily on aerodynamics.