Thoughts on the Figaro Beneteau III

[Foolish Muse]

The February print edition of Yachting World Magazine has done an article with deeper information on the Figaro III. I've been waiting for this before making any comments on the design. I've got a few concerns.
1. The foils will cost E35,000 a pair. YIKES! These boats will be sailed at night in coastal waters, where there are typically lots of logs and debris floating around. E17,500 is a hefty bill for hitting a log at speed, something I've done plenty of times.
2. Fixed bowsprit. The Figaro II was designed with a symmetrical spinnaker at the request of the experienced skippers to allow for downwind sailing, common in the Figaro races. I won't get into the asym versus sym debate, but couldn't they at least have put in an articulating bowsprit? That would have taken the sailing range back as far as 145 apparent. They get some nice breezes in those waters, perfect for deep downwind running. That's all gone now.
3. Only running backstays. I hope and pray that the mast can withstand a 25 knot gybe with the chute up and the running backstays completely ignored. 3:00 am is a bad time to ask a singlehander to make intelligent decisions about line handling. The 3-day Figaro races do not really allow the skippers to get into the 24 hour sailing cycle of the trans-ocean races.
4. At full speed, the foils will add 30% extra righting moment. I love the idea of foils to eliminate the need for water ballast and reduce leeway, but the greatest need for this is when beating up into the wind. This is the boat's slowest point of sail and the foils will offer minimum lift. (Lift increases with the square of speed.) Will they offer any benefit when beating?
5. At 14 knots, the foils will add 15% to speed. Just how often does a 33' boat reach 14 knots? Yes it will be thrilling in the downwind videos, but what will the day-to-day normal sailing that we are all familiar with be like?
6. Roller furling headsails. This means that there will be a lot of weight (the roller unit and 1/3 the weight of the sail) sitting at the top of the mast - the worst place for weight on a singlehanded boat, that must be offset at the bottom of the keel.

I will be thrilled if all of my concerns are put to rest. Your thoughts are more than welcome.

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

It doesn't sound like it's the boat for you. Have you looked at the Anderson 22?

 

[flaming]

I too have some reservations about the new boat, but they pretty much all centre around the foils. I don't see any justification for the upside down design other than to beat the DSS patent, and I think the price quoted rather reflects the unnecessary complication that design produces.
The fixed bowsprit is fine. If you think an A-sail cannot sail deep on high performance boats, then I would respectfully suggest you're a little out of date. Putting an articulating sprit on the boat would have added a lot of cost for an extremely marginal gain. Putting a symmetrical kite on a modern race boat just doesn't work.
Runners (or more accurately twin masthead backstays - there is a difference) are just becoming the norm now. If there is an accidental gybe they are nothing like as problematic as an old school runner, as the boom always clears them and it's only the top part of the sail that gets caught. Not ideal, but not a threat to rig integrity.
I share your thoughts about upwind performance. I doubt the boat will be any quicker than the fig 2 on a heavy air beat.
Roller furling is interesting. This will of course be furling and not reefing, so I suspect they have configured the sail plan to have only a couple of jib options, with the expectation of normally picking a sail for the race and sticking with it. Leaving a roller furling jib up when heading downwind with the kite up is no big deal. Especially as I suspect that when the breeze is up they will folllow the thinking in other fast classes and leave the jib set. Only furling it in lighter conditions. A big gain in ease of sail handling for a fairly manageable loss in performance. Especially if the sail plan is OD.

 

[Foolish Muse]

have you looked at the Anderson 22

I singlehand an Olson 30 with sym chute. Just keeping my eye on advancements in singlehanded design.

Runners (or more accurately twin masthead backstays - there is a difference)

The article says "running backstays" but that could be a misunderstanding. Twin masthead permanent backstays would be great. Perhaps you're right. I'm concerned about losing the mast in a gybe, not just clipping the boom.

Putting a symmetrical kite on a modern race boat just doesn't work.

Yes, I certainly know this is the trend, but not something I'm keen on. The final 1/3 of the Singlehanded Transpac is dead downwind and an asym just isn't the way to go.

I share your thoughts about upwind performance. I doubt the boat will be any quicker than the fig 2 on a heavy air beat.

With no ballast to keep the boat upright, the leeway will be terrible in these conditions. I tend to spend 2 hours of beating for every 1 hour of running, so I'd really like to get better upwind performance.

The wind's gonna blow 15 this afternoon and it's a balmy +5C outside, so time to go sailing! Have fun.

 

[flaming]

Yes, I certainly know this is the trend, but not something I'm keen on. The final 1/3 of the Singlehanded Transpac is dead downwind and an asym just isn't the way to go.

1/3 of a transpac is an awful lot of distance. Sailing off at 140-150 with a big A-sail on something like this that can plane or foil is always going to be a lot, lot faster than poling back and running deep.

The thing with the Figaro, is that actually not all that much of their racing is upwind, so maybe they've decided to just sacrifice a bit of upwind speed for gains in simplicity. Sort of makes sense in an OD class. Or rather it does before you see that foil...

 

[ifoxwell]

You only have to spend some time in performance dinghys, and get a proper handle on apparent wind sailing, to know that a symmetrical kite has no place on a performance boat. If your sailing it properly you will always be going upwind, or close to it, so the pole on a symetrical kite will be pinned against the forestay any way.

 

[Foolish Muse]

Here is a route map from the Singlehanded Transpac a few years ago. Can you guess which boat flies an asym? He added quite a bit of distance and placed 13th overall in the race. When the winds are blowing consistent 20 and 30 in the squalls, near DDW is the way to go.

 

[flaming]

It doesn't depend on the wind, it depends on the hull.

That new fig with an Symettric kite would be thrashed downwind by one with an a-sail sailing angles.

 

[flaming]

Here is a route map from the Singlehanded Transpac a few years ago. Can you guess which boat flies an asym? He added quite a bit of distance and placed 13th overall in the race. When the winds are blowing consistent 20 and 30 in the squalls, near DDW is the way to go.
View attachment 62869

Out of interest what type of boat was the boat that sailed angles?

 

[Foolish Muse]

Out of interest what type of boat was the boat that sailed angles?

An extremely fast Owen Clarke designed Open 50. Of course a sample size of just one boat in one race is a really terrible way to compare spinnaker types, but I'm not giving up on my thoughts about syms. I really like the way they sail deep down wind in a blow. At 23.6 knots of wind, my Olson 30 picks up off the water and planes and the whole world gets really exciting.

 

[flaming]

At 23.6 knots of wind, my Olson 30 picks up off the water and planes and the whole world gets really exciting.

That's an extremely precise windspeed!

I totally agree that for most boats Sym is the way to go. And a boat that doesn't plane until 23.6 knots of wind is definitely one of them. But lighter, newer, boats designed from the off to be A-Sail boats are simply faster downwind when sailing angles with a large A-sail than they ever would be sailing deep with a smaller Sym kite.

This Fig will be planing a long way before 23.6 knots of wind. About 15 would be my bet.

 

[temptress]

MY thought was 'FMIWO' -- I want one - looks like a lot of great sailing and fast fun racing....

 

[caleb001]

It doesn't sound like it's the boat for you. Have you looked at the Anderson 22?

Exactly.

 

[Foolish Muse]

New photo out of the III.


Holy Cow that's a lot of draft. And for the life of me I still can't figure out how the foil improves righting moment upwind. I can't wait to see it in action to see how it works. More info on the Beneteau site http://www.beneteau.com/us/figaro-beneteau-3 The draft is not listed. The upwind sail area is just 4 metres more than the II.

 

[flaming]

New photo out of the III.
View attachment 65373

Holy Cow that's a lot of draft. And for the life of me I still can't figure out how the foil improves righting moment upwind. I can't wait to see it in action to see how it works. More info on the Beneteau site http://www.beneteau.com/us/figaro-beneteau-3 The draft is not listed. The upwind sail area is just 4 metres more than the II.

I guess when heeled a significant portion of the foil will be horizontal, which would help a bit. My suspicion is that this thing will be pretty poor upwind. Possibly even worse than the Fig2, which is not a very good upwind boat. But it's OD, so providing it's reasonably exciting to sail and reasonably bulletproof it shouldn't matter.

What I hadn't seen in the renders previously was just how blunt the bow is.

 

[Chris 249]

You only have to spend some time in performance dinghys, and get a proper handle on apparent wind sailing, to know that a symmetrical kite has no place on a performance boat. If your sailing it properly you will always be going upwind, or close to it, so the pole on a symetrical kite will be pinned against the forestay any way.

But the Figaro be that high in performance? Even things like Farr 40s seemed to like going under a sym at times. By the way, an Olson 30 is not exactly like an Anderson 22; it's J/97-ishor J/92-ish in speed.

Personlly I think the FIII looks like an over-priced trendy toy that is ridiculously impractical, and the price of those foils is just silly. It's also silly to see the number of journos who have said "if Beneteau are doing it then foils must be the coming thing". Beneteau have regularly gone off on tangents with their special racing boats - no one went to water ballasted foils after the Figaro 1, production half tonners pretty much died after they built the F30 race versions like King One, the First Evolution one ton was a dead end, etc etc etc

I also can't work out how the foil is going to maximise RM at the right time, which is either going upwind or when you're crashed out and boatspeed is low. If this sort of thing becomes popular can one imagine raft-ups and club races? Imagine how much a single nudge at a dock or startline would cost. When the sport starts seeing owners as nothing but cash cows it's not a good thing.

 

[mrming]

The Figaro III is confusing alright.

Here's how I understand it:

The foils don't lift the hull. They're meant to add righting moment and reduce leeway. No idea if this will work at this kind of speed but VPLP have a certain amount of credibility.

The Figaro class is a rung on the ladder for ocean racing. Sure the III will be heavy and not ideal for a-sails unless it's blowing, but the next steps on the ladder are true a-sail boats, and it's a one design offshore racer, so it doesn't really matter if it would be faster with a sym kite in many conditions - everyone will have the same setup. It also makes sense to get used to handling some kind of foils as the IMOCAs already have them and the Volvo boats are getting them.

So yes the Figaro III would be a stupid boat to buy unless you want to go proper ocean racing. For normal offshore racing boats like the Sun Fast 3600 and the JPKs make more sense and I don't think we'll be seeing moustache foils in club racing any time soon.

 

[Chris 249]

I suppose I'm just not a real foiling believer. Sure it's fun (although personally I don't find it amazing, but I come from a background including windsurfing where we do incomparably more moves enormously higher above the water) but normally the performance advantage doesn't seem to be worth the financial and logistical costs. The Moth is arguably special case because it's already such a low-drag beast that foils have a much greater effect than in other types. The FIII's foils don't seem to add enough speed to be worthwhile.

Adding lots of extra cost and hassle, and further dividing the sport into smaller and smaller ghettoes of "normal IRC boats" and "foiling offshore boats" etc doesn't seem to be wise, IMHO. It may work in the Channel, where a huge population and the geography means that the French and British fleets combine to get enormous numbers, but it's a bit of a disaster in most places in the world where critical mass is hard to come by.

 

[Roberto]

Currently moored in st gilles croix de vie, beneteau hq, the black prototype is on the hard, I took a few photpgraphs.
How much do you pay for the pictures ?

Just joking of course, give me a few minutes to upload them


Here they are, sorry photobucket does not allow direct link any more so I put them in my blog
http://sybrancaleone.blogspot.fr/2017/08/figaro-3.html

Surely a machine it would be very exciting to sail

 

[Foolish Muse]

Here is a new video showing lots and lots of detail:
https://www.facebook.com/yachtingworldmagazine/videos/1488750617874872/

I still have lots of questions about this boat design.
The first winch, right in front of the skipper, controls the running backstay? Should this be the most accessible winch?
The next winch, just a foot forward, controls the halyards? Is it necessary that this be so close to the skipper?
Where is the jib sheet winch? This is the winch I use most often.
There is essentially no bunk inside. Sure, a bean bag is fine while racing, but what about the days before and after each race?
Lots of other questions too.