The third edition of the Vendée Arctique-Les Sables D’Olonne race, which sets sail on Sunday, includes two of IMOCA’s great characters among its fleet of nine, in the form of the Italian sailor Ambrogio Beccaria and the veteran Frenchman Manuel Cousin.

Both of these skippers start this challenging assignment, which takes the fleet from Les Sables D’Olonne on the Bay of Biscay to the Arctic Circle and back, on boats which have emerged from the winter after substantial re-fit work. 

In Cousin’s case his Coup de Pouce is a new boat for him and it’s his first foiler. It’s the former La Mie Câline – a VPLP-Verdier design from 2010 that was launched originally as Foncia 2 – and the 58-year-old two-time Vendée Globe finisher has now added new foils. 

For Beccaria sailing Allagrande MAPEI, the Antoine Koch-Finot Conq flying machine from 2022, new foils are on the way but not yet fitted after a substantial schedule of work over the winter to alter their position within the hull. 

Cousin took part in both previous editions of the Vendée Arctique in 2020 and 2022, so he knows this can be an exceptionally tough race with rapidly changing weather in a region of the world where deep low pressure systems can make life very difficult for solo sailors.

 

He says his goal is to use the race to continue the process of getting to know his new boat and, after years in the IMOCA daggerboard fleet, get to grips with the new world of foiling. And the former auto industry executive who quit his career to follow his dream to sail around the world, is eager to get started.

“We haven’t really set ourselves any performance goals in the Vendée Arctique because it’s still very early days,”he told the Class this week. “We installed the second foil only 15 days ago and we haven’t done many outings. My qualification went well, but I still don’t have an in-depth knowledge of the boat.

“This race is going to help me become one with the boat,” he added, “get to know it better and de-bug everything that needs de-bugging, because obviously it’s all brand new. We installed the latest-generation of foils, so there are bound to be loads of things to learn - it doesn't happen overnight.”

Cousin says he will work with the weather, but not push too hard if conditions deteriorate to the point where he feels he is taking too many risks at this early stage with his new boat. “I don’t want to make mistakes or burn my wings, if I can put it that way,” he said. “I think it’s important to learn how to master the beast first.”

For the ebullient young Italian skipper Beccaria, trying to do the same will be hard for a sailor who admits he can’t help pushing to the limit in the white heat of competition. And the Vendée Arctique will be Beccaria’s first race solo on Allagrande MAPEI - the former For People. He admits that that brings with it some concerns, as he takes on the north Atlantic and rivals like Sam Goodchild (MACIF Santé Prévoyance), Corentin Horeau (MACSF), Elodie Bonafous (Association Petits Princes-Quéguiner), Francesca Clapcich (11th Hour Racing) and Nico D’Estais (Café Joyeux).

© anne beauge

“I have a lot of worries,”said Beccaria, 34, a former successful Mini and Class 40 sailor. “But then I did my qualification for the race one week ago and it went very well and that gave me a lot of confidence and I need a lot of it, so now it’s better. But I am very, very concerned about this race because it’s a difficult race, and I know that I have eight or nine days in front of me that are going to be very challenging psychologically. But I know that I will do what I know I can do, so it’s just going to be a sailing race.”

Beccaria and his team have altered the position of the foil casings on the boat to lower them in the hull to give the boat more lift and power in all conditions. However the new, and bigger, foils for the new configuration will not be available until after the Vendée Arctique so the Italian skipper will be sailing a boat in hybrid condition during this trip to the waters around Iceland and back. “It’s going to be a little bit weird in this race because we have foils in a new position for which they are not optimised,”he explained. “But we have to go step-by-step and wait until after the Vendée Arctique to discover the true potential of the boat.”

Alongside the work on the foil casings, Beccaria and his team have also worked hard to lighten an already fast boat, removing, for example, a large amount of the electronic equipment and installing smaller and lighter replacements. “Weight is a philosophy, so if you see it you can remove it,” said Beccaria. “We didn’t lighten the structure of the boat, so it’s a huge amount of electronics, maybe the top category. We reduced the number of screens, we have a much smaller PC, much smaller everything to save wait and to save energy.”

All together the work on the boat over the winter has been extensive and expensive, but Beccaria says his main sponsor MAPEI has been completely committed on this score. “This is an IMOCA boat and it’s an IMOCA project, so it is definitely not cheap. But they are a very big company and very invested in this project, so they were very, very happy to choose to do a project like this,”he said. 

Beccaria is looking forward to racing against a high quality fleet but acknowledges that the in-form - and current IMOCA Globe Series Champion - Sam Goodchild is going to be hard to beat. “MACIF and Sam are far in front because they prove that every time, except in the Transat Café L’OR that they did not win. But in all the other races, when there are conditions that are not only downwind, let’s say, they have always won. So I think they are going to be very complicated to beat,”he said. 

Cousin, meanwhile, will be the oldest skipper in this race, a few years ahead of fellow Frenchman Arnaud Boissières on April Marine-Recherche Co-Partenaire. Like Boissières, he is still completely in love with his chosen sport as he continues his build-up to what will be his third Vendée Globe in 2028.

“I train really hard and the desire is still there,”he said. “The little flame is still there and it’s burning just as strongly inside me. I want to continue as long as I feel it’s still possible, as long as I’m enjoying myself and it doesn’t become ridiculous.”

These days he is thinking about those coming up into the Class after him and wanting to share what he has learned over the years and help young sailors make the step to IMOCA. “What would really please me is being able to share whatever knowledge I have gained about these boats, about doing a Vendée Globe, about preparation, about these magnificent machines, all of it,” he explained. 

“And I’d want the next person to be just as passionate as I am, because I think that’s essential - otherwise there’s no point, it just doesn’t work. So what drives me is simply pleasure, desire, passion and maybe later on, the desire to share and transmit that experience.”

Ed Gorman