The “Class 40”
Class40 was born as a result of the distillation of excellent yet simple ideas. Designers, sailors and boat builders had been working on the idea of a dedicated offshore race boat for some years prior to the creation of the Class in 2004. A boat somewhere in between a Series Mini and an ocean-going 60 footer. A true race boat of course, but more than that… a boat sufficiently seaworthy to safely sail across the Atlantic. The Class40 was already well on its way…
For several years, ideas had been based around a 40 footer, but had not yet taken form. In 2004, at the request of many people in the marine industry, skipper-journalist Patrice Carpentier took the initiative to draft the Rules for Class40. He brought together the skipper Michel Mirabel, Christian Bouroullec of the Structures Boatyard, and Pascal Jamet, CEO of Volvo and passionate about sailing. Between them, they created the "Class40" Association.
Benetau Figaro 3
The Figaro BENETEAU 3 is the first production foiling one-design monohull ever to be designed. A distillation of technology and innovation, it results from a collaboration between group BENETEAU’s best experts and the Van Peteghem Lauriot-Prévost (VPLP) office, the architects of the two last boats to win the Vendée Globe.
“The challenge that was proposed to us, summarizes the naval architect Vincent Lauriot-Prévost, was to make a high-performance boat as reliable as the Figaro Bénéteau 2 was. We did a lot of work with the specialists of the Bénéteau Group in order to to design a hi-tech boat, in terms of materials and manufacturing process ”.
Always invested in high performance and competition sailing, the Bénéteau Group has brought together the best experts within its brands and businesses to design and build this new generation. They thus contributed their know-how in the design of the one-design by VPLP. In order to optimize series production and comply with the strict rules of the one-design, the Bénéteau Group has created a specialized unit The Bénéteau Racing Division and set up a production site dedicated to the construction of the Figaro Bénéteau 3, located at Nantes-Cheviré.