t does indeed look interesting- my hypothesis is they are trying to get the deck as low drag as possible and also generate aerodynamic lift this the inverse shear front and taper aft.
The Scow is making a comeback, thats for sure.
IMOCA 60’s being Open Design has allowed for 60ft’er to plane upwind now, with the revolution of foil design and rotational wings in the rigs means less drag in the waterline and more opportunity to plane upwind. Where once the design would have needed to “plough a trough” like trad bow designs, there no need now as the bow rarely needs to punch through, rather glide over the top. The chines give definition before the beam to allow pointing combined with he foils, otherwise each “wave” would knock off the bow and upwind angles would be less acute.
The fat stern has been in vogue since the early 90’s, again planing surface allowing water to glide off the back at anything more than 10knts (‘ish)
I’d love to see the hull inverted, be much clearer to see where the V is (if any) and how far back it goes (but would expect no further back than the front of the mast foot.
Not too sure about he graphics on the stern, looks like the designers are playing with a Lambo CAD programme.. and pretty pointless other than to create media interest (as per the bat mobile above, which no doubt is the aim of the design in this area)
I have been on his old (natch) Open 60 around the IOW, him and a few from the Club got the opportunity, and it was stunningly fast with 1 slab in and stonking upwind. It pointed really keen and once up on the plane seemed to point even higher.. once around the Needles and offshore about 4miles we put up the code 0 and the thing flew downwind to St Cat’s. Felt like about 10mins to get there.. but the whole trip was fast. Over-riding memory was it was bloody noisy, slamming over waves sounded like a car crash and the pitch and yaw coming of even modest 5ft waves around Freshwater Bay felt like we’d take off and land on the waves 40mtrs in front and pretty much miss out on the ones in between.
He (Alex) is a driven character thats for sure, but he certainly has the steely eyed mentality of an offshore sailor. Whilst I think this endeavour maybe a bit wasted on him (recent history proves my particular point) I think he’ll certainly have the quickest boat out here, and even the French are still making variants of the last designs as competition.. So good on him.. It’ll be an interesting race..