AN INNOVATIVE RACING PROGRAMME:
The Sun Fast 3200 is a racer-cruiser sailboat designed for offshore racing and optimised for sailing with a short-handed crew.
For this reason, the Sun Fast 3200 has been selected for the production model class in the Transquadra, where 17 owners will face off next summer, racing double-handed or single-handed for equal legs between the French
Although developed with this specific concept in mind, this new Jeanneau race boat is equally well suited for participation in the headline offshore racing events and in Sunday regattas around the buoys.
ISOTYPE: A new design concept for offshore races of equal legs
The Sun Fast 3200 combines the qualities sought by those who fervently race one designs and enjoy racing in real time and by the partisans of IRC races with handicaps, where a crew may race against a wide variety of sailboat designs and is therefore accorded compensation in timing.
The Sun Fast 3200 is first and foremost a sailboat designed for IRC offshore racing, and to this end, it conforms with the IRC rating system rule, first conceived of by the French “Union Nationale pour
Today, in the sphere of offshore sailboat racing, the IRC rating system is probably the only internationally accepted system with handicaps, allowing monohulls of diverse sizes, technologies and designs to race fairly against one another.
The international development of handicap races managed by the IRC demonstrates the success of this system and its rapid growth in popularity in the sphere of offshore racing.
The Sun Fast 3200 is also a one design
The originality of the Sun Fast 3200 is in its carefully balanced design, suited both to handicap races, governed by the IRC Management Committee, and to the strict one-design race, which has seduced the most avid fans of racing in real time.
The first rule of the One Design Class of the Sun Fast 3200 is to have the same level rating for all sailboats in the class, with a single TTC of 1.00X.
To achieve this, the essential elements that enter into the calculation of an IRC handicap were established as design criteria for the boat:
- The hull, the appendages and the rigging are identical to others in its class and cannot be modified.
- The boat must respect a precise inventory of equipment that corresponds to its weight. In answer to this, and made possible by the advanced technologies employed (particularly infusion), Jeanneau established rigorous industrial controls on the factory weight of the boat (+/- 40 kgs, or less than 1.15 % of the total race weight).
- The sail plan is fixed in its principal dimensions (height, width or IRC identical areas).
à Because of this, with the exception of a very limited difference in race weight (+/- 60 kgs), the factors contributing to performance are strictly identical from one boat to another.
The difference in weight, resulting from the weight of the factory model being increased by additional pieces of equipment chosen by the owner, has resulted in a correction defined in the rules for the one design class, which uniquely has bearing on the roach of the main sail.
è Therefore, all Sun Fast 3200s can simultaneously race in real time with all sister ships, and in adjusted time with other sailboat models. Until now, it was necessary to choose between a one design for racing in real time and an IRC sailboat for racing with the broader range of sailboats. This is no longer the case with the Sun Fast 3200, the first sailboat to claim the title of “Isotype.”
Credit for this accomplishment rests notably on the strength and dependability of the technology employed by Jeanneau in the construction of this new sailboat, and in the protocols for weight certification that were followed throughout the construction phase.
It is for this reason that the national bodies of the IRC (the UNCL and the RORC) have determined that the weight used in calculating the level rating of the Sun Fast 3200 should systematically be taken from the certificate of weight sent directly by the Jeanneau shipyard, in default of any other weighting.
Download the Class Rules as of 28.02.08 on the web site in the menu "the class"