Owen Clarke Design have been involved with the development of Class 40's since the rule’s inception back in 2005 and have now produced fourteen custom/semi–custom and five production boats, since 2006. Our designs have been Class Champion, won or placed on the podium in events such as: Class 40 Mondial/ISAF Worlds, Route du Rhum, Round Britain and Ireland Race, Normandy Channel Race, Atlantic Cup, Bermuda Race, Bermuda 1-2, Marblehead-Halifax and the Transat Jacques Vabres. In the 2019 season our previous generation design and the first to be raced by a professional duo, #157, Imagine, finished third in the 2019 Normandy Channel Race, second in the La 40 Malouine in St Malo and a close run sixth in a very demanding and record breaking Transat Jacques Vabres (TJV). More recently Merf Owen, the lead designer of Dragon 2, our newly built Class 40 scow raced and completed his second TJV on the Marc Lombard designed 40, PolkaDot.
You Tube video with designer Merf Owen pre TJV 2021:
Transat Jacques Vabres Class 40 dock walk
Credit: RORC/Arthur Daniel
OC's new 2023 scow design (graphic at bottom of this page) is a another product of 'out of the box' and innovative thinking that's been a feature of each of the six generations of 40's we've completed. Generation 4 was Longbow # 143, designed with IACC designer Clay Oliver, built at Carbon Ocean Yachts, USA and launched in September 2015. This superbly detailed development fast 40 footer was built in a female carbon mould and launched in Newport, Rhode Island where there is an active 40 class. Optimised for the light to moderate conditions that are typically found on and off the New England coast, this design broke away in many areas from the typical Class 40 designs found in Europe. Among the features new to the class were a masthead rig and six ballast tanks (three per side). She also sported an independent under-deck headsail sheeting system, for faster trimming in inshore regattas. An album of design, sailing and build photographs for #143 Longbow can be found in the following
FACEBOOK ALBUM
Class 40 is intended to be a ‘broad church’, although with the exception of Owen Clarke boats, all of the recent designs have, not surprisingly, been Franco centric, developed for the pro/semi-pro French sailor and optimised solely for trans-oceanic races, the Route du Rhum in particular. While our boats have appeared on the podium of both the Rhum and the TJV and most of our clients wish to race predominantly offshore, others never complete a long-distance event. Hence, the development of a series of polyvalent designs for amateur/club sailors have become somewhat of a niche for us in recent years. Class 40 is a box rule that has produced boats that are capable of racing fully crewed (typically 3-5 persons) in classic events such as the Fastnet, Bermuda Race, as well as short-handed in races such as the AZAB, TJV and Atlantic Cup. With our latest design that has changed: Dragon 2 has been specifically designed for the Route du Rhum, with hull, sailplan and ballast optimised for the anticipated conditions using CFD and Router. She also sports the highest level of cockpit protection in the fleet today.
Credit: Atlantic Cup
Building on our eighteen years’ experience of designing and racing in the class, using the latest design tools available this is Dragon 2, built at Evolution Marine, Cape Town and fitting out at Maine Yacht Centre in the US. She is a scow bow design, optimised and focused on providing a platform to win the Route du Rhum and
THE RACE AROUND
. As well as active design and build support (five visits to the yards for the the current boat), OC continue to update and conduct tender processes with yards, sail-makers and suppliers worldwide and have a considerable amount of information and costings that allow our boats to be built anywhere in the world. For those sailors and owners who have not commissioned their own boat before we have produced a useful guide describing the design and build process. It answers many of the questions you're likely to have about commissioning the build of a custom or semi-custom race boat.
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