There are many ironic facts about the 2012-13 Vendée Globe fleet… among them is that, although a Bruce Farr design completely dominated the previous race, only Verdier/VPLP and Owen-Clarke have new Imoca 60 designs competing this time round

Guillaume Verdier and Vincent Lauriot-Prévost (VPLP)

Seahorse: Your design partnership is from this race responsible for all but one of the new designs. Can you still recall Marc Guillemot’s rationale when, six years ago, he approached you jointly for your first Imoca 60…

Guillaume/Vincent: The idea of approaching our offices together was to mix fast offshore multihull experience from VPLP with Imoca 60 experience from Guillaume. Marc had identified that with boat speeds escalating, more and more multihull technology was becoming relevant to these boats – especially around foils and appendages.

SH: So for Imoca 60 projects you work together as one?

GV/VPLP: There is no written contract between us, but the past few years’ collaboration demonstrates just how complementary this approach has proved to be. Between our two offices we can cover every design aspect to a high level: hull shapes, rigs, structures, fluid analysis, composites, race modelling and meteo analysis and so on.

SH: Six of your designs will be at the start in Les Sables and they are all driven by top skippers. What are the main differences across the six?