Class winner in the heavily windward 2000 race was Belgian Ronny Nollet when his extreme La Promese set a slowish time of 21days 6 hours. Ronny has campaigned this boat for seven years and in the right conditions the Rowsell design is probably the fastest forty-footer in Europe having proved its speed by completing the 1200 mile outward leg of the Azores and Back race in 6.5 days in 1999 and 5.8 days in 2003. Michel Kleinjans sails his unlimited Roaring Forty, fresh from breaking the 2,500 mile Round Britain & Ireland solo record Record #sailingrecord in 11days. A veteran of two OSTARs in the Figaro1, Michel holds the 30 foot class record Record #sailingrecord at 20 days 14hrs.

The Lutra designed hull which displaces 4,300kg and sets 107square metres of white sails, is more suited to the mixed windward conditions encountered on the rhumb line to Newport and with a new suit of Ian Vittorengal’s sails he must have a very good chance of beating the class record of 19 days 11hrs held by Simon Van Hagen (Seatalk) since 1992.

The two Belgians are close friends but fierce rivals, in previous head-to-heads Michel has proved marginally faster, besting Ronny 3 to 1 in last year’s Petit Bateau races over 1000 miles of Biscay courses. In the 2003 AZAB, Michel took line honours but both boats retired from the stormy first leg of RWYC Round Britain and Ireland in 2002 with structural damage.

The emerging French ’Class 40’ aims to provide fast but affordable fortyfooters by limiting exposure to exotic materials, prohibiting swing keels and restricting water ballast. At a minimum displacement of 4,650kg these boats are significantly heavier than the Belgian fliers. Pierre-Yves Chatelain, another victor of Petit Bateau 2004, will race his spit new Jumbo Class 40 designed by Pierre Roland and built by Jumbo construction. ’Destination Calais’ carries 112 square meters of white sail and draws 3 metres. P-Y told Petit Bateau that he had been tres content with the 1,500 miles of sea trials since launch in February 2005 but recognises that more time would be an advantage in his first transat anglais.

Patrice Carpentier is no stranger to the OSTAR course having completed the race on three previous occasions as a warm-up for his main event, the Vendee solo non stop circumnavigation ! He is a late replacement skipper in the prototype of the Finot designed Pogo Class 40 ’Yellow Basket’ owned by Pascal Jamet. Patrice will be the man to set the pace for the Class 40’s in a race where experience and resolve are the trump cards. Patrice is a colossus in French sailing, a contributor to the magazine ’Course au Large’ which reported on the gestation of the Class 40 in several issues and is very much a driving force for the class development.

The third French Class 40 is that of Michel Mirabel, in another Pogo 40 at 4800kg. Michel is a seasoned solo transatlantic sailor having completed four mini-transats, many in Pogo 650s and two Transquadras in his Pogo 850. He will find beating along 50 north latitude a refreshing change from trade-wind surfing in the tropics.

The 3 Class 40’s take on the Atlantic at some considerable risk. Being very new and in the development stage this first race is bound to reveal problems that may prove insurmountable in such a long beat, the results will indicate how far advanced these new boats are compared with the older opens of Kleinjans and Nollet.

Professor Pieter Adriaans has made radical changes to his Robosail, abolishing the complicated canting mast that Conrad Humphries tested to destruction at the start of the Route du Rhumb in December 2002 and replacing it with a carbon unstayed mast and cat rig which sets a impressive 100 sq.m mainsail and saves 400 kg in weight. 4,000 miles of testing over two years have proved the durability of the rig and Pieter is hoping for mixed conditions to minimise the acknowledged weakness of this sail plan in pure windward work. Pieter’s secret weapon may be the intelligent autopilot, developed in his lab at Amsterdam University that gave the boat its name.

With an average age of 40 years, Nico Budel and Hannah White are at opposite ends of their ocean racing careers. Both have acquired very well travelled 40’s from the around alone circuit which are extremely tough and well proven but with skinny canting keels may be optimised to off-wind conditions less often encountered in the North Atlantic. Consulting the Hitch Hikers Guide to the North Atlantic* every OSTAR new boy will read that’ The North Atlantic is big ,really big , you just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is, you may think that a trip to Cherbourg is a long way but that’s just peanuts to the North Atlantic’ .

This fact soon becomes understood after surviving the first frontal attack and the beating that accompanies such events, leaving the Atlantic novice pondering the GPS readout with over 2,500 miles or more still to go and the prospect of several more geostrophic moments of depression. The relentless grey breaking seas and the featureless grey skies are offset only by the remarkably warm sea washing over the chilled tiller man as he ponders on the enormity of the task before him.

* Douglas Adams, Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. 1978.