Mirabaud LX modifications declared a success

Mirabaud LX on Lake Geneva © Pierre-Alain Follier / Mirabaud LX

As the Lake Geneva Classics season comes to an end, the Mirabaud LX team, led by Thomas Jundt, is largely satisfied with the modifications made to the development foiler.

The Mirabaud LX foiler, one of the most innovative sailing crafts on the lake, lined up for the Lake Classics, Geneva-Rolle-Geneva and the Bol d'Or Mirabaud in June.

The team raced with the conventional rig as opposed to their usual wing mast for these two light air events. "The wing works very well but the system lacks rigidity as we can't get enough tension on the forestay. In light airs with the genoa it is imperative to have a tight forestay to sail quickly," explained skipper and owner Thomas Jundt.

The new foils and float were hugely successful in the wide-ranging conditions that the boat raced in throughout the month. The modified appendages have a leading edge of 260cm, a trailing edge of 240cm and 16cm of cord, making them fast, especially in light airs. "Their impact on when the boat flies is not that significant, it might take off a little bit earlier, but where you really notice a difference is when the boat is on the water," said Thomas Jundt. "The drag is drastically reduced and we slide over the surface much more smoothly than before. The boat has become more all round which is a big step forward."

Mirabaud LX finished 18th in the monohull class at the Geneva-Rolle-Geneva and 17th at the Bol d'Or Mirabaud and the crew that includes Antoine Ravonel, Eric Gobet in addition to Thomas Jundt was pretty happy with the result: "When we are flying, we are very quick. To illustrate the point, during the Bol d'Or we were crossing tacks with the M2s as we came out of the Petit Lac which demonstrates the performance potential of the foiler," said Jundt. "But we do struggle a bit in the light airs and the last bit of the Bol d'Or was very light and very tricky, we lost a lot of ground in a wind shadow which didn't really affect the bigger monohulls driven by inertia."

The focus for the next half of the Mirabaud LX season is to master the wing mast. "From the beginning of August, we will start sailing with the wing mast again and will be working on how to make it more rigid. The wing is a superb tool that deserves to be developed to its maximum potential. Handling is a bit complex, but it makes the boat manoeuvres easy, doesn't get overpowered and never flaps."

Thomas Jundt let slip that he is thinking about a new boat and that the design will benefit from the five years of development put into Mirabaud LX. "It will look like an improved 18 footer with foils and a wing mast. We'll see, I don't know whether we will do it or not yet."

If conditions are right during the training sessions, Mirabaud LX will attempt some of the Lake Geneva record attempts, such as the hour record and kilometer record and the development foiler still has the Six Heures de Nernier and the Double de Versoix on its race card.