Evolution Marine Manufacturing of Cape Town, South Africa, is excited to announce the build of a brand new Class40 scow, designed to take on the hottest fleet in offshore sailing today.
Over the course of the past 18 years, the Class40 has proven to the be most versatile, exciting platform available for short-handed offshore sailing, boasting a fleet of over 190 boats racing in all corners of the globe. The skipper driven class has resulted in a stable rule that has delivered proven reliability and exciting racing across the most classic race courses in the world. With fleets finishing within minutes after thousands of miles of racing, no other class can produce the excitement found in Class40.
In recent years, the fleet has come to be dominated by scow designs, blunt bowed versions of the Class40 that get on plane quickly and deliver meaningfully faster average speeds than prior generations of Class40s. The scow bows have dominated the podium since they first appeared in 2018 and the expectation is that they will lead the 55-boat fleet of Class40s entered in this year’s Route du Rhum.
Evolution Marine is excited to be partnering with Owen Clarke Design (OC) to launch the Evo40. OC has a long history of assembling design teams to create innovative IMOCA 60s and Class40s and is highly confident that their design for the Evo40 can best the rest of the scow Class40 fleet across a wide variety of race courses.
The first boat is being built for an American client, Michael Hennessy, who plans on racing her in Europe in 2023 before bringing her home to the USA. Michael, who has been racing in the Class since 2008, plans on entering his boat in the Normandie Channel Race, Fastnet and Transat Jacques Vabre next year.
With over 100,000 ocean miles in his current Class40, Hennessy brings his considerable experience to the design process and has worked closely with Evolution Marine Manufacturing and the design team to create the most optimized Class40 afloat.
When asked what led him to Cape Town for his new Class40, Hennessy replied “South Africa has a long history of quality yacht construction, and the team that Oliver Dawson has assembled at Evolution Marine is world class. I looked at builders all around the world for this project, and believe I have the best partner possible to deliver a winning boat.”
Evolution Marine has started construction and expects to deliver boat #1 to Europe in March of 2023 for final fit out.
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