It's a great introduction to the circuit for a top boat since Mike Golding has demonstrated during the Imoca circuit over the past few years, that the architectes had managed to design a very homogenous boat and one that is fast on every point of sail. A development of the Ecover II design (now known as Mutua Madrilena) but earlier than the next generation Temenos II and Ecover III. Spirit of Canada is the first IMOCA monohull made in Canada. Spirit of Canada certainly lacks fine tuning but its delivery from Canada to Brazil is already a guarantee of its reliability prior to this single-handed transatlantic to Brittany.

"This ECOVER BtoB transat is the first race for Spirit of Canada so we're very excited to be here and to be doing the race because, other than being a qualifier for the Vendee Globe of course, we’re very interested to see how the boat will do in relation to all the new boats. It’s good for us as we have a big programme. Basically the boat is a development of Ecover II (after Ecover II but before Temenos II and Ecover III). They have moved on generation as well as we started building in Canada in 2006. As a result of some slow sponsorship it took us about 15 months to build. The boat has turned out perfectly though. We brought in a team of builders from France and New Zealand and the US. I’m very happy with the boat. We now have 5000 miles on the boat and the boat is working fine. After seeing all the boats here after the Transat Jacques Vabre we've got some good ideas so over the winter we'll try and make the boat lighter and faster. This will be the first time that I've sailed onboard this boat single-handed in a race as there were three of us onboard sailing from Canada. There are a number of opportunities to qualify for the Vendee and this is the first one, but I’m very interested in doing this race, as it’s the last section of the Vendee Globe, between here and France and conditions will be similar. This will be a race and we have lots of good competition and good boats. I don't expect to do very well but we'll see how it goes. I know the area of Port La Foret but I've never sailed there before so I'm looking forward to seeing it again.”

Tech spec

Architect: Owen Clarke Design

Constructor: Canada

Launch date:

LOA: 18.28 m

Beam: 5.50 m

Light displacement: 8,800 kg

Draught: 4.50 m

Mainsail surface: 175 m²

Solent surface: 135 m²

Gennaker surface: 250 m²