At the awards ceremony last Friday, Axel Tréhin, winner of the 15th Trophy Marie-Agnès Péron, pointed out: “The Mini Class rules are pretty well done, look at us, our three boats (the 945, 865, 800 that finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd, respectively) are quite different and yet, there is a hell of a battle at every race! Indeed, the first two arrived less than 5 minutes apart last Thursday.
The Measurement, supervised by Joël Gâté assisted by Annabelle Moreau, is a set of measures and rules that each boat must follow to be admitted to start at the Mini races. First established in 1994 by the board of directors of the Class Mini, the set of rules addresses both performance and safety issues.
The basic principle is that a Mini boat must fit in a box of 6.50 m x 3.00 m x 14.00 m for the proto and 6.50 m x 3.00 m x 12.00 m for the series.
The Mini is a class to experiment and bring innovation to the field of offshore racing, which sometimes leads to funny situations. During checks, we have seen some having to shorten their booms, another one obliged to race with a reefed mainsail, a boat having to set up pumps without connected hoses. The most extreme case was a proto boat, launched a year earlier, which had to been cut in two to expand it. The most spectacular test during these checks is the righting. Lying on the side, we measure, at the head of the mast, whether the force is sufficient to self-righten the boat.
The Class Mini Rule is a set of rules and a clever mix to balance safety, competitiveness and innovation.
