Combining the Arkè launch on the market with a sailing sponsorship was a natural consequence of the shareholders passion for the sea and for sailing.
The Mini Transat is a sailing race which takes place in the Atlantic sea every two years, lone yachtsmen on six and a half metre boats , from Brittany to Antilles.
It is a captivating and spectacular “adventure”, conceived in 1977 by the Englishman Bob Salomon. Meant as a change as opposed to the big open regattas of the end of the “70’s”, the Mini Transat keeps intact the concept of the first English transats: a man, a boat and the ocean.
Until the last edition, the use of using instruments other than sextant and radiogoniometer was prohibited, praising the sailing talent of the participants. The relationship with nature and with the sea is absolute.
They say, but maybe it is only a legend, that for the first edition of the race, Bob Salomon put the boats to a “peculiar” test in order to determine their resistance: a crane lifted the boat up to four metres above the sea level, and then it was dropped into the water from that height. If the boat weathered the jump, it could face the Atlantic waves…The second edition passed to French people leaded by Jean Luc Garnier.
Many things have changed since then, and today the minis are considered the “university” of yacht design, where technological innovations can be tested. Rather cheap but quite fast, the minis are an important reality in Italian sailing races.
Inside the boat, the vital space is minimal: in a total of six and a half metres, the living space is less than three cubic metres where you have to fit two hundreds kilos of equipment, the sails, the galley and, moreover, there must also be space to allow a lone yachtsman to live more than three weeks in the high seas.
But all this makes the whole adventure even more fascinating…!
