DMG Mori Global One - The big reveal in Lorient

The moment a new boat is revealed to the world is always a special time.

This is when a vision becomes a reality. When the pixels on a designer’s screen, the lines on the paper, become a physical object of unbridled potential.

Today the DMG MORI team marked that milestone with friends, family and media guests in Lorient, France.

Skipper Kojiro Shiraishi led the team in introducing the new boat, which is a marked design departure from the current IMOCA fleet.

”This is going to be my last boat, so I want to make it special,” the Japanese skipper said. “I’m surrounded by a great team, great people, and that gives us confidence. The hull form is definitely very different from the other boats. I asked Guillaume Verdier (lead designer) and his team to have a free mind, free ideas, no limits, and that’s how we ended up here.”

The form of the hull resembles the central hull of a trimaran, which is designed to allow the boat to foil more easily, slam into the waves less violently, and reduce the wetted surface and drag.

“It’s very different, which is always a bit scary,” Verdier said. “We did a lot of work on the shapes and we thought there was a new possibility as in reality the boats don’t heel over very much most of the time. We’ve been designing boats to heel over but that’s not how we are sailing when we race around the world. So we pushed the other way. We designed a foil to be more upright. It’s not only the hull. It’s all integrated - the foil, the aerodynamics, the rudder…"

“We are so lucky to be trusted to try this new approach. It’s exciting. A bit scary, but very exciting! Kojiro has been very open and supportive to try something different… It’s incredible he trusted us so much in the process.”

Verdier says one side-effect of the new design is that the ride should be much easier for the sailors in terms of life on board.

“The sailors have been suffering so much the way the boats have been before. We hope this is more like the feeling of sailing on a multihull with a lot less wetted-surface. It should be quite different… We think it is very promising.”

The new boat - DMG MORI GLOBAL ONE - was built by Multiplast and still needs a few more weeks of finishing at the team base in Lorient before launching and preparation for The Ocean Race Atlantic in September, ahead of the round the world race in January 2027.

“As this is the first time we show the boat, today is like unwrapping a new present. But there is about one more month of work and then we will launch and prepare for delivery across to New York for The Ocean Race Atlantic,” said Jacques Caraës, the Team Manager. “It’s a new page in IMOCA design. The boat should be very stable, and foil earlier - this is what we are hoping!”

The sailors can’t wait for the last of the work to be completed so they can get their hands on the new boat and prepare for racing. The new design is also raising excitement levels among the sailing team.

“We can see right away the new evolution in the hull shape, which is different from any IMOCA out sailing today,” said Sam Davies, an experienced and accomplished sailor in The Ocean Race and the IMOCA class, who will race alongside Koji in The Ocean Race Atlantic. “It will be really fun to learn to sail. In theory it’s a hull shape that will slam a lot less and take off foiling much earlier than we are used to…"

“We’re all quite impatient to get sailing as there is not a lot of time before we are racing. In less than two months we leave France for the USA which isn’t a long time in ‘new boat’ terms but we’re very confident as Kojiro has an incredible shore team and everyone is highly motivated. I’m sure we’ll be on the start line in great shape.”

The new boat is expected to touch the water for the first time near the end of the month.