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Mini 6.50 presentation

Mini 6.50, the smallest ocean racing boat

The Mini 6.50 was born in England in 1977 when for the first time sailors competed in a transatlantic race on the smallest ocean racing boats designed up to that time. The Mini 6.50 has become more and more French from year to year and the English cradle saw the activity settle and make its nest on the French Atlantic coast. Top-level sailors have adopted this striking little boat and have made the Mini the first step in ocean racing careers.

Mini 650: small boat, great performance

This little one, whose construction rules (gauge) are quite free, has seen a lot of architectural experimentation. The mini 6.50 series is often referred to as "the laboratory of ocean racing", as the small size of the boats makes it possible to test innovations at a lower cost and more quickly.

The Mini has therefore been equipped with the main innovations of ocean racing keelboats: pendulum keel, pendulum rigging, wing mast, thick sails and foils for the most modern boats.

The Mini, because of all these qualities, attracted many of the big names in ocean racing and this striking little boat accompanied their debut. The expression that best describes the mini as an offshore school is the phrase "put your mini first", which suggests that every offshore sailor should if possible (or even imperatively) start with a few years at the helm of a 6.50 mini.

The Mini Transat 6.50 the big event of the mini calendar

The mini class offers a rich calendar of many regattas in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, often solo, sometimes double-handed (like the Mini Fast Net for example). But the big meeting point for the mini sailors is the mini transat. A race which takes place every 2 years in autumn and which links the Atlantic coast (Les Sables d'Olonne for the next edition) to the Caribbean (in Guadeloupe as for the Route du Rhum for the 2021 edition).

1 model but a lot of Minis

Since its creation, the mini has evolved a lot. The class is currently divided into 2 distinct architectural and building rules. The Mini of series and the Mini prototype. The mini of series which have rather strict rules of construction and must use simpler and less expensive techniques and materials. In addition, series boats must exist in a certain number of examples to be precisely series boats. The most well known series models are the Pogo of the Structures shipyard, the current Pogo is in version 3. The prototypes have much freer rules that allow architects to express their creativity with few limits, whether it is about construction techniques, appendages, materials or sail surfaces.

These two groups of boats, the mini 6.50 prototypes and the mini 6.50 production boats, race together but the sailors have separate rankings: the prototypes logically have much better performance.

Second-hand Mini 6.50 market

Nearly 1000 boats have been produced since the end of the 1970s. Few very old boats are still sailing but there are on the globe. It is therefore easy to find second-hand Mini 6.50 boats for all programmes and budgets. The floor price of these second-hand boats is 15,000€, modern boats can cost up to 100,000€ for recent, high-performance and well-equipped boats.