Belgian sailor Michel Kleinjans today confirmed that he has ordered a Kiwi40FC with BTBoats in New Zealand. Kleinjans has secured the second Farr designed Class40 production boat to be built at Cookson Boats, Auckland, ensuring that he has a highly competitive platform for his hectic, forthcoming offshore campaign.

The new boat will be delivered to Europe in time for Kleinjans to compete in a series of Class40 races during 2011 which will begin with the double-handed Normandy Channel Race in May and lead up to the Global Ocean Race 2011-12 which departs from Mallorca in September.

Kleinjans, Belgium’s premier short-handed sailor, won the single-handed division of the 2008-09 edition of the Global Ocean Race and has since raced extensively on a variety of Class40 boats. His exhaustive research has led him to order a Kiwi40FC which will be shipped to Europe from New Zealand at the end of March 2011.

“Having sailed the first Kiwi40FC some weeks ago, I knew that it was the right boat for me to order,” says Kleinjans. “The design and build pedigree are both excellent and I was highly impressed with the boats performance – I am now anxious to race her in European waters against the Class40 fleet here.”

For Lapo Ancillotti, Managing Director of BTBoats, Kleinjans’ order is a fabulous endorsement for the Kiwi40FC: “Supplying a racing yacht to a sailor of Michel’s calibre is a great honour and a fantastic endorsement of our product,” says Ancillotti. “We believe that the Kiwi40FC is a major step forward in both performance and quality, so we are extremely pleased that our first two boats will be campaigning in the ultra-competitive European Class40 circuit next Spring before they take on the challenge of the Global Ocean Race 2011-12.”