Carbon fibre masts

Southern Spars' David Barnaby looks at the new rigs on Volvo Ocean 60s

Code O tight luffed sails are developing headstay loads in excess of seven tonnes, which effectively makes the V.O. 60 a masthead rig boat (ie more powerful). These sails began their development in the 1997-98 race when they were effectively shackled to the top of the mast. This time around there has been significant development in halyard locks to hold these sails up.

Halyard locks (see above) have three functions, firstly to hold the sail onto the mast, secondly to reduce halyard compression in the mast and thirdly to minimise stretch in the luff of the sail. All this results in huge luff loads but creates a far superior performance in light airs.

The carbon masts of the 2001 race also have less windage. This is purely a function of the stiffness of carbon. A stiffer material makes it easier to design a mast that is as stiff and as strong as the last generation rigs, but is also dimensionally smaller in cross section.

Trends for this race show that most masts have one checkstay instead of two. The windage gains may be small and difficult to quantify, but the kind of match race situation which is likely to unfold with the increased number of shorter legs the gains will be significant.