An Aussie's view of the EDS - pt1

Kingfisher's co-skipper Nick Moloney on Open 60s v Volvo 60s, getting soaked and sailing with Ellen

But I like being a little bit frightened. You keep going and going and hanging it out. With me, if I get to a point where I think we hung on to that for a long time, it makes me feel we were really cooking. If I was really nervous about it, it makes me feel I was doing all I could do. I love the image of going on deck and it's all action: There's water going everywhere, the guys are all clipped on and suddenly the sun pops out and the whole ocean's white, foaming up with some good sized breakers thrown in.

With these more easily driven boats the fear factor is the same, but it comes at higher speeds, maybe 26 knots of boat speed on Kingfisher. I think the top speed she's seen is 32 knots, but we'll maintain 28 knots for a long period of time.

The whole thing equates to apparent wind speed, and that determines how much load you have on the boat the whole time. With a Volvo boat you have a little more apparent wind because the boat displaces more (13.5 tonnes, compared to 8-9 tonnes for Open 60s). Kingfisher feels a lot more effortless because you have less apparent as the boat's going a lot quicker.

All that goes out of the window when you wipe out. If you nosedive or broach or Chinese gybe you're in a position where the apparent wind equates to true wind speed. That's when everything loads up heavily and goes bad. That's when that cold head pings out of its fitting and the whole rig goes over the side.

I like Kingfisher's package, because it is conservative - we do have spreaders (ie not deck spreaders like Sill and Ecover) and we do have standard rigging. I think the rigs, particularly wingmasts are going to be the huge development in this class but they're just not quite right at the moment. I'd quite like to go to Hawaii and windsurf for a month and try and develop some ideas about how to move that development forward.

Tomorrow Nick talks about what it is like on board an Open 60...