Finally - the Bruce Farr design Open 60

The Daily Sail catches up with Jean-Pierre Dick and the radical new Virbac

One of the most talked about Open 60s to hit the water was formally launched in Auckland on Sunday - for the new Virbac, belonging to French skipper Jean-Pierre Dick and aimed at winning line honours in next year's Vendee Globe is the first example in the class to come from that titan of yacht design himself, Bruce Farr.

When it comes to race boats, Farr Yacht Design are without doubt the world's most profilic yacht design house and it would be tempting to think that in this position they might rest on their laurels and get a little conservative. Not a bit of it. The new Virbac shows that FYD have gone back to basics and created a truly innovative boat that not only draws from the present generation Open 60s, but also from their company's wealth of experience designing America's Cup and Volvo Ocean Race boats to maxis, etc etc.

Bearing in mind Bruce Farr's preference for narrow boats, the boat is at the wider end of the Open 60 spectrum. Her beam max is similar to the Lombard designs like Sill and Tiscali, but not as wide as the Groupe Finots like Ecover. This is driven by the Open 60 class' outdated rule dictating that an Open 60 must heel by no more than 10deg while at the dock with ballast, be it a swing keel and/or water ballast, fully deployed.

"In the Farr tradition, she is a bit finer forward and a bit narrower at the waterline although there is good volume as you move up the hull from the waterline to still allow you to reach well but we opted for some finer, narrower sections forward to help it cut through the waves better," explains Dave Millett, Design Sales and Marketing Manager at Farr Yacht Design.

Generally the trend in Open 60s is away from designing boats solely for reaching and running and in the case of Virbac there seems to have been a move away from running altogether. "Things have been moving towards all round boats, because as the speed of the boats increases and the technology has improved, you are almost never running, because you are moving your wind so far forwards all the time," says Millett. "What you are really thinking about is a lot of power reaching and close reaching and a lot of sea keeping and leeway issues that weren’t taken into considerable on earlier generations of boats, because people did consider them more reaching and running races and leeway wasn’t that big an issue."

Comparison of the vital statistics of the top Open 60s

	New Virbac	Kingfisher	Ecover	Sill
LOA	18.28m	18.28m	18.28m	18.28m
Beam	5.55m	5.40m	5.60m	5.54m
Draft	4.50m	4.50m	4.50m	4.50m
Displacement	8.6t	8.7t	9t	8.6t
Sail area	283/574sqm	270/470sqm	280/510sqm	295/515sqm
Designer	Farr Yacht Design	Kingfisher design team	Groupe Finot	Lombard
Builder	Cooksons, NZ	Marten Yachts, NZ	JMV, France	MAG France

In the case of Virbac she has both a swing keel and water ballast - as is the current norm in the class - although the Farr office believe they have made significant steps forward in the detail of both.

Most noticably different are her twin asymmetric daggerboards which are located more outboard and more vertical in their inclination than on other boats. The daggerboards on swing keel boats are used to give lift and prevent leeway (the keel foil effectively becomes little more than a strut holding the bulb away from the boat). However on Virbac they are positioned also to encourage the boat to lift out of the water as it goes faster. "It is very akin to what they do with multihulls," says Millett. So if this works we can look forward to seeing Open 60s flying along with just their appendages in the water, similar to the high-flying tris.

The keel cants by 35degrees in either direction. However Farr have completely reappraised the canting mechanism used on other boats and have come up with a system whereby the pivot point is smaller, resulting in less of it being slung below the boat. "That is a big drag point, so we’ve spent a lot of time working on that and ours is probably less than half the protrusion that the other boats are," claims Millett.

The specifics of this have not been revealed, but Virbac is only fitted with one hydraulic ram to cant the keel (she is designed so that she can have a spare). Millett says that they have attempted to reduce the loads on the pivot pin by taking more load on the ram and the surrounding structure.



Like the daggerboards, her twin rudders are also further outboard and like the original Virbac (formerly Michel Desjoyeaux's Vendee Globe winner, PRB) these kick up. However the Farr system is much less complex with the rudders folding down flush into the transom instead of being transom-hung. Each rudder will kick up in the event of a collision, but the weather rudder can also be raised manually to reduce drag when on one tack for a prolonged period.

The boat is built in carbon/Nomex, with conventional watertight bulkheads and none of the fore and aft full bulkhead arrangements found in boats like Bobst Group-Armor Lux and Solidaires . The water ballast system was developed in conjunction with builder Mick Cookson and is integral to the structure of the boat. There are three pairs of ballast tanks - aft, midships and forward - as Kingfisher has. FYD have carried out considerable research into the placing of this ballast and they are none too specific about the role of the midships tanks. It is known that it can be used to beat the 10deg rule - taking on ballast in the midships tanks effectively sinks the boat increasing its waterline beam and improving stability.

Also unusual is the aft section of the boat. There is no aft deck to enclose the cockpit and prevent waves washing the skipper over the back of the boat and the impression is that both cabintop and cockpit are further aft than on other Open 60s. The large cabintop helps the boat right from a full inversion (scroll to the bottom of this page to see photos of Virbac's inversion test).

In the cockpit J-P Dick has opted for a single tiller arrangement rather than wheels or a twin tiller arrangement like a majority of the boats, although Millett says they are talking to other potential Open 60 clients who want wheel steering.

This being one of their first boats for solo racing, working out the amount of helm proved a novel challenge for the Farr office. "It is real hard, because you want to make it a sailor’s boat, so that there is decent feel and the skipper can control the boat well. But the more helm load there is, the more fatigue there is on the skipper and the autopilot and consequently the batteries," says Millett. "So you are trying to get that fine balance between almost having lee helm were there is no feel and no load to where you’re having just enough load to make it a good sailing boat. When you are working with multiple appendages - two rudders, two canards, canting keel - it takes a lot of time to get to where you’re going to achieve that balance."

All the control lines from the mast run back through a tunnel in the top of the cabin top to a utility winch in the front of the cockpit. "Except for setting and dousing spinnakers, the skipper should never have to get out of the cockpit to control any sails. That includes raising the main," says Millett. An upshot of having no aft deck is that the satcom dome has been moved forward of the mast.

Rather than go for a rotating mast with deck spreaders or hinged spreaders (like the old Virbac - an ideal borrowed from Tony Bullimore's ill-fated Open 60 schooner Exide Challenger), the new Virbac has a conventional fixed mast, made in carbon fibre with four sets of spreaders. Millett explains: "Again we did a lot of research and simulation runs on the drag of all that and the extra weight versus getting a more stable boat, if you reduce drag how much faster the boat would go over the long term around the world. And we found that going back to a conventional carbon rig actually gave the best drag profile for the boat so that it wouldn’t have much hanging up in the air that was nothing but windage half the time because you’re not using it."

Sails are by North France, while the standing rigging is in PBO. An observation about both PRB and Kingfisher who came first and second in the last Vendee was that they had less working sail area than the boats that came after them. At the time certainly PRB skipper Michel Desjoyeaux felt this was significant. However on Virbac it seems they have gone for max power with a rig that is supposedly taller than those on other Open 60s, but with a shorter boom. "It is to give the skipper more usable sail area over a wider range than to reduce sail area," explains Millett. "It was more about optimising the sail area and making it usable."

Up forward, there is a fixed bowsprit for the asymmetric kites and gennikers. Under the Open 60 rules you are allowed a fixed amount of overhang be it on the boom or the bowsprit and on Virbac it all appears to be on the bowsprit.

Along the deck there are three potential headstay points. Although the sails furl, they are designed to be dropped when not in use to reduce windage. "In our windage studies we found there was a significant amount of windage to leave them up and sail with them when they’re not in use. They slow the boat down completely," says Millett.

Down below there is quite a lot of headroom - thanks to the voluminous cabintop - and the central feature is the canting chart table. This is similar in concept, but a different design to the old Virbac (see photo)



Millett says that although the new Virbac is a similar size to Volvo Ocean 60s, of which Farr has designed the majority, the two concepts are radically different. This boat will weigh around 8.5 tonnes, compared to 13.5 for a VO60 and also has a canting keel. They were able to use some of the lessons they have learned for the rig design and the water ballast system. "What you will find is that the Open 60 research we have done will be more application to the new crop of the Volvo boats than the old," he says.

To read about skipper Jean-Pierre Dick - see page two
For the official line from Farr Yacht Design and line plans - see page three