Frers versus Farr

At the Nautor Challenge christening James Boyd had a scout around their two different Volvo Ocean 60s

The implications of having boats from different designers

Aside from the 11th hour nature of Nautor Challenge's Volvo Ocean Race campaign - their Farr Volvo Ocean 60 was only launched a week ago, with less than two months to go until the start - the biggest worry is how on earth are they going to get their sail program up to speed? They haven't had a training boat (or better still two training boats to work with as illbruck Challenge had) and now they have their two new boats, this is still going to prove difficult as their designs are very different boats from different designers.

Sail development work is the single most important aspect of getting a speed edge on the competition under the Volvo Ocean 60 rule to the extent that two campaigns, Assa Abloy and djuice dragons, have built two identical boats solely for this purpose. With identical boats sail development can be carried out in the fastest possible way as any difference in performance between the two boats will solely be down to the sails, their trim and the trim of the boat. Campaigns use heavyweight telemetry systems so that each boat knows how the other is performing to monitor and record this.

With hulls of different design this process is far harder.

The reason for having boats from different designers was historic. Grant Dalton was approached to be involved with the project only after Frers had been commissioned to come up with a design. To Dalton, who has an intimate knowledge of how to win and how to lose the Volvo Ocean Race, it was a reasonably good bet to assume that a Frers boat would not be as fast as the Farr. Frers has effectively come from nowhere in terms of Volvo Ocean 60 design, whereas Farr has colossal experience not only in terms of research and development programmes on the 60 footers prior to this year's race and the two races preceding it, but a huge amount of hard data from the race course too. If Dalton was to come on board one of the pre-requisites was that one boat had to be a Farr design, so at least they'd be in the ball park.

Aside from the sail development issues Dalton still believes he is quids in, although it is hard to know if he is merely being political. He has sailed a reasonable amount on the Frers boat and is happy with her performance, but at the launch it was too early to tell how it compares to the Farr design. If it does prove faster than the Farr over the next few week then this would be fantastic, but if it doesn't then he still has a middle of the road Farr boat to fall back on as a safety net. So the decision over which boat the boys will take and which the girls will be on, will be fascinating. If Dalts plays it safe and goes for the Farr boat then it is possible that the girls could end up with a boat which is faster, at least on some legs. If it goes the other way then the girls will end up with the Farr boat that should be level pegging with the rest of the fleet.