Assa light boat, sirree!

Jason Carrington gives James Boyd a guided tour of the Volvo Ocean 60 ASSA ABLOY

All the Volvo Ocean 60s carry the maximum 2.5 tonnes of water ballast, divided up between three or four tanks running from midships aft. "The difference between having three or four tanks is hard to see," says Carrington, who says they have kept the same three tank configuration as Silk Cut. "It's confusing enough with three tanks."

ASSA ABLOY is the only boat in the fleet where the water ballast can be controlled by the helmsman on deck, who can see how full the three tanks are by three readouts by the B&G instruments on the coachroof. Under the Volvo Ocean 60 rule water ballast plumbing must have a maximum volume of 250lts and this can be divided between the water 'intake' and the transfer system and any other plumbing the designer feels fit to use.

Carrington says that the occasion when speed is required is when tacking or gybing and as a result they have concentrated the bore of the pipework (all built in Kevlar of course) for the transfer system. They can now dump all the 2.5 tonnes of water down to the leeward tanks in just 12-14 seconds. The downside is that the bore of the pipework to fill the tanks is smaller - Carrington says it takes around two minutes to fill all three tanks and they have no way of pumping up water from the leeward tanks.

"In the last race on most boats you would dump your ballast and when it was 75% done, then you'd tack and pump the rest up to weather. We can't do that as it would mean more pipework." He believes that most other boats have gone for a similar configuration.