Richard Gilles - a madforsailing interview

Bob Fisher talks to the Volvo Ocean 60 build-meister

Kiwi boatbuilder Richard Gilles along with his partner Tim Smyth have been at the coal face of the build of Gunnar Krantz's new Volvo Ocean 60 Team SEB. The duo's previous experience building race boats - in particular Whitbread race boats - has put them in an enviable position for their clients.
madforsailing: So this is the fourth boat you have built for the round the world race?

Richard Gilles: This is number four. We started with Galicia Pescanova in the north-west of Spain for the 1993 race, and we did the sister ships for EF for the last race, and now this one.

madforsailing: And this is the best by a long way?

RG: Yes,but it depends on how you view it. In some regards these boats have been down tuned a little bit in composites especially compared with four years ago. I think that is probably due to the impact of Volvo going conservative and maybe the Code Zero impact (the restrictions on these sails has now been removed). The composite weight is up, but this is a different boat and we have done some different things with different materials. We have been driven more on the process side of the boat building of late. The Volvo Ocean 60 is a box rule - there’s not a lot of development left in that, and it’s a bit like fish soup, you stir round the pot looking for the last big bit of fish. We are left with the core and pre-preg issues and tried to put them to bed with this boat. It has been cured at 95 degrees (C), which is the rule maximum and the core has been custom made by Allusuisse. We believe this is a very reliable composite structure and that’s what we are aiming for in these boats, reliability at sea. The race isn't over until it's over and everyone's in bed.

From the boatbuilding side, I don't think that there's much left to gain. I know that some guys have gone the female mould route. Good on them. If you have two boats to build, it is a cheap, cost-effective solution in getting 50 kilos out of the boat, but no one is going to spend $150,000 and all the man hours that it would take to drag that 50 kilos out on a one-boat build. Aside from that, this boat has a very innovative deck layout. Rodney Ardern and the Team SEB crew members have all had their hand in that, and they have done a brilliant job in coming up with something new. It gets the crew members into the middle of the boat and eases up sail handling problems.

Inside the boat, the structures have changed quite dramatically from four years ago. That's Farr engineering. They have found a way of opening the boat up - the Volvo Ocean 60 is a cramped, tiny little box - and they have changed the framing, opened it up and straightened the water ballast tanks. It's been harder to build, because we have had to work harder to put a lot more equipment into the centreline of the boat, and that had taken some additional hours which weren’t present in the other boats we have done.

All-in-all, the VCG is about the same, so maybe you could go round in EF Language and have a shot at it, but I am very proud to have built this one, and I think it is the best boat we have ever produced, and I hope everyone like it.

madforsailing: It’s bright, isn’t it?

RG: Green, yes. Rodney Pattisson would never get on board it! We saw it out there the other day with the sun shining and its green sails, green topsides and it looked pretty special. It’s a go-places boat. We hope they are going to crank it up, send it, and win it.

madforsailing: You have obviously tried hard to keep all the weight out of the hull. Do you think you have been as successful as you had hoped?

RG: Yes. We saw the boat on the hook.

madforsailing: Okay. Tell me what you saw. What does it weigh?

RG: I can’t tell you that. We’ll put it in the water, float it and do all the things that you have to do, and there will be another bulb.

madforsailing: Bigger?

RG: Maybe it's bigger or maybe it's smaller - I don’t know. Ask Gurra (Krantz - Team SEB's skipper), he will maybe tell you that. I’m not here to blare off on his secrets, but we are all very happy people.

madforsailing: Having watched while Grant Dalton removed filler in the keel/bulb joint and filled it with molten lead four years ago, I know how much skippers want to keep the weight down low.

RG: We all want the maximum stability for these boats. It is a stability driven thing and this is why the focus has been on fast transfer rates for the water ballast. They have an inshore look these days because there are a lot of short legs and everyone is going for sail handling on the short legs. It's not the long ocean marathon it used to be. Look at the deck layout - it's for short course racing. Handling the sails, hoisting and dropping spinnakers and Code Zeros and that's what the input from the crew on this boat has been. I’m not a great sailor, but I can step back and say that these guys have done something with this boat and it will open people's eyes.” It’s a new breed inside the box [rule].