Assa Abloy - the Stradivarius of Volvo Ocean 60s

Prior to her sailing through Tower Bridge we had a crawl round her

From the same syndicate which brought you EF Education and Paul Cayard's winner EF Language in the last Whitbread round the world race, comes Assa Abloy, most recent (and second last) of the Volvo Ocean 60s to be launched.
Like Knut Frostad's djuice dragon team, Assa Abloy have built two identical boats. However Assa Abloy's are both Bruce Farr designs and they have had them built by Green Marine in Southampton under the watchful eye of Project Manager (and by a strange quirk of fate a former Green Marine apprentice) Jason Carrington. The first boat was launched just over a week ago and was brought up to London where last night she was christened and sailed under Tower Bridge for the benefit of the press and the assembled corporate gathering. The second boat, which Carrington confides is a fraction lighter still, is due to be launched in a fortnight's time.

At first glance there is nothing unusual looking about the boat. Compared to the last generation of Volvo Ocean 60s she has a cut-off transom and the now standard cockpit layout with twin wheels just aft of the main sheet track, two coffee grinders at 90degrees to each other, five of the compact but powerful Lewmar 80 winches, one on a central island for the main sheet and four smaller winches for the halyards and reefing lines. These lines are fed back below decks to two banks of jammers below decks.

She has a mast made by Carbontech and built in carbon fibre as are her four sets of spreaders, boom and two spinnaker poles. Assa Abloy has an exclusive agreement with this Australian company who built masts for several America's Cup teams including the Nippon Challenge boats. Sails are by North Denmark.

We were not allowed down below. Next time I will try disguising myself by dressing up in some Assa Abloy crew gear and speaking with a Swedish accent to check out whether they have a head made out of Kevlar too. Generally it is the plumbing for the water ballast, the positioning of the water ballast tanks, the location of the chart table and whether or not they have made many special provisions for the fast stacking of sails that teams wish to keep discreet.

Below the water, as with most of the other modern Volvo Ocean 60s, she has a T-shaped keel (in the last race many boats still had the L-shaped keel, where the foil attaches to the front of the bulb - in short an engineering nightmare).

...see page 2 to read about Assa Abloy's unique construction