The weapon

Cayard and Coutts tell us of the signifcance of Friday's announcement and talk about the design of their new cat

This article follows on from part one published yesterday

What now?

The trigger for Friday's press conference in Lisbon was a deal Coutts and Cayard have come to with João Lagos, head of Lagos Sports. A former Davis Cup player and team captain, Lagos has since the late 1970s been a sports promoter, particularly specialising in tennis. The deal with Lagos is worth a staggering 50 million Euros and effectively underwrites the construction of the fleet of fourteen 70ft catamarans.

Coutts explains: "You can go out to various people who say 'that is a nice idea, but is it a reality?' So we have the underwriting to build the boats now. That is a big step forward and it is a big commitment by João. It is a huge project when you think about building 14 of these big cats. For example I don’t think there will be one yard in the world that could build them. We’ll have to farm out some of the work to other people for sure."

If there is to be a Bernie Eccelstone figure in the World Sailing League, Lagos is likely to be it rather than Coutts/Cayard, as the latter says: "We tried for a while and we just couldn’t get it done. It is the chicken and egg situation in something like this to give sponsors the certainty it is going to happen. In this sport it is not like going down and buying a soccer ball. To create a soccer ball in this sport takes two years and there are 14 of them and they are big pieces of equipment. So that was always the impediment for us to get the thing going and until we ran into João who really believed in the vision and was willing to underwrite the boats. By getting the certainty of having the boats, now that pressure is off - we start building them and as it gets closer to the start it should be easier to get the interested parties to sign up."

Coutts and Cayard trawled around for a few tenders for a design, eventually granting the contract to leading ORMA 60 architects Marc van Peteghem and Vincent Lauriot Prevost. Now the button has been pressed progress will accelerate rapidly. Preliminary design work has already been carried out and the bulk of it will be finalised by the summer. A prototype will then be built and sailed while full production gets underway. No yard or yards have been appointed as yet.

Coutts hopes the first boat will be launched at the end of this year, but it is more likely to be spring 2008. "These things always take a bit more time and often it is better to take a bit more time at the start of the program as you end up saving time at the end of the program if you do that - particularly when you are building 14 boats. It would be crazy to rush this process and make a mistake that we then have to go back and tidy up. I see the only things that we would have to correct are the reefing systems on the boats, changes to the sail plan, maybe some sheeting changes with the headsails, little things like that. I can’t see us changing any of the big items. In fact that will be under construction well before the prototype gets sailed. Obviously there will be a structural test too. The concept is to design something that is going to be structurally sound enough to be transported around and raced in these different venues and wind conditions, but it is still prudent to have a physical testing in the field before we build 14 of them."

While they are both creators of the project, Coutts has been having more of a hand than Cayard in working with VPLP on the design side. The boat will be 70ft (or 20m) long with a rig of around 100ft (30m) - much the same size as the rig on an ORMA 60. The displacement of the boat is expected to be around 5.2-5.3 tonnes. Due to the one design nature of the class, one would think there might be no reason to go hi-tech for the build and fit-out, but this is definitely not the Coutts way and the boat is sure to be state of the art pre-preg carbon-Nomex sandwich construction, etc.

70ft was chosen to be large enough to make an impact, wherever the circuit takes them, says Coutts. "We also wanted it to be a certain scale in terms of crew size. The target is for eight crew – that is something we have to test on the first boat. We may end up with 10."





The initial drawings published show the boat as having slightly reversed bows as is seen on F18s like the Capricorn, but the major feature is the Decision 35-style centre beam running fore-aft down the middle of the boat, effectively making her a trimaran with her central hull lifted out of the water. The advantage of this configuration (first used in the early 1980s on Nick Keig's Derek Kelsall-designed VSD catamaran for the anorakae among our readers) is that it allows far superior fore and aft rig tension as well as a more robust place to anchor forward stays. It also removes the need of the horrible forward beam, that always ends up piling into waves if there is any sort of seaway. Finally it also means that the mast need not necessarily be stepped on the main beam, therefore allowing some structure to be removed from this area (VPLP did a similar thing with the new Groupama III).

"One of the reasons we went for a cat was that it would be powered up in light winds," explains Coutts. "Some of the venues will be light wind venues, so you have to have that choice, but we also want to sail in breeze and the central beam allows a lot of structural advantages." Aside from the benefits for the rig Coutts says the fore and aft beam will also contain water ballast as having it there will mean it doesn't have be transferred side to side during manouevres. "It will allow us to control the boat in stronger winds, so there it is acting as stability, but it is also trim ballast as well."

Also unusual is that the drawings show the boat as having a central cockpit - most cats of this type have a cockpit in each hull. The boom arrangement also looks fairly conventional which is no doubt Coutts' input. The present drawings show normal straight foils, but Coutts reckons they'll end up with curved foils as "it is a huge performance benefit and it may increase the sailing range of the boat. You obviously have to look at the foil shapes and the rudders and they will probably end up deeper than they are now and then the shape of the central beam - that could change with the water ballasting and the position of that - it all has to be refined."

Another impressive first is that all 14 of the 70ft cats plus their gear are going to be transported around between venues on the World Sailing League's own ship. Plans at the moment are that the platform of each cat will not be taken apart for this operation, although being able to demount them is in the design brief (we suspect that engineering the boats so that they come apart will prove too hard and will be binned).

At present there is no plans for the rigs to cant as the need for this is less than it is on the ORMA 60s.

The boats will be completely one design and this will extend to the sails, although Coutts says the job of supplying sails will be given to different manufacturers, one producing all the main, another producing all the headsails. We imagine one of them will be Quantum...

Performance-wise the boats will be nothing short of outstanding. They should carry a similar acreage of sail to the ORMA 60s, but weigh 1-2 tonnes less. Coutts reckons that VMG upwind they'll be making 15-17 knots, while 30 knots shouldn't be a problem. Coutts is keen on the boats being versalite in different wind strengths, so mains will have reef points. The boats are likely to be flying a hull in around 6 knots of breeze and we suspect their top end speed will be closer to 40 knots than 30.

"The thing about this is, because it is one design they will be pushed really hard," says Coutts. "We will obviously start out finding our feet in terms of sailing the boats, but eventually you are going to have to be racing the boat hard to win. You will be itching out every performance thing you can."

At present the plan is to have a single boat from each country and one imagines that Coutts and Cayard will borrow the Volvo idea of hosting regattas in countries where teams come from. Cayard maintains that in their negotiations to date arranging host ports has been easiest part.

So to conclude, does the sailing world need yet another major event? If it's this, then in our view the answer is a resounding 'yes'. Anyone who has witnessed a Grand Prix for the ORMA 60 trimarans held in any sort of breeze will know just how exciting they can be. However the ORMA circuit has been exclusively French for almost two decades now. We like the fact that Coutts and Cayard have approached this from the point of view of how to make a teenager, who knows nothing about yacht racing, to get interested in a sailing event.

Coutts and Cayard's endorsement, along with their new financial backing, indicate that this circuit is not just a pipe dream. However there is still a huge amount of work to do. While team budgets have been pitched just under that of a Volvo Ocean Race campaign one still wonders if there are enough companies with this kind of marketing budget and the will to get involved in yachting who are not already on board with either the America's Cup or Volvo. When this does get off the ground in 2009 - will there enough sailors to go round?

Will the World Sailing League be a success? Does it interest you? How could Coutts and Cayard improve it further? Email us here