New boat for the Volvo pt1

madforsailing gets the views of eminent yacht designer Bruce Farr on the options available to Volvo

So in an ideal world, where the return on investment was there, what would Farr suggest Volvo did? "If cost wasn't an issue and you had sponsors lining up because they perceived the return was fantastic then you'd want to go to an altogether comparatively lighter, faster longer boat with quite a bit more in the way of creature comforts. You'd also need to do something about moving sails around the boat."

Farr feels, like many others, that the easiest way to address the stacking issue is simply to have less sails on board during each leg. "That reduces costs and makes the boats physically less demanding to sail. It might also allow less crew."

But this is a yacht race, not motor racing. Although the media monitoring that has taken place during the event has thrown up some impressive figures, the Volvo Ocean Race is not yet in a situation where there are million dollar television rights to be sold. Ultimately Farr does believe that if the race is to survive then cost containment has to be addressed.

There are any number of ways to achieve this. "There is how many boats they (the teams) can have and how long they can use them prior to the start."

Farr believes that to have less sails, less crew and yet more performance you have to build a bigger boat. "And it has to be less conservative in its concept - so lighter displacement, more water ballast or you could go swing keel - that is an obvious way to get more performance, relatively inexpensively in terms of displacement or man power. Whether Volvo should do that with the race is another issue."

Farr is not convinced that Volvo will plump for a new more high performance boat if the safety margin is reduced, as he believes it would be if the stability of the boat is reduced compared to the present boat (to give an indication - the angle of vanishing stability of a VO60 is roughly 135deg, compared to 127.5deg for a modern Open 60 - or as little as 105 degs prior to the IMOCA rules being introduced following the numerous capsizes experienced in that class prior to the last Vendee Globe.

"Most directions tend to give you a boat that is inherently less safe from a stand point of righting from an inversion. I hasten to add that Volvo Ocean 60s are very good in that respect. Of course swing keels offer some benefit in that regard. They give you the scope to produce a lighter faster boat."

Following stability problems in the Open 60 class (several cases of boats inverting failing to right) all boats must now go through stability tests. When SEB was knocked down, literally thrown on her side by a wave during the second Southern Ocean leg she righted herself only when the rig broke.