New boat for the Volvo pt3

Today yacht designers Mani Frers Jim Pugh Marc Lombard and Merfyn Owen give their views

Merfyn Owen

Part of the Owen Clarke Design Group, Merfyn Owen was part of the design team that brought the sailing world Ellen MacArthur's Open 60 Kingfisher and most recently has been responsible for Graham Dalton's brand new Open 60 HSCB and is currently working on an IRC90 for a client.

Owen thinks that the sailors want a boat which will be both faster and longer boats to shorten the time at sea and make the class interesting and 'Grand Prix' again. Yet at the same time sponsors want to reduce costs... "Are the two above mutually exclusive? Yes, the costs will inevitably rise I think, but the task is to keep them within limits that are commercially acceptable," he says. "So assuming bigger boats will be more expensive, how could their cost be limited?"

- Limit campaigns to building one new boat thereby reducing all the cost and logistics involved with a second boat
- Limit crew numbers, although in theory a bigger boat would require more people to sail it. Limiting crew would go well with limiting the number of sails carried, thereby reducing sail stacking. However it would probably lead to greater use of furling headsails, which would be quite a leap for grand prix sailors to get used to - but this versus stacking?
- Further limit the size of the sail wardrobe, although how to do this in the R&D phase? Limiting crew number would probably have more effect on self-limiting sails, than a specific limit on sail numbers.
- Limiting construction materials is a misnoma. It's not materials that cost, it's the labour processing them - ASSA ABLOY, built in very exact female moulds, is an example of this. So carbon fibre should be allowed making for stronger, lighter boats.
- Limit time on the water prior to the start of the race, to reduce sail development costs and crew wages.

Ultimately campaigns will always go for the biggest budgets they can, because whatever rules you apply campaigns will always find ways of spending money to go faster. If you went to a one design that wouldn't stop the richest campaigns recruiting the very best names or finding some way to use their increased budget to give them the maximum advantage.

A suitable replacement boat might be something along the lines of this record boat that we started to look at last year. She's basically an Open 75 and so has a swing keel and daggerboards, but a more conservative version could just as easily be waterballasted with a fixed keel. Early VPP work indicates this boat to be between 10 and 13% quicker overall than an Open 60..... That's around the magic number of 80 days for a monohull Jules Verne Trophy attempt.

See Merfyn Owen's website