Volvo Ocean Race 2005 - the nuts and bolts

James Boyd looks at the new Notice of Race and the final rule for the Volvo Ocean 70

Coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the start of the first Whitbread Round the World Race, the Volvo Ocean Race have announced their Notice of Race and the final version of the rule for their new Volvo Ocean 70.

The next Volvo Ocean Race will start from a 'southern Europe' port on 5 November 2005, will finish in the Baltic on 18 June 2006 and will comprise nine legs, six proper stopovers and two pitstops, one in New Zealand (at a port to be decided - not necessarily Auckland), the other in New York. The timing of pitstops is such that if the first boat finishes before 1730 (local time) on any day the start for the next Leg will be at 1730 the next day. If the first boat finishes at 1730 or after, the start for the next Leg will be at 1730, two days later.

Race schedule:
Leg 1: Southern Europe-Cape Town (7,200 nm) leaving Fernando de Noronha (scoring waypoint) to port
Leg 2: Cape Town to Melbourne (6,100 nm) starting on 2 January 2006, leaving Eclipse Island, to starboard. starting 2 January 2006. There will be scoring waypoints at Kerguelen and Eclipse Islands.
Leg 3: Melbourne to New Zealand (1,400 nm) starting on 12 February 2006.
Leg 4: New Zealand to Rio de Janeiro (6,700nm) leaving Cape Horn (a scoring waypoint) to port.
Leg 5: Rio de Janeiro to Baltimore (5,000 nm) starting on 2 April 2006, leaving Fernando de Noronha (a scoring waypoint) to port
Leg 6: Annapolis to New York (400 nm) starting 7 May 2006.
Leg 7: New York to Southampton (3,200 nm) leaving an ice waypoint off the Grand Banks to port. There will be a scoring waypoint at the Lizard.
Leg 8: Southampton to Gothenberg, (720 nm) starting on 4 June 2006.
Leg 9: Goteborg to the finish in the Baltic Sea, (250 nm) starting 17 June 2006.

There will be in-port racing in Cape Town, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro, Annapolis, Southampton and Gothenborg. These races will be roughly 35nm in length.

As normal scoring will be one point per position, so first gets one point, second two, etc. In-port races and scoring waypoint will be scored on the same basis but at 50%. There will be additional trophies on each leg and overall for 24 hour records and the Roaring Forties Trophy for aggregate points scored between Cape Town and Rio.

As Volvo have previously indicated, the crew numbers for the Volvo Ocean Race are to be reduced from last time - nine for all-male crew, ten for boats with five or more females or 11 for an all-female crew. In addition to this there are much more flexible rules allowing owners representatives/media on board during the racing - three for the in-port racing, etc.

Fleet 33, Fleet 77 and Inmarsat C satcoms will be mandatory. In the previous race the navigator from each team was allowed to nominate 10 websites that they wished to view prior to the start of each leg. These lists were combined and then the whole fleet were able to view all or any of them. For the 2005 race this has been simplified and the available weather information navigators can use will be limited to that provided by the organisers and what is publicly available via radio and satellite transmission.

The final rule for the Volvo Ocean 70, published today, fleshes out many of the points VOR Director of Race Operations Andy Hindley and CEO Glenn Bourke have talked about over the last months. In a nutshell - the Volvo Open 70 Rule is "intended to produce fast, single mast monohull keelboats of similar performance, suitable for long distance racing offshore at the highest level of the sport. The need for safety and self-sufficiency is paramount. The Rule is intended to foster gradual design development leading to easily driven, seaworthy yachts of high stability, requiring moderate crew numbers."

The vital statistics for the boat are:
LOA: 70.5ft (23.5m)
Beam max: 4.7-5.7m
Draft: up to 4.5m
Displacement: 12,500-14,000kg
Bulb weight: 4,500 kg

The unusual overall length came from a study commissioned by Volvo looking at LOA versus performance versus cost. Interestingly there are no waterline beam restrictions and it is likely that VO70s will be at the narrower beam limit to reduce drag as thanks to the substantial swing keel and no limit of 10degs for the static heel angle (as with Open 60s) there is little reason to have large hull form stability to beat the rule.

The hull shape, as previously mentioned, is relatively free from constraints. For safety there are three freeboard stations - essentially the boat must have 1.9m freeboard the bow and 1.4m at the stern. There is a rule to prevent the hull having a pseudo-trimaran shape and others dictating the deck edge, the outline of the boat in plan view and where hollows can be (ie they can be forward but not aft.)

"Apart from stipulations about freeboard for safety reasons and hatch watertightness and scantlings as far as hull shape is concerned it is draw what you like between those limits," says Andy Hindley.

Unlike the Volvo Ocean 60, carbon is now allowed in the hull but its modulus is limited as are the temperature and pressure at which the laminate can be cured.

The hull must have an angle of vanishing stability (ie the angle from the upright beyond which the boat wanted to invert rather than right) of 115degs with the canting keel and water ballast deployed in the worst case scenario (ie both to leeward). The AVS rule for the VO60 was simply 142degs with the keel straight down. The equivalent AVS under the new rule is around 138-139degrees. "It's a couple of degrees less than a VO60, but 142 was by far the highest AVS requirement of any boats out there," comments Andy Hindley.

Like the Open 60 rule, teams must be able to prove that the boat can be righted from a full inversion (without the mast) by two crew inside the boat just using the canting ability of the keel.

Movable ballast will be limited to the keel, which is allowed to cant by +/- 40degrees and there is the option of having an aft ballast tank. This must be symmetrical about the centreline, can carry up to 1200lt and cannot be filled by powered pumps. The axis for the keel canting mechanism can be fitted up to 150mm inside the boat (some designers are looking at moving this inside the boat to reduce drag). There is also no restriction on the fore and aft positioning of the keel (although the rig position is fixed).

Compared to Open 60s forward ballast is prohibited and this could make life interesting for designers trying to establish fore and aft trim. "We wanted to get away from too many ballast tanks and the designers said if you don’t put it in, we’ll design the boat not to have it. The consensus was if you were going to put anything in for trim ballast - put it in the back and then we can design a boat with that in mind," explains Andy Hindley.

As previously announced the VO70 is allowed to have any number of appendages but each can only move in one way - ie a rudder can turn but not lift, a daggerboard can lift but not turn, a keel can cant but not lift. The rule is not entirely clear about the legality of trim tabs, but there seems to be nothing to prohibit the use of the canting ballast twin foil system (CBTF). "We were concerned about cost," says Andy Hindley over the reason appendages are limited. "It is something we can free up in later editions of the race, but the boats are going to be blinding quick anyway."

In terms of the rig, only one mast is allowed and there are rules banning America's Cup-style cathedral rigs. The minimum weight of the mast is 675kg and once again the modulus of the carbon fibre used in the spar's construction is limited as is the cure temperature and pressure (albeit to a higher level than allowed for the hull). Hindley says they will be allowing 300 GPa modulus carbon as opposed to 310 that is allowed in AC rigs as the latter is especially made to beat the AC rule and as a result can be as much as 4x more expensive.

Core materials for the spars are also limited to "syntactic core materials, consisting of microspheres loaded into a polymeric binder, provided any such core material has a density of not less than 300 kg/m3, and the total thickness of the core is not greater than the total thickness of the fibre reinforced laminate walls." (whatever that means...)

Significant rig dimensions
P (mainsail hoist): <28m
Mainsail leech length: 29m
J (base of foretriangle): <9.5m
IG (height of foretriangle) <25.5m
E (mainsail foot): 8.5m
Spinnaker pole length: 11.5m
Bowsprit length: <1.82m
Mainsail: <175sqm
Genniker: 330<500sqm
Masthead spinnakers: 330<500sqm
Fractional spinnakers up to 350sqm

The Notice of Race sets down the limit on sail numbers and type: a maximum of 24 sails, excluding trysails and storm jibs and not more than three mainsails may be used during the race. A maximum of one mainsail, three headsails, one reaching headsail, one gennaker and four spinnakers, at least two of which shall be fractional spinnakers, may be on board while racing. In addition boats must carry a trysail, a storm jib and a heavy weather jib.

The rules team have consulted Grant Spanhake and North Sails NZ to come up with the rules for the sails. Areas for the main, genniker and spinnakers are based on formulae limiting the basic shape of the sails. PBO and carbon fibre cannot be used in the sails, the latter because it interferes with radar and satcom communications off the boat.

In a significant advancement over the old boat PBO standing rigging is now allowed although the carbon fibre protruded strand rigging that Southern Spars have under development is not. Roller furling is allowed, but not mandatory and the rule seems to encourage its use - the furling drum for example can be recessed into the deck to reduce windage. Unfortunately the rules do not allow roller furling only to be fitted for the Southern Ocean legs.

The type of engine is limited to a Volvo Penta D2 55 this is fitted with a three bladed prop. Significantly the rule now allows the prop to be retracted (as on the maxi Bols) considerably reducing drag while also allowing a larger prop to be fitted. Because of the smaller prop the D2 55 is in fact smaller than the engine required on the VO60s. This set-up must be able to drive the boat at 9 knots.

There are obviously many rules governing aspects of safety. For example the boat must have bulkheads positioned in certain locations to create a minimum of six watertight compartments. Despite the smaller crew, two giant 10 man SOLAS-approved liferafts must still be carried. The hatch opening must be more than 3m aft of the mast and only one hatch is allowed (the SEB-style twin hatch system that allowed water into the boat during a knock down is prohibited).

Significantly the boat will be a flier. The new boat has been sailed around the world on illbruck's course and with illbruck's weather on meteorologist Chris Bedford's computer and has proved to be 20-22 days faster around the course - an improvement of 18%. As Andy Hindley puts it: "it's going to be blindingly fast. The boat weighs a ton less (at minimum weight) with a 60% increase in spinnaker area and doesn’t get heavier when you want righting moment." Hindley says the new boat is more than two minutes a mile faster than the VO60 in low wind speeds and one minute faster in every other conditions. "I reckon they’ll see 35 knots surfing at max speed. Some of the sailors reckon they could see 40."

At present the first new Volvo Ocean 70 designs have been commissioned, but as yet none are under construction.