A first for Farr

Prior to the start of the Transat Jacques Vabre theDailySail got a guided tour of the first Farr Open 60 - Virbac

Back in April we ran a profile of Virbac, the first full-on Open 60 to originate from Farr Yacht Design, and of her owner - Mumm 30 sailor and Tour Voile winner, Jean-Pierre Dick.

In Le Havre prior to the start of the Transat Jacques Vabre Dick's no2 and co-skipper for the TJV Nicolas Abiven and David Millett of Farr Yacht Design gave us a guided tour of the new beast, which is currently leading the monohull division of the doublehanded race south to Brazil.

Virbac has been designed solely with the objective of winning the Vendee Globe. Although the Virbac team and Farr looked at other boats in the Open 60 fleet, they have clearly come to their own conclusions in many key areas.

The performance spectrum of the boat has been optimised for the weather expected on the Vendee Globe course. Abiven says this no longer means a boat that is simply a rocket ship reaching, like many of the older generation Open 60s.

Already the new generation Open 60s such as Ecover and to a slightly lesser extent Virbac have shown a clean pair of heels to the older boats upwind, as they demonstrated in the first days of heinous conditions in the TJV.

The long surfboard-shaped hull is beamy but narrow at the water line and carries the beam aft to the transom - a fairly conventional Open 60 shape. "In order to help chose this hull, we ran this and several other hull shapes over 10 years of weather data, 100s of times in the computer over the course before the final selection of this hull shape was made with Nicolas and J-P," says Farr's David Millett.

There is a reasonable amount of camber on the deck and forward the boat has a little more freeboard in the bow. "When you are sailing downwind in hard conditions sometimes it feels like the bow is going to dive in, but in fact it never goes in, which is very satisfactory..." says Abiven.

Aside from this Abiven says they wanted a boat where there was some feel in the helm. "It is very well balanced which is one of the conditions which we asked for because we think it is very important to be able to feel something so that you can trim the boat and improve the speed," he says. The issue of helm balance is an interesting one with Open 60 because most are designed to have very little helm in order to reduce the amount of power the autopilot consumes driving the rudders.

Abiven says that Virbac's helm is balanced enough that you can leave it for 10 seconds or so in order to quickly trim a sail. "You can ease the sheet and come back and nothing happens. The boat goes really straight - which is very nice." They haven't tried it, but Abiven is confident if they had a full power meltdown on board they could set the trim and sail along upwind quite effectively with the helm lashed.

"The concept of the hull shape came from a lot of CFD research, from past America’s Cups, other types of research and looking at a lot of the older designs," says Millett. "But primarily because they wanted nice balance in the boat the concept of the hull shape and the canard placement and the swing keel was a whole concept. We didn’t try and develop one piece."

Daggerboards are necessary on swing keel boats because with the keel canted the foil no longer provides lift where it is required - in particular when going upwind - so the daggerboard takes over this role instead.

Unusual in the 'appendage department is that Virbac's twin assymetric daggerboards are longitudinally in a line with the keel (on other Open 60s there are either two assymetric boards or a single centreline board located forward of the mast). Abiven says that this also contributes to the balance of the boat. Alarmingly if the keel is accidently dumped it is supposed to stop just 15mm short of the leeward board... (we sure hope Cooksons built it accurately...) Abiven says that to date they have had no problems with this.

Her twin rudders are also slightly different. They have a kick-up mechanism very similar to that of Thierry Dubois' Solidaires. In the event of the rudder colliding with any flotsam, there is a metal fuse on each that is milled to break causing the rudder to kick up. Virbac earlier this year went through an extensive sea trial as Dick and his crew sailed her back to Europe from New Zealand. On this passage their rudders twice collided with flotsam and kicked up as designed, also giving an indication of how much of a problem this can be.

The principle difference to Solidaires' system is that on Virbac the rudders can be lifted clear of the water to reduce drag.

Above deck the rig is very conservative. The carbon fibre tube is by Southern Spars and is believed to be the same section as that of a Volvo 60. The rig has four spreaders and uses lightweight PBO standing rigging from Future Fibres.

Abiven says that they considered a wingmast but discounted it. "We think that for the Vendee Globe and for the long offshore races with a short crew you have to finish. When you are looking at the numbers - wingmasts fall down more often than conventional masts and in the studies which we did with Farr Yacht Design didn’t show a big advantage for the wingmast - the difference was very small, just a few hours…"

Millett maintains that there is more windage on a rotating wingmast than on Virbac's rig. "There is a windage penalty when you are not sailing with your biggest sails. These boats don’t often sail with their main at hull hoist and the biggest genoa. Then you are dragging around more mast than is efficient." Agreed, but quite how a rig with four spreaders and the full compliment of Ds and Vs has less windage than an aerodynamically efficient rotating wingspar with no spreaders and a quarter the amount of rigging still beats us.

"It came out to be a very small issue," continues Millett. "This mast also gives more sail set options. It is a bit taller, it carries less roach on the mainsail and they have one extra reefing option and several more sail set options to remain at the optimum speed."

Up forward there is a fixed bowsprit to which the larger downwind headsails are tacked and a Solent jib on a fixed furler. There are two inner forestays both of which can be tensioned by a block and tackle at the tack and can be pulled back to the mast (even with the sail furled on it) to clear the foredeck when the big Solent is required.

The sail wardrobe for the TJV comprises two big chutes, two big gennikers, one smaller genniker, a Solent jib, a staysail, storm jib and the mainsail, the principle sails being built ouf of carbon 3DL - Abiven says this will be much the same as will be on board for the Vendee. Laurent Delage of North Sails France is part of the Virbac technical team and has been responsible for the sails. These are built in carbon 3DL although they also include some Spectra in case the carbon should fail. (North France also build the sails for Ecover and Kingfisher)

Most unique about Virbac is her large cabintop and her cockpit which is considerably further aft than other Open 60s. Large cabintops became a feature of Open 60s since the new set of rules was introduced to ensure they right rigless from a full inversion and have a minimum Angle of Vanishing Stability of 127degs. Virbac's cabintop is bigger than most and Abiven explains that aside from helping the design conform to the IMOCA rules "we also wanted the cockpit to be quite protected from the waves - wide and a long way aft."

"It is only maybe 5% bigger than it needs to be, but it is amazing how much more comfortable the living space is down below," adds Millett. "On some of the other boats you feel very cramped inside. That is important when you go around the world not to feel cramped."

Another feature of the cabintop is the tunnel which runs through it from the mast step back to the cockpit. This is to channel all the lines from the mast and foredeck back to the cockpit, where there is a large centrally mounted bank of stoppers (which the French endearingly refer to as 'le piano') located between the twin doors down to the accommodation.

Abiven admits that they do get water down through the tunnel. "Basically when we are sailing in hard conditions, the leeward door is always closed, so it is not a big problem. Sure some water comes through but the compromise is good. This is very efficient. We keep the Solent up until 28-30 knots of true wind speed so once you have the staysail on above 30 knots, you never leave the cockpit. Everything can be done from here, reefs, putting sails up - it is very comfortable and safe."

The boat is fast and as with any boat with this pace (unless it is massively long like Mari Cha) it is extremely wet. "When you are sailing faster than 18-20 knots - it is very wet," agrees Abiven. "It is like a Mumm 36 - much the same. But with good [foulweather] gear it is okay."



Jean-Pierre Dick (left) with Nicolas Abiven.

Millett adds that the theory behind this whole cockpit layout is to minimise the need for the skipper to go on deck: "to take as little risk of falling overboard or falling on the deck and getting hurt. That is why the cabintop finishes behind the mast - so that the skipper always has a flat working area around the mast."

Also unusual compared to a majority of other Open 60s is that aside from being a long way the cockpit is open ended (most Open 60s have enclosed cockpits to prevent the skipper being washed out of the back of the boat).

"We were very keen to go for an open cockpit," says Abiven. "It was quite a difficult decision to take because most of the boats have narrow cockpits and really with this cockpit, after half a round the world of sailing coming back from New Zealand, we are really sure this is a good solution. Because these boats are very fast, even faster than a Volvo 60, all the waves come from the front - you never have any waves coming from the back. It is important that once you fill up the cockpit it drains very quickly. Also with this type of hexagonal cockpit you can reach every block and the track while staying inside the cockpit which is very comfortable (and safe)."

The mainsheet runs along the top of the transom while the steering is carried out by a central tiller and tiller extension. "The boat is so well balanced that we always steer using the tiller extension," says Abiven. "We reached 26.7 knots in the Indian Ocean under one reef and the Solent and we were steering with the tiller extension." Other features of the cockpit are the Harken coffee grinder and the rather obtrusive Inmarsat F77 satcom dome.

Down below the accommodation is very different to other Open 60s. Unlike the Finot and Owen-Clarke designs there is not the same 'central bridge' arrangement, raised to give some view out. Rather than the cramped accommodation found on most Open 60s, the interior is voluminous thanks to the large cabintop and it feels very pleasant.

"Most of the designers put all the water tight bulkheads along the length of the boat," explains Abiven. "What Farr Yacht Design did on this boat was to put most of them in the forward part which is good because the problem if you hit something is always in the bow. This allows you to have a big living area which is good when you are on board for three months sailing around the world."

Instead of the conventional forward-facing chart table, the arrangement on Virbac is more like the dinette off a small cruising yacht - there is a central table with a comfy bench seat either side. On the table is a large computer screen which can be swivelled. This arrangement allows the navigator to sit up to weather and the bench seats' degree of recline can be adjusted to suit the heel angle of the boat. "Then it is very good because you body uses the natural way of rotating to compensate for the movement of the boat," says Abiven. "We had a very big discussion about it, but we have already sailed 20,000 miles with the boat and we are very happy with the inside."

Interestingly the whole nav area - the rest of the instruments are mounted on a smallish panel at the front end of the central table - is built in Kevlar to avoid the conductivity issues associated with mounting electronics directly on to carbon fibre. The normal array of electronic gizmos are present including three autopilot heads (for redundancy - there are two rams fitted to the rudders for the same reason), comms gear such as an Iridium phone and a nice electronic barograph. They have two fully plumbed in PCs, one a back-up of the other.

There are pipecots either side of 'the saloon'. Forward of this is the business-like area for the canting keel. There are two large hydraulic rams, one either side of the keel, to cant the keel. Abiven says that they are likely to change this arrangement for a single ram set-up for the Vendee to save weight. The hydraulic gear for the keel looks highly robust and Abiven adds that it is the only hydraulic system on board simply because on a race like the Vendee it is much easier to fix rope-based systems rather than hydraulically-operated ones.

The hydraulic keel canting mechanism comes complete with a handpump, enabling Dick to operate the keel by hand if there are electrical issues.

Interestingly Abiven says in their conception of Virbac they took a long hard look at the most probable causes of why boats had previously been forced to pull out of the Vendee Globe.

"There are three reasons that caused a lot of stops in the last race:
- the mast, which is why we went for a very conservative rig with four spreaders
- rudder breakage, which is why we have a kick-up system.
- loss of power."

On this last point, for reasons of weight there is no separate generator, but the cabintop is covered in solar panels. "We can provide 15amps from the solar panels, so you don’t have to run the engine so often," says Abiven. "For example when Jean-Pierre came back from Cape Town to the Azores he didn’t run the engine for six or seven days. When we went from the Azores to the Fastnet [on their TJV qualifier] we had two very sunny days and we didn’t have to run the engines."

Aside from the canting keel Virbac carries substantial centreline water ballast. These appear to be in three tanks in the forward, central and aft compartments. The forward tank would have been put to good use in the first few days of the TJV, to add displacement and alter fore and aft trim when bashing upwind, while the aft tank is filled to help lift the bow when hard running or reaching in waves. The tanks are filled using the Venturi effect and there is some complex plumbing between the three tanks which Abiven says they are going to try and simplify prior to the Vendee.

Compared to some of the French designs Virbac is perhaps on the conservative side but, Abiven maintains, this was their desire. "Basically we took very simple choices - Farr, Cookson, Southern Spars, Future Fibres, Harken, North and Mafioli for the ropes. We took what is the best and very reliable. We didn’t want to make any difficult choices."

Interestingly he says that a majority of the delivery trip back from New Zealand they sailed fully crewed and absolutely loved it. This set them thinking: "We have sailed it with 4-6 crew on board which is fully crewed on this boat and we really think that this boat could go in for crewed races like the Volvo in very good shape with maybe six guys on board and no more. They are very easy and I think many guys used to Volvo conditions should try this and see that it is a different way of doing it - it is very fast and very safe and cheap. You just have to pay five guys and not 12. Basically for the same amount of money you can have a 2.5 year project compared to a one year project. For sure it will be slower than the new Volvo boat but what is important to have enough boats on the line."

Interesting indeed...

More photos over the next few pages