First Brazilian Open 60

We speak to Walter Antunes about his Lavranos-designed Galileo and his plans for the Vendee Globe

With the likes of Robert Scheidt and Torben Grael, Brazil is one of the world's top Olympic sailing nations, but they are less known their offshore racing. But this may all be about to change. Firstly we have Torben Grael's Brasil 1 campaign in the Volvo Ocean Race, which is getting much media attention in the home country, but this year has also seen the advent of Brasil's first Open 60 campaign.

Walter Antunes' Open 60 Galileo was delivered to Europe in the summer and has competed in the Rolex Fastnet Race and subsequently in the Transat Jacques Vabre, two handed appropriately back to Brazil, but the reason the boat has been built is to race in the Vendee Globe.

Originally from San Paolo but now living in the exotic hotspot of Florianopolis, Antunes went to college in the USA before returning to Brazil where he set up a telecoms company which he ran for 10 years before selling it in order "to pursue a little bit of the big dreams I had." The big dream is to race an Open 60 around the world in the Vendee Globe and he hopes to be on the start line of the next race in 2008. "It is the Everest of sailing and I look at it as a great personal challenge for me. So I am looking forward to it - I want to gain experience over the next couple of years and hopefully be on the starting line."

As a sailor Antunes has sailed since childhood, competing many times in the few offshore races that exist in Brazil but has also sailed two Cape Town to Rio race. During the 2000 event Antunes was aboard his Lavranos-designed 44ft cruiser racer catamaran (also called Galileo) and won their class. Prior to the start of that race he had met Angelo Lavranos in person. "I thought he was a very good designer, a good person with a good mind." As a result it was Lavranos who got the commission to design Antunes' new Open 60.

Although Lavrnaos, a South African yacht designer, now based in Auckland, hasn't been associated with the Open 60 class for some years, back in the 1980s he was one of the prominent forces, first for his Voortrekker designs and ultimately for the ultra-beamy, spent-uranium keeled Allied Bank which South Africa solo round the world sailor John Martin raced in the 1990-1 BOC Challenge. Unfortunately during that race, while leading after two legs Allied Bank struck an iceberg and sank, her skipper rescued by fellow South African solo sailor Bertie Reed.

"Choosing a designer is about feeling and preference and I had this good empathy with Angelo and when I found out about his Allied Bank design for the BOC Challenge I was pleased," continues Antunes. "He worked for a few months in getting up to date with what the class was doing and I am very happy with his design. There is room for improvement so if we get a sponsor there are a few things we know we can do to improve the performance. It is a question of finding a partner..."



Antunes project managed the build of the new Galileo in a yard he set up himself just north of Salvador using a master boatbuilder from Rio. The hull and deck were constructed or unidirectional carbon tapes. Airex® R63.140 was chosen as the forward bottom shell core material due to its ability to its impact absorpsion and prevent delamination due to slamming. Nomex honeycomb core was used in the rest of the hull and deck. The internal structure was constructed from carbon double bias stitched cloths and unidirectional tapes on Nomex honeycomb cores with the exception of the integral tanks which were constructed using Airex® C70 foams to ensure watertight integrity.

The engineering and lamination spec was performed by Susan Edinger at High Modulus in New Zealand. Chris Mitchell worked on the rig engineering, while Tim Sadler from designers Owen Clarke engineered the swing keel fin, hydraulic systems, and some other details.

Galileo's design, Antunes says, is for all-round performance as is the modern way with Open 60s in order to compete in Atlantic races as well as on the round the world race track, however the emphasis is still on power reaching. "Most guys are on their second or third design, so we have an all-rounder which we'll take it from there. Angelo has drawn up a fairly powerful boat - I think we have around 10% more ballast:weight than everyone else which is why in the Fastnet we really had a hard time."

The new Galileo has twin asymmetric daggerboards and a canting keel - the bulb is a long slender Team New Zealand/ABN AMRO affair - but also has a substantial amount of water ballast. Antunes thinks Lavranos' design shares much the same philosophy as the ABN ABRO VO70s in terms of her powerful hull shape and the shape of her performance curves.

Down below Galileo has three sets of ballast tanks with the possibility of bringing on a whopping 4.5 tonnes of additional water to alter fore and aft trim as well as longitudinal stability. "It also increases the sinkability of the hull and therefore increases the righting moment, which has been our philosophy all the way," says Antunes.

Weighing around 9 tonnes, Galileo is perhaps 10% heavier than other modern Open 60s which are around the 8-8.5 tonne mark, but Antunes says that around 300kg of this extra weight is carried in her keel. He reckons much more weight can be lopped off his boat. "The rams [for the canting keel] are very heavy and my hydraulic equipment is just industrial stuff. The daggerboards are 95kg each, so we can take some off there and in a few more details and then we’ll be close."

In terms of sail plan, Galileo is more modest than the giant rig for example to be seen on Virbac-Paprec. "Some of these boats are very overpowered in terms of their sail plan, they reef very very early," explains Antunes. "I think we are comparible. We have a mainsail of around 170sqm which is slightly smaller. We have a 26m mast, which compares with Ecover. Even though we have as big a sail plan, the feeling I have is that we can reef a bit later and that helps in some situations."

The rig is a conventional four spreader carbon fibre fixed affair, made by HallSpars, their first foray into Open 60s. Sails were supplied by Doyle Sails (NZ), while deck equipment is by Harken and composite rigging by Future Fibres.

At 5.54m, the beam of Galileo is about the same as Virbac-Paprec and the Lombard designs (and slightly narrower than the older Groupe Finot designs) with the beam taken a long way aft as is normal with Open 60 designs which, as ever, must heel by no more than 10 degrees either way at the dock with all their movable ballast deployed. Lavranos reckons the requirement to maximise waterplane inertia and lateral buoyancy shift with heel is now greater than ever in the class: "I believe this design has carried this issue further than any other boat to date (including Sill and Bonduelle which incorporate a topside knuckle as another approach to increasing beam on the waterline). Interestingly the first VOR 70 ( ABN AMRO) is also following this line."

Having had a look around Galileo prior the Transat Jacque Vabre start she seems to be in the ball park, a robust belt and braces-type Open 60. Antunes says that he deliberately kept the boat simple in order to learn how to master it and there is much potential for developing it and adding performance-enhancing tweaky bits in the future.

The cockpit appears well thought out, with twin wheels and sheds water by being open at the transom, save for the beam supporting the full-width mainsheet track. Runner/spinnaker sheet winches sit on neat islands just aft of the steering positions, while there is a central island for the mainsheet winch. Just aft of the cabin top there is a single coffee grinder to power the primaries.

Along the sidedecks the chainplates are moulded in and there are fore and aft tracks for the headsail sheets (most Open 60s have athwartships tracks making it easier to barber haul these days). On the foredeck there is a small circular hatch, a headsail on a fixed roller furler and a removable inner firestay with another furler. At the bow there is a robust-looking fixed prod for the kites and gennikers.

The extremely light conditions of the Fastnet didn't appeal to Galileo while in the Transat Jacques Vabre this year which Antunes sailed with Brazil-based Frenchman Raphaël Coldefy - the only non-Brazilian to work on Galileo's build - the boat suffered a mysterious boom breakage.

"The whole fleet had only tacked two or three times up to that point," recounted Antunes. "We had had no crash gybes or any other event that comes to mind that would have caused the failure. We were sailing west, towards the centre of a depression with southwesterly winds. We went through the front and the wind turned west, opening the gate to tack and take the southbound highway towards the Azores. A few hours before, when taking the third reef, one of our battens came loose, but it was no problem because it was below the reef for the time being. Once we tacked south, we needed more sail area therefore we needed to re-tension the batten. To have access to it, we let go one of the lazyjacks, dropped the main to the side on top of the coachroof to climb the boom. Just when we let the lazyjack line go the boom cracked and twisted..."

Antunes adds that there had been some chafing around the gooseneck area but this shouldn't have caused any problems.

They repaired the boom and continued on to finish the Transat Jacques Vabre, albeit in last position. "I guess you can say we had a very frustrating race. Nevertheless, repairing the boom without outside assistance and finishing the race was the way we found to make it less painful. As for the cause of the failure, it remains a mystery. The good news is that the boat is rock solid and feels fast."

The boat is sailing to her numbers - upwind VMG ranges from 8 knots in 12 knots true wind to 9.3 kts in 25 knots. Reaching she does 23 knots in 25 kts at 140 deg with main and code #2. Average speeds of 20 knots in optimum conditions are possible. Boat speed exceeds wind speed on one or more points of sail up to 15 knots TWS.

From here the main issue for Antunes is to find funding. To date the project has been completely backed by himself and unless sponsorship is forthcoming he say he will be forced to sell the boat in the new year. "Not having an offshore sailing culture in Brazil it was almost impossible for me to get someone to fund the boat for a project in construction, so if I had the product ready for immediate return for a sponsor. A few doors opened but nothing solid."

His ambition is to race Galileo around the world in the Vendee Globe, but the program for the boat is open to suggestions. If he got a European sponsor then it might be the Route du Rhum, Barcelona World Race and then the Vendee, if he gets a Brazilian sponsor then perhaps a more adventure-type race like 5 Oceans might be preferable he thinks.

One ray of light is that Torben Grael's Brasil 1 Volvo Ocean Race campaign is educating the Brazilian public that sailing doesn't only exist within the Olympics and this may help Antunes' cause.