Boss sign for another four years

Alex Thomson discusses his Open 60 project with thedailysail

While Mike Golding is now making quite strong noises about his third new Open 60 and an attempt at the 2008-9 Vendee Globe, so our most capped singlehanded round the world sailor will face stiff competition both on the water and in media terms off the water from young blade, Alex Thomson - the fastest solo sailor in the world, as his PR material states.

At a glamorous soiree in the Hugo Boss store on Sloane Square last night, attended by grandees such as RYA Chief Executive Rod Carr and Thomson's former business partner, Air Miles and Nectar founder Keith Mills (as of today Sir Keith following his team's spearheading the successful London bid to host the 2012 Olympics), Thomson formally announced his new four year Open 60 campaign with his German fashion label sponsor.

Hugo Boss is a top sponsor within sport generally so their being involved seriously with yachting is excellent news. Since 1981 they have backed the McLaren Formula 1 team. They support the Penscke Indy racing team in the US. In golf they currently support eight players including four up and coming stars from the UK, along with the US and European PGA tours, in tennis they back the Davis and Kremlin Cups, they also support boxing brothers Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko. In short they sponsorships are long ones and they anticipate this to also be the case with Thomson and yachting. "In all the sports we have long term commitment," confirmed Hugo Boss, Head of Sports Sponsorship, Till Pohlmann. "I hope this will go on beyond the four years we have just signed. Sailing fits very well to the brand and there is still a lot to do in sailing."

Thomson's schedule is an ambitious one, including three round the world races in consecutive years - the stopping singlehanded Velux 5 Oceans this winter, the two handed non-stop Barcelona World Race in 2007-8 and the pinnacle and the true focus for Thomson, the Vendee Globe in 2008-9.

While most of this is known and previously published on thedailysail the most significant announcement last night was that Thomson is following Yann Elies in choosing Groupe Finot - today known as Finot-Conq, the Paris and Vannes-based design house - as the creators of the new Hugo Boss Open 60. While for the last Vendee Globe Finot-Conq had no new boats on the start line and seemed not to be flavour of the month, skippers prefering Farr Yacht Design ( Virbac), Lombard ( Sill and Bonduelle) or Owen Clarke ( Ecover), it came as some surprise that the winner of that race should be PRB, firstly not a new boat, but also the only to win the race twice - she was sailed to first place in 2000-1 by Michel Desjoyeaux. PRB is also a Finot-Conq design (in fact accurately she has a Finot-Conq hull and a Lombard deck) and Vincent Riou's victory's was they fourth consecutive line honours in the Vendee Globe

"It was very logical," says Thomson of his choice of designer. "Why not Farr? Because I didn’t want to be a small cog in a big engine. Lombard because I’ve got one already. I never really wanted to go outside the field and it was very close between Owen Clarke and Finot-Conq. I felt that Merf had made quite small changes along the way and because these guys are French, they have the passion and they understand singlehanded sailing."

Unlike Elies who is building at multihull and America's Cup specialists Multiplast in Vannes, France Thomson has chosen Southern Ocean Marine in Tauronga, New Zealand. Here, he says, they have huge experience of Open 60 construction having been behind Hexagon and Ecover. Currently under way there is Dominque Wavre's new Owen-Clarke design and following this will be the new Farr-designed Virbac. The new Hugo Boss will come after starting in August this year with a launch date set for April 2007. "So we will get all the experience from those guys and it is a hell of a lot cheaper to build down there," Thomson continues. "And they have a relationship with Southern Spars and North Sails New Zealand. So the whole thing fits together quite nicely." Southern have also built the replacement mast for the present Hugo Boss due to be delivered in June. This has been made using the same mould as Pindar's spar (Thomson has just returned from racing on the Pindar Open 60 in Antigua).

For Finot-Conq the new Hugo Boss contract comes with sufficient budget to carry out extensive R&D work including tank testing and specialist CFD work and design work started on the new boat last year. Tank testing has already taken place at a facility in Normandy. According to Finot-Conq's David de Premorel this is the biggest tank in Europe. Called the B600 it is 580m long, 15m wide and 8m deep.

Following on from the Volvo Ocean Race and the heavyweight R&D put into canting keel Volvo 70s, so it is likely that Open 60 design will take a quantum leap with the next generation of boats. Thomson thinks that the end result will be Open 60s that are fairly similar in speed, but a more significant advance over the present generation than between the boats that came out between the 2000-1 and 2004-5 Vendee Globes.

Few design details are at present available about the new Hugo Boss. One of the most interesting things the design team has been looking at says de Premorel has been 'where to get the power from?' "You can gain it from several places - the keel, the hull shape or the ballast. So the arrangement between all of these is interesting to study," says de Premorel. While 1990s Open 60s, particularly those from Finot-Conq had massive beam since then with the introduction of more stringent IMOCA stability rules have reversed this trend, so it is unlikely we will see the new Hugo Boss having a 6m beam. "The easy way to pass the stability limits is to have a boat that is not too wide," says de Premorel. "It is the 127deg AVS requirement that is important. With a canting keel the 180deg inversion test is no problem."

The new Hugo Boss will have a 'classic' fixed mast. "Despite everything the wind tunnel says on the water you don’t see much difference," says de Premorel. "And it will have classic spreaders." Owen Clarke were at one stage seriously looking at a fixed rig with deck spreaders.

Thomson anticipates sailing the Velux 5 Oceans in his present boat, the new Hugo Boss coming on line in time for the Barcelona World Race.

To see our video from our ride earlier this year on the present Hugo Boss - click here