Suits you

We take a wet ride on Alex Thomson's Hugo Boss in Skandia Geelong Week's Passage Race

Fired up by tales from the Southern Ocean the Volvo crews have been spinning, we were invited on board Alex Thomson's Open 60 Hugo Boss today for an epic 34 miler in Skandia Geelong Week's Passage Race. The black and white-hulled Hugo Boss is the same boat in which Thomson set the singlehanded monohull 24 hour record and competed in the last Vendee Globe. Hugo Boss, the formerly Roland Jourdain's Sill Pleine Fruit is typical state of the art Open 60 - with a canting keel, deck spreaders and a rotating wingmast, and twin rudders.

The downwind start off Williamstown was a lively affair with Skandia and Wild Joe hitting the pin end at speed and rapidly disappearing into the distance. On Hugo Boss today we were sailing with a crew mostly comprising gentlemen's retailers from Melbourne and were a little slow off the line, under single-reefed main and blast reacher Alex was thus reluctant to the hoist the kite given the conditions and the possibility of a crew unfamiliar with the boat losing their appendages in the process.

Despite this we were still hitting speeds hovering a fraction under 20 knots, perhaps two knots slower than we might have been under spinnaker. As a result the event handicap race winner, the canting keel Cookson 50 Living Doll was able to roll us to leeward but as we rounded a mark and harden up under the Solent and full main, we quickly overhauled them. Ha.

What one takes away from sailing Hugo Boss is just what fantastic bits of kit Open 60s are. Specific to this boat is just how ridiculously wet she is. Even sailing in flat water as we were today, In the cockpit there would be the familiar shudder of Open 60 bow hitting wave, followed a few seconds later by the rushing sound as a torrent of fast moving water ran up the weather side of the cabintop duly dumping itself in the cockpit. It was almost as if the bow scooped up water then lifted out of the water funnelling the water on deck aft. This feature is something Alex plans to address on his new Open 60, more details of which we can expect in April.

To see video from on board Hugo Boss - click here . Note this file is suitable for playing Windows Media Player and as it's 18MB in size, it is only realistic for those viewing this site from broadband connections....

Look out for our interview with Alex over the next few days...

More photos on the following pages...