On board ABN AMRO One

We get to see what's down below on black betty

One of the joys of working for thedailysail is getting to go for rides on top race boats. Recently we added to our catalogue Volvo Ocean Race leader ABN AMRO One aka 'Black Betty' or simply 'the black boat'.

We have obviously written extensively about Mike Sanderson's Juan Kouyoumdjian design previously, when she was first launched and when we spoke to Juan K after ABN AMRO One had won the first leg of the race into Cape Town, but we had never sailed on ABN AMRO One before. While it was interesting to be aboard her in her full carbon fibre glory, inevitably of course the opportunity to experience first hand a canting keel Volvo Open 70 fully arched up and surfing at 30+ knots did not come to pass thanks to the sub-10 knot wind speeds.

Much reported are the many horrors to date with the Volvo Open 70s, particularly when it comes to their canting keels. Even ABN AMRO One has had her issues, such as the crew demolishing one of her steering pedestals and some core breakage in the hull forward of the keel. To our understanding neither of the ABN AMRO boats have suffered keel problems during the race. Aside from the keel issues, the level of carnage has in reality been no worse than it has been in previous Volvo Ocean Race with the VO60s. Just stepping on board a VO70 tells you it is a million miles from being a light weight carbon fibre Med racer simply through looking at the robustness of the gear on board.

Having sailed the Open 60 Hugo Boss recently before going out on ABN AMRO One it was immediately evident from the way the boat reverberates going through even small waves that here is a very much stiffer boat. ABN AMRO One for example is 70ft long with a displacement on or approaching the 14 tonne maximum allowed under the VO70 rule, while the Open 60 is around the 9 tonne mark.

Skipper Mike Sanderson has of course sailed both types of boat too. "It is pretty stiff fore and aft compared to an Open 60," he admits. "That’s because of the importance of headstay tension for the inshore races. So they are cool boats, but the whole fleet is cool..."

In the ABN AMRO One crew there is a great mix of sailing disciplines from former 18ft skiff and International 14 World Champion Rob Greenhalgh to Jan Dekker and Sidney Gavignet who have both covered many miles on the French trimaran circuit to the posse of Kiwi Volvo/America's Cup stalwarts such as Brad Jackson and Mark Christensen. These gentlemen working alongside Juan Kouyoumdjian and his team in Valencia have clearly done some blue sky thinking when it comes to pretty much every aspect of the boat. Over the course of the next weeks we'll be publishing parts of Mark Christensen's video guided tour to ABN AMRO One deck layout and gear, where he gives us some insight into the ideas the team put into these aspects of the boat.

A side of ABN AMRO One so far not revealed to the public is exactly what goes on down below for it is here that the black boat is most radically different from her rivals.

We were not allowed to photograph or video down below, so we'll have to rely on our descriptive powers: What is most evident from a crawl around down below is that the division of space (ie the bulkhead positions) are markedly different to the Farr boats. Most noticably there is a substantial bulkhead (ie a full bulkhead with cut-outs) around 3m forward of the companionway and closer examination reveals one of ABN AMRO One's secrets - she has one less bulkhead (and therefore saves this weight) compared to the first generation ABN AMRO Two.

The Volvo rule when it comes to bulkheads, specifies that down below must comprise six watertight compartments and then goes on to state the positioning limits of each of the five structural bulkheads. Inside ABN AMRO One this is achieved by combining the bulkhead for the front of the keel box as the one also for the mast step. This was an idea the team came up with thanks to the assistance and engineering skills of Herve Devaux (Open and ORMA 60s, G-Class) and Will Brook (America's Cup) who were brought in to lend their expertise to structural side of the black boat.

"It is a little bit of harangue getting the [keel] bearings out because you have to disassemble the whole mast base," says Sanderson of the system. "But obviously you never take the keel out with the rig in so it is not an issue. It all works really nicely."

Forward of the main bulkhead is a similar bulkhead but with larger cutouts to clamber through. Ahead of this is the sparce galley area, slightly offset to port - everything in au naturel black carbon carbon fibre - and with the substantial daggerboard cases to port and starboard. Forward of this is the famous head compartment which Brian Thompson 'fell through' on the second leg. Far from Thompson being a lumbering idiot, closer examination reveals just how easily this could happen. Down below on ABN AMRO One there is a distinct division between what is structural and load bearing and what is not. Thus many panels, such as those surrounding the head, are not loading bearing and are not rigidly joined to the structure that is load bearing. As a result many of the panels for the furniture are unimaginably light.

"If we had to make it strong enough so that it is structural, it would be a lot heavier," explains Sanderson. "But if we could let it slide in a socket we could make it a fraction of the strength because it wasn’t structural." Use of this technique is most evident in the head compartment, the galley and the chart table.

Back to the area ahead of the companionway and there are tunnels running along the inside of the cabin top for the lines coming back from the mast. Going aft on each side there are six pipecots each side and we understand that 'hotel ABN AMRO One' comes complete with inflatable air mattresses on the bulks, the ultimate in lightweight comfort.

A principle difference between ABN AMRO One and the interior of the Farr boats is that on the latter the companionway is not joined to the front underside of the cockpit which one might imagine to be a structurally signficant union. The reason for this is to make it easier for sails down below to be thrown across the top of the engine box during manoeuvres rather than having to lug them forward and then across and back. In the event however few sails are kept down below - teams prefering 'to stack' them on deck.

In fact the whole stacking set-up down below is different from the Farr boats. For example forwrd the aft bulkhead and astern of the media station there is a massive empty area, which on a cruising yacht might amply accommodate a king-sided double bed and this is where some sails are stacked in strong downwind conditions. "Our big stacking area is aft. We don’t ever have sails down the side, only pre-start and the finish," says Sanderson.

Among the heavier items carried below are the spare daggerboard, spare spade rudder (if singlehanders can slot them in mid-Vendee Globe they can do it with a full crew) and an emergency rudder.

Down the centre line, in the space between the engine compartment (immediately aft of the companionway) and media staton, is Stan Honey’s lair - the nav table. On the Farr boats the standard arrangement for this area is to have two bench seats going across the boat with those working at the media station facing aft with their backs to those working at the chart table facing forward. On ABN AMRO One the set-up is very different with a chart table that effectively tacks, where Honey can always work from the ‘high side’ looking down to leeward rather than forward, his special seat crammed in between the weather pipecots allowing him to wedge his legs snugly in beneath the chart, useful for when the ride on board becomes like a rollercoaster.

The gear at the chart tables includes two IBM laptops their screen on swivels in the middle of the chart table and two separate keyboards, each heavily wrapped up in plastic to keep them dry. The Raymarine radar display is mounted on a swivel too attached to the forward bulkhead. The nav instruments are B&G Hercules 2000. In addition to this are fans, lights, and on the forward bulkhead most of the electronics including VHF, GPS, SSB, Vetus Meteoliner electronic barograph, Thrane & Thrane Inmarsat C, compass etc plus fuses, switch panel, etc.

Significant in the engine compartment is that this is where the hydraulic pump for the ram’s driving the boat’s canting keel mechanism are stored. Unlike the Farr boats where the rams are driven by the generator on ABN AMRO One they are powered by the main engine. The ABN AMRO One pump is much much larger than the ones used on the Farr boats, and the result is heavier but it also means a much shorter canting time, that is un-necessary offshore where the stack must laboriously be moved, but is most welcome for the in-port races.

“We are the only ones running [our pump] off the main engine as far as I know,” says Sanderson. “Our pump size was limited to our engine size, so the engine is 60hp and the generator is 18 or something, so we have at least twice as big a pump as anyone else can have.” The system uses more diesel, but as it is principally used for the in-port races this is not really an issue, Sanderson adds.

Also hidden in the engine compartment is the Cariboni PLC (not public limited company but programmable logic computer). This runs the entire control side of the keel canting system. “We can enter in here for the keel to do anything,” continues Sanderson. “You can have heaps of different functions. So if you want to come out of a tack with 20 degrees of cant and then the next time you press the button it goes to 40, you can program it all in.”

Next week we will run the first part of Mark 'Crusty' Christensen's guided tour of ABN AMRO One's deck layout and gear used.