How to win the Volvo Ocean Race pt1

James Boyd takes an in-depth look at John Kostecki's illbruck campaign

Traditionally Farr boats have a fine entry forward to help them slice through waves, but Morris says that as a result of their research illbruck has fuller topsides forward to help her plane and a slight bulge in her topsides, 'ballast tank flair' as it is known in the Farr office. This is not for any contrived hydrodynamic reasons, but simply to ensure the optimal positioning of the internal water ballast. "This enabled us to achieve a certain amount of stability with less waterline beam," explains Morris.

One of the observations several of the other teams have made about illbruck was that she seemed to hold a more 'bows out' trim when she was hard reaching. Interestingly Morris says that while some teams liked to have upright masts and some liked to rake the mast to get more luff length on the Code Zeros, illbruck's bows out trim was probably more due to stacking sails on the transom.

In addition to Farr Yacht Design, illbruck Challenge had their own in house designer in Michael Richelsen who acted as the interface between the Farr office and the campaign. "A lot of research work is highly technical. You can explain that directly to the team, but it's hard to get the message across," says Morris. Richelson would work with Farr and then would report back to Kostecki and his 'inner core' (Kostecki included Halcrow, Bannatyne and Christensen in most of the major decision making). Morris adds that of all the Volvo campaigns this time round, illbruck had the closest involvement with the Farr office.

Richelsen was also heavily involved in much of the R&D and design aspects of the boat. He developed special software to run various 'virtual' boats around the world on weather models generated by Chris Bedford. In total they tested 46 different boats. Following on from his experience working as Principle Designer for America One, Richelson was also responsible for illbruck's keel. He worked with Kiel University on a test programme (that no doubt may still progress into research for illbruck's America's Cup campaign) and eventually the team opted for his keel rather than Farr's. Illbruck's bulb is believed to be the second heaviest after ASSA ABLOY's.

Tomorrow we look at other winning factors being the illbruck campaign...