Volvo Ocean Race 2005 pt2

James Boyd looks at the different boats that might be suitable and proposed a Volvo ocean racing circuit

Open 80

In a poll carried out last year on madfor sailing your views showed that staying with the VO60 was prefered to changing to an Open 60 or a 100ft catamaran. The only boat in our poll to beat the VO60 was an Open 80.

A more extreme 80-100ft monohull would perhaps be a good compromise for Volvo. These would be more impressive to the public than a 60 footer and deliver a hike in performance shortening the duration (and therefore the cost) of the race. Because boats such as this are known quantities it would take less time for them to become competitive. But again larger boats mean more cost and this would only be a viable option if a one-design were considered.

At this point it is perhaps worth looking at the one design argument. At present the Volvo Ocean 60s are built to a box rule, but the result today is so well developed they might as well be a one design. Looking at the rating certificates for the eight boats the difference in Bmax between them is just 11mm. Even to us journalists who follow and do our best to commentate on the race it is hard to identify the physical differences between the boats. Assa has the lightest hull, djuice is possibly slow although you need a degree in naval architecture to pinpoint why, Amer Sports One is fuller in the ends, SEB has a different cockpit arrangement - all this has become almost an irrelevance compared to who has the right sails for the conditions and who went the right way down the race track and who broke least.

If this is the case and the competitive element is of paramount importance why not simply make the new Volvo boat a one design, thereby saving thousands of dollars that would otherwise be spent on R&D for some microscopic improvement in performance? It is hard to see what the argument against this would be other than the employment of yacht designers and tank test facilities.

So if the new Volvo boat were a larger monohull what form should it take? Kevin Shoebridge's point about the VO60 looking like something out of the local marina has considerable resonance. The new boat, be it a mono or a multi, must look awe-inspiring and it must get the pulse racing in teenage boys. This is almost an issue of style rather than design, but it is hard to see why the choice of boat should remain so conservative.

The present generation of Volvo Ocean 60s are built in Kevlar, while these days for minimal extra cost every other modern grand prix ocean racing boat is made from carbon fibre and they weigh 13.5 tonnes, getting on for twice that of a marginally smaller Open 60. Making the boats lighter would not only make them faster, but cheaper too.

There are other issues like reducing the number of crew. This would be hard to achieve while keeping the Volvo the Grand Prix ocean racing class as sail wardrobes would have to be compromised with roller furling sails. But is this an issue in modern day offshore racing?

Continued on page 3...

Or an 80-100ft version of this?