Team Tyco profile

madforsailing looks at the wooden Volvo Ocean 60, Team Tyco and talks to her skipper Kevin Shoebridge

The first move the campaign made was to purchase Merit Cup. From here it was an obvious choice to return to Farr Yacht Design for a new boat. "I've got a lot of history with Farr," says Shoebridge. "I've sailed on his boats in the last three races. There is no doubt he is the force to be reckoned with in this race." He adds that while taking the Farr route will certainly put them in the ball park with the other boats, the speed differential between the boats when it comes to design is fairly small. "The biggest differences will be in the sail programme and the people on board, not the design. It was a no-brainer for us," says Shoebridge of this decision.

Tyco clubbed together with other Volvo campaigns to go for stage two of Farr's R&D program, but unlike Illbruck didn't opt for the third stage. Shoebridge explains: "We were designed about a month before Illbruck. We were the first built as we wanted to get on the water earlier to spend time on sail development." Illbruck could afford the luxury of the added research and a later launch, he adds, because they were already testing with the two identical former EF boats they own. "We had one (test boat) for five months last year. It allowed us to put a new rig in and start developing Code Zeros."

Team Tyco was built by Eric Goetz Custom Sailboats in Bristol, Rhode Island in prepreg Kevlar, but is unique among Volvo Ocean 60s in having a balsa core (SuperLite), rather than a foam, core. This is not run of the mill balsa, but a special type created by Baltek, which is highly controlled in its quality and the way it is cut. "We spent time and effort doing panel testing," says Shoebridge. "We were testing three different things: weight, how well it stuck and the stiffness." The panel with the balsa core won overwhelmingly. "As a core it won hands down on the stiffness tests, especially as it's a Kevlar, not a carbon boat." The result, he adds, is a very light, very stiff boat.

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