Ian Walker on the Volvo Ocean Race

How it will be necessary to sleep with your sails

Ian Walker returns for his second crack at the Volvo Ocean Race as skipper of Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing. While the funding issues that affected his Green Dragon campaign in the last round the world race may not be an issue this time, the UAE campaign has suffered slightly from time constraints and their VO70 was the last of the new generation boats to be launched, only sailing for the first time at the start of this month.

While Puma, Groupama and Telefonica all have new VO70s boats from Juan Kouyoumdjian, who obviously designed the last two winning boats ABN AMRO One and Ericsson 4, the new UAE boat is from Farr Yacht Design. Farr obviously know a thing or two about the fully crewed round the world race, their boats having been at the forefront of the race since the early 1980s, with back to back wins from Peter Blake’s Steinlager 2 maxi ketch in 1989 through until John Kostecki’s illbruck Challenge in 2001-2, but their designs have obviously lost out to the dominant Argentinian in the last two fully crewed round the world races.

So was choosing Farr a brave move? In fact, for Ericsson 4 the last Volvo Ocean Race was not the run-away success enjoyed by Mike Sanderson’s winning ABN AMRO One team in 2005-6. The Farr-designed Telefonica Blue ended up winning two of the legs into Singapore and Qingdao as well as four in-port races, while her sistership, Telefonica Black, claimed the final leg into St Petersburg. One of the reasons Ian Walker says Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing chose Farr as its designer was that the Annapolis-based design house was “hungry” to return to its previous success in the round the world race.

This was also one of the reasons the Abu Dhabi team got into bed with Future Fibres and in particular the Valencia-based company’s new spar making division, who’s facility has constructed their mast.

For the build the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing team also chose to construct their new VO70 at Persico in Italy. Persico have in the past built America’s Cup challengers for Il Moro de Venezia and the Luna Rossa Version 5 AC boats, but their main business is creating parts for the automotive industry while their marine division more typically builds moulds for production manufacturers.

The tie-up between Persico and the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing team came through Future Fibres as Persico is part of their new spar-making business and, for example, in addition to the UAE Volvo Ocean Race entry, the Italian manufacturer is set to build the AC72 wings for Artemis Racing.

According to Ian Walker they were originally looking to build their VO70 in Abu Dhabi, but they were running out of time, plus there wasn’t a facility on the team’s home turf set up to undertake pre-preg composite boat building. Persico’s Operations Manager Mark Somerville, looked after the build of the new VO70, with the legend, Jason Carrington, running the show from the team’s side.

The gear at the Persico facility in Bergamo is impressive – their giant CNC milling machine was able to form the female hull and deck moulds for in the VO70 in one piece with millimetre precision, and also allowed them to allowed them to include inserts for the rudder, the wetbox for the keel and the daggerboards from the outset rather than the more fiddley job of adding them afterwards. The VO70 hull and deck were cooked in the former Luna Rossa oven that they had to widen for the purpose.

Rule changes

In terms of the boat, Ian Walker says that the main differences this time are the new minimum fin weight and maximum bulb weight rules, that have required some optimisation in order to lower the centre of gravity of the fin as much as possible, without compromising its strength or the mandatory grounding requirements. However the new rules have done nothing to prevent teams attempting to shed all possible excess weight from the hulls, only now it is so that weight distribution can be optimised throughout their length. As Walker explains: “Last time around the big thing was that you were trying to maximise your keel weight, so that all the weight you saved in the hull you could put in the keel. Therefore anything you could take off the hull for measurement was good, because it made the all-up weight lighter and you could put it in the bulb. Now it is almost the reverse position – your bulb weight is fixed, so now you want to build everything as light as possible and have as much on the boat when you weigh it and still be at minimum weight. So it is different, but ultimately the same thing – which is build the boat as light as possible...”

Otherwise building to the Germanischer Lloyd classification has changed panel weight requirements, so the name of the game, more than ever, has been attempting to get structural areas around the boat – notably around the mast, keel and chain plate, etc - to perform multiple functions wherever possible.

Boards

An evident area of variation between the different designs of the new VO70s is in the configuration of their retracting twin daggerboards.

The original function of these was to prevent leeway, a roll that the keel was unable to fulfil when it was canted. So in early canting keel Open 60s for example you see the boards being ‘toed out’ so that they are vertical in the water when they are lowered on their respective tacks. However on the Farr Open 60s they were quite vertical in the boat, and as a result inclined when the boat was heeled thereby providing a component of vertical lift, and this was taken one stage further on Michel Desjoyeaux’s latest Foncia (now Banque Populaire) which has the boards ‘toed in’ to provide even more vertical lift when heeled. It appears that the Juan K VO70s have also gone down this route while the Abu Dhabi/Farr boards are near vertical or slightly toed out. The Juan K and Farr designs have the boards just forward of the mast, while those on the Marcellino Botin-designed Camper are slightly aft of the mast. “They could have different solutions, because it is an upwind-downwind trade off,” reckons Walker.

This time around the course and potential weather likely to be encountered, along with scoring for the Volvo Ocean Race, have changed. Walker says there is slightly more upwind bias to the course: “This time the leg to New Zealand will be a lot more upwind-orientated than before. From China to Auckland, until the last 1000 miles, it will be mainly upwind and we have still have toget around the top of the Philippines and go through the Strait of Luzon which is where some boats fell apart last time, and we broke our ring frame [on Green Dragon]. Before when we left China we were coming out of Qingdao, so we were further north and able to reach for about a week, but now [coming out of Sanya] we will beating in the trade winds and New Zealand is a long way east, so that is a little bit different.”

Walker also points out that this time around the whole of the Volvo Ocean Race schedule has been shifted on by one month, which will make for differences throughout the race course.

In terms of the scoring this time it has been simplified and there are no mid-leg scoring gates and the weighting on the ten legs has been increased against the in-port races, which now represent only 18.6% of the total available points.

While this will be the third race the VO70s have been used (it should be remembered the VO60s only lasted three races) and the boats will inevitably be closer than they have ever been before, Walker points out that teams will always have their own ideas about the weather conditions they expect to experience on the round the world race course and how they mode their boats as a result – in essence ‘stiffer’ or ‘slipperier’.

Sails

But the biggest difference between teams this time around is likely to be in the sail inventories. This time boats are only allowed to carry eight on board at any one time. “Before, you had 11 sails, so you could pretty much populate the sail chart and you could make you boat sail at 100% at most angles,” states Walker. “Now we have one masthead downwind sail. Assuming everyone takes a Code 0, which is quite likely because it is a very multi-purpose sail, it means effectively downwind we have one spinnaker, whereas last time we would have had an A3 and an A4, so a reaching sail and a running sail. So what are we going to do this time? Take a running one or a reaching one or try and morph one in the middle somehow and if you do what sort of sail will it be? Will it furl like an A3 or will it be free flying like an A4? And what will you build it out of – nylon or Cuben fibre? Small differences in spinnaker shape are going to make boats sail with a 10° difference in angles with completely different performances and they might just route differently.” So a boat with flatter, smaller kites will sail higher angles than one with fuller downwind gear and on the race course they will sail in different directions – but Ian Walker points out that importantly this choice of sails will also have a significant bearing on the design of the boat.

“We are going to have big holes in our chart where we were just can’t sail competitively, for instance – say you had a running spinnaker and a masthead zero, the masthead zero might go down to 120° TWA in some wind strengthsbut you might not be able to use your running spinnaker in above 135° TWA, so there is a 15° angle where you can’t sail anywhere near competitively.

“So you are trying to widen the range of the sails, but then you also have to decide whether you have certain sails for certain legs, so you only have eight sails on your boat at any one time, but you might have 12 in your inventory. But as soon as you do that then you don’t have back-up sails, because we are only allowed 17 sails for the whole race. If you have 12 in an inventory to choose from based on a weather forecast, you only have five back-up sails and what are they going to be? So sails are a BIG issue.”

While the number of sails was reduced as a cost-cutting measure, as a result teams have had to focus more resources on this issue, carrying out more comprehensive weather studies, R&D, etc. As a result Walker reckons there could be more variation between the performance of the boats this time. “For sure Ericsson would have had better sails last time because they had more budget, trained for longer and would have optimised more, but essentially Green Dragon’s sails didn’t look very different to their's, just their's were slightly bigger because they had more righting moment! Whereas now there are lots of different ways you can deal with it. You have only got three headsails, so assuming everyone is going to take a heavyweather jib, which you have to due to the rules, then you have two headsails.

“My worry is what happens if, for example, all the sails fall apart two thirds of the way round and people don’t have sails to finish the race. I guess you’ll just have to plough on without being competitive - I don’t think anyone wants to see that: the Volvo race determined by who has the sails with the least holes in them. And what are Volvo going to do if someone loses five sails over the side, as has happened before on a Volvo boat? Basically you will need to sleep with your sails and look after them.”

All this will certainly put pressure on the rules governing the sails, warns Walker, in particularly the amount of a sail that can be replaced, what determines a sail, etc.

Aside from Team Sanya which is going with Doyle, the rest of the VO70s are believed to be using North’s new 3Di, which has been proven round the world aboard Jean-Pierre Dick’s Virbac Paprec 3 IMOCA 60.

Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing has the eminent JB Braun as their sail designer, who worked with Puma last time. More hands on with the Abu Dhabi team is North UK’s Jeremy Elliott who Walker says co-ordinates the sail program on a day to day basis and spends considerable time sailing with them. Their sail knowledge has also been complemented by the addition of Justin Ferris to the crew as on board sailmaker.

Elsewhere above decks Walker says that development with the rigs has followed that of Telefonica from the last race, ie no jumpers and generally lowering windage by reducing aft rigging. Development has also gone on with the sheeting towers for the Code 0s, that elevate the sheeting point from the deck, and also the pyramid used for the forestay attachment.

Walker also observes that much of the developments in the new generation boats are similar to those we regular see in the TP52s – such as reducing windage on deck and minimising the amount of deck gear. A noticeable variation between the boats is that the Camper has one of its three pedestals mounted aft behind the main sheet track (another TP52 trend). “In the middle of the boat you spend a lot of time getting completely hosed or getting swept off your feet, so the logical thing is to move it back,” explains Walker. “But it has some disadvantages - the guy grinding on that pedestal can’t reach over and let the sheet off.”

Interestingly, compared to the last generation of boats, Walker doesn’t think the new generation will show much of a speed advantage, principally because the older generation VO70s had a higher righting moment but also because the limitations in the sail wardrobe will have an effect on performance. “I don’t think there will be a lot in it, but then there never needs much to make a difference. I don’t think there will be a massive difference between the best boats last time and the boats this time, but that is pretty common whether it is the America’s Cup or the Volvo - a lot of the weaker teams don’t get as fast as the winning boat from the time before. If you took us in the last Volvo Ocean Race, we were quite a lot slower than Delta Lloyd, which was the winning boat (ABN AMRO One) from the race before.”

Ian Walker and the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing VO70 at presently training in Cascais, Portugal but are soon to head north for the UK where they will be competing in the Rolex Fastnet Race.