Telefonica - race winner?

Neal McDonald and Horatio Carabelli discuss their Volvo Open 70

On Friday night the Iker Martinez-skippered Telefonica claimed the first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race. Ever since 1985, when L’Esprit d’Equipe won into Cape Town on handicap, the team that has come first in the opening leg of the Whitbread/Volvo Ocean Race has gone on to claim overall victory – so this initial win will be a most welcome one for the Spanish team.

By rights Telefonica should be favourite to win this Volvo Ocean Race. While it is the second campaign for Puma, Telefonica is on to their third with Martinez taking over the reigns of Pedro Campos’ team from Bouwe Bekking this time. However the team is notorious for maintaining a low profile and despite pretty much seamlessly rolling into their third campaign after their last finished, they were one of the last to announce.

Early recruits this time were skipper Iker Martinez, who came with his formidable 49er/Barcelona World Race co-skipper Xabi Fernandez. From the winning Ericsson 4 team last time (and before that Torben Grael’s Brasil 1) they plucked watch leader Joca Signorini and Horacio Carabelli. Carabelli was especially vital having sailed the last two races, but also a yacht designer by trade, he is not part of the sailing team and instead is their Technical Director, liaising between the team, Juan K’s design office in Valencia and the builders nearby at King Marine.

Other early recruits were navigator Andrew Cape, who sailed with the Telefonica team’s ill-fated movistar in the race before last, the highly experienced Pepe Ribes, 470 gold medallist and ex-Alinghi strategist and Jordi Calafat, plus Britain’s own son Neal McDonald, setting out on his fifth Volvo Ocean Race (or sixth if you count Lawrie Smith’s Fortuna maxi, which barely made it beyond the Needles before dismasting in the 1993 race).

McDonald says he started with Telefonica around Christmas-time after the last race finished. It was nice to join a team that already owned boats and had existing infrastructure. “None of it was breaking new ground. We knew what we were doing and there was an awful lot of continuation about it, even to the extent that when we got Telefonica Blue [now Team Sanya] and started sailing, it all went very very smoothly.”

In particular McDonald is impressed with skipper Iker Martinez and Xabi Fernandez. “In Lanzarote we were sailing five days a week, working on the boat for the other two and these guys were going out in their lunch break for a two hour run in the heat of the day, to drop weight because they were doing the pre-Olympics. And they finished equal points with first, having not raced for a year. It was unbelievable. And then when they finished the Barcelona World Race, Iker was on the phone about six hours after he’d finished... They have an incredible drive and interest and you can’t help but have some of that rub off on you. Those two are pretty special people.”

The Telefonica team may not have the substantial size of the Groupama and Camper/Emirates Team New Zealand campaigns, with around 40 people in total including the sailing team, but they have no shortage of talent and experience.

According to Neal McDonald this time around the fleet generally feels that little bit more professional. “We thought we pitched up with a boat that was really nicely finished, all the details had been superbly dealt with, but I look at all the other boats and they are just the same.”

By way of example he talks about the build of the boat at King Marine, where thanks to the builders and the precision of the plans from Juan Yacht Design, construction was millimetre perfect, not perhaps 3-4mm as it once was. “That counts for a lot when you are setting a boat up and how simple it makes putting the rig in. It is wonderful when you have datums that you can trust. To check reference I look at the runner blocks and they were spot on. In the America’s Cup they have been doing boats like that for a long time with the luxury of the manpower and the money. Now this fleet is at the same level.”

Telefonica is one of three Juan K designs in this Volvo Ocean Race. In terms of boat lineage, Horatio Carabelli points out that they and Puma are similar, he and Signorini coming from Ericsson 4, while Puma picked up Kiwi hotshots Brad Jackson and Tony Mutter. Areas like cockpit layout are similar, with the principle difference being the rig package: Puma went with Hall Spars, while Telefonica stuck with Southerns. Caribelli happily points out that the jumpless rig that this time features on all the VO70s is the same as the Telefonica boats used in the last race.

Frankly it is difficult to see the difference in hull shape between the three Juan K designs. One imagines there to be minor variations in volume distribution according to each team’s take on the anticipated weather. However it is believed that both the Puma and Telefonica teams allowed the designers longer to come up with final plans than Groupama did. Carabelli says that they did as much CFD as they could – even delaying the build in order to carry out further development of the hull shape. What was more obvious in Alicante was the different in rake and transom immersions – Groupama with a lot of rake and a more immersed transom, a set-up more for heavy weather and reaching conditions compared to Puma and Telefonica.

Compared to the older generation boats, the new boats have more volume forward and McDonald says this adds to the righting moment and prevents the bow from burying so quickly. “There is a lot of spray, but I don’t think it does much harm to the drag. You have to push the water aside somewhere, it is just done a bit earlier. You put your foulweather gear on about two knots earlier...”

Most noticeable on Telefonica, is its significant deck camber mid-ships, that incorporates much of the cabin top. Within the team this is known as the ‘Capey deck’, after their navigator (also a yacht designer) who came up with the idea.

“It is basically to reduce the amount of water that comes into the boat,” says McDonald. “ The cost is when you are working to leeward the angle is worse. If you are putting a sheet on, you have an extra 5° of heel you wouldn’t have.” It is also stiffer and lighter and increases the space below, compared to the conventional arrangement, although nothing comes for free and there is also a windage gain and a slight raising of the hull’s centre of gravity.

With the Telefonica team having already had experience of jumperless rigs in the last race, so this time the team went one stage further in the perpetual quest to reduce windage aloft, by removing the checkstays.

McDonald was the member of the sailing team involved with the rig, working with Steve Wilson, who project managed its design. He says they spent probably too much time contemplating jumpered v jumperless, looking at the risk v the reward. “Just that decision for the jumpers I’d have a 1000 emails about it...”

Their rig has swept-back spreaders, by around 10°, whereas Puma’s are almost in-line. This obviously limits the degree of movement in the middle of the mast and may also be related to their reasoning for having no checkstays.

Compared to the other boats Telefonica’s daggerboards are slightly more ‘toed in’, so in theory they should develop more vertical lift than the boards on the other VO70s, however, as Farr’s Patrick Shaughnessy told us in our recent interview with him, this is not a given as it also depends on how the boat heels. And it should be pointed out that the positioning and orientation of Telefonica’s boards, while extreme in the VO70 fleet, is nowhere near as radical as it is on boats like Banque Populaire and MACIF in the IMOCA 60 fleet.

Another variation between the boats is in the length of the daggerboards. Camper is well known for having max-length boards, but with this comes the possibility of the board being colliding with the keel as it is canted, although, obviously there are measures to safeguard against this. In addition to this McDonald also points out that with the max length boards there a weight issue develops too, as the boards need to be beefed up to counter their extra bending moment. So it seems likely Telefonica’s aren’t max length.

“Juan puts a lot of emphasis on the lift and he wants to minimise the leeway and the boats they feel nice when they are loaded up – grippy, they feel positive," says McDonald. "He goes for quite high lift daggerboard sections. The hulls are reasonably easily driven – the mix between righting moment and low drag - the balance feels nice.”

And of course all of the above is dependent on sail choice, given the compacted inventory the boats can carry in this race. This is most crucial in the downwind sails, as Horatio Carabelli says: “Before you could take an A4, A3 and a masthead 0, but now you have to leave one, and then you develop your boat for that, looking for more VMG or whatever...”

As sail choice has a significant effect on the design generally, that was also a decision that had to be made many months out. “It is a painstaking decision because you put your *$%$s on the chopping board,” says McDonald. “Again that was a decision made more than a year ago and it is a grey area and there will be horses for courses. You won’t be able to match someone else’s angle if you don’t have that same wardrobe. For a competitive sailor that is the hardest thing, if, say, someone starts sailing a little bit lower. So there is a lot of backing yourself, stick with what you’ve got. That is quite tricky for the competitive guys on the boats, which we all are...”

But aside from this decision there are also differences between the handling of these sails with some teams, such as Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing, using top down furling, that enables them to use a flying sail with the handling simplicity of a furler. On Telefonica McDonald says they opted not to do this.

While Camper has a deck hatch that really is just there to be rule compliant, on Telefonica McDonald says that they only use their hatch in light winds. They have a partial string drop system for sucking the big kites in through the main hatch, but McDonald says they use that to "start them off”, for on this race, this type of equipment must be taken on the offshore legs if it is to be used in the in-port races.

In the cockpit Telefonica's layout is reasonably similar to Ericsson 4 – the Telefonica team reverting from the fully sunken cockpit they used on their boats last time and now featuring on Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing. The new boat has conventional sidedecks around the forward half of the cockpit for stacking sails and the mounting of winches. Like all the boats they have three pedestals and McDonald says they did consider Camper's arrangement of having the main pedestal after of the mainsheet track, but chose against it.

What is unusual is that their runners attach to the top of the elevated kite turning blocks on the transom corners, rather than to the top of the transom inboard of this. This makes the passage of the runner itself a little awkward, having to pass through the sidedeck and then up to a winch. Despite the runner attachment being outboard, there are still attachment points at the top of the transom (where most have their runners) and on Telefonica McDonald says these are used for sheeting the giant flat Code 0. “These boats are so wide at the transom now that you want them to come in a bit. So instead of having barber haulers, etc, the foot comes over the rail and comes in board.”

The aft winches either side are for the traveller which passes through a jammer on the cockpit side before it reaches the winch – this doesn’t make a great angle for the traveller to arrive at the winch, which is why the bottom of the winch drum has a Kevlar covering. The forward winches are accompanied by a ratcheted snubber winch which McDonald says is mostly for safety. “When you hoist a sail, you put it on a lock and people are very conscious of it jumping off the lock - which is not completely out of the question.”

In big conditions the crew can lower the scoop to fill the water ballast tank from the cockpit. “With four people on deck it is a really nice feature – it is the safety button. If you see a dark black cloud you put it down to give you a bit more margin of error,” says McDonald.

Due to the amount of noise on deck, they have a comms unit set up in the cockpit to talk to their eminent navigator down below. Capey can also see what is going on on deck via a camera. So big brother is perpetually watching them.

The only track for the headsails is for the overlapping J1, the tracks mounted just outboard and forward of the primaries. For smaller upwind headsails they run the usual barber hauler arrangement off a series of deck-mounted padeyes. All the sails are on locks, all made by Southern Spars, while the standing rigging is carbon EC6.

Compared to the other boats, Telefonica is unusual in not having a ‘tower’, ie an elevated part of the deck to which the forestay is attached. Carabelli explains that their reasoningfor this is because the tower doesn’t allow you to increase your sail area, only to move it further forward a little. “But you pay a penalty in weight.”

Telefonica’s sail design was carried out by Henrik Soderlund, the sails built in North 3Di and finished at Pedro Campos’ loft in Galicia. According McDonald, Soderlund, while working for North in Denmark, has been spending almost half of his time with the team. “He has done a lot of sailing with us, probably 3000-4000 miles. He is part of the team, which is a change. He did ABN AMRO and was involved with us on Green Dragon and Assa Abloy. We are lucky having him.”

When it comes to hydraulics, Telefonica is in the middle of the field. It is used for vital functions, such as main cunningham, outhaul and vang, etc but not for the tacks of sails. All the hydraulics on board was made by Cariboni.

Down below is relatively conventional. The main bulkhead configuration is slightly different due to the swept back spreaders. McDonald also points out that the positioning of bulkheads has also been affect this time by the new rules prohibiting stacking in the forward and aft extremities of the hull. The head and galley are forward of the main bulkhead. “Quite sociable,” as McDonald puts it.

Aft the pipecots are mounted down each side with the nav station and media station beneath the cockpit, although Andrew Cape will always sit to weather with the electronics mounted on a panel that can be swung from side to side.

On this first leg into Cape Town where in past races 24 hour records have been set, the highest managed was Camper’s 554 miles – some way off Ericsson 4’s 596.6 set in the last race. McDonald has the theory that the latest generation VO70s’ ultimate speed is not as great as it was on the older generation boats – which benefitted from having a heavier bulb and more sail slots. However he believes that the latest generation boats, certainly the Juan K designers, are faster in average conditions.

Telefonica is certainly off to a good start in this Volvo Ocean Race. However with most of the next leg to Abu Dhabi likely to take place on a ship, it won’t be until Sanya or Auckland, with all six boats are racing, that we will really have a good picture of who the prime movers are in this round the world race.

Photos: James Boyd/www.thedailysail.com