Volvo Ocean Race - Frostad on Boat Design and final changes (Part II)

by Rob Kothe & Jedda Murphy on 28 Sep 2014 The seven One Design VOR 65s were built by a consortium led by Green Marine in the UK. The first of those for the Team SCA women wad delivered in October 2013, the last was supplied to Team Vestas Wind in August 2014.

Since the end of Race Zero, the boats have been out of the water, here in Alicante on the Spanish coast, with a team of Volvo Ocean Race Boatyard shipwrights making sure all the boats were strictly one design and that the number of modifications were applied identically on all the boats.

Yesterday we talked to Knut Frostad, the Volvo Ocean Race CEO about changes made to all the boats in the final upgrade and maintenance program just being competed.

Frostad explained ‘We were very pleased with the small number of overall changes we had to make to boats.

‘I had contemplated we would be forced to make a lot more because we wanted to build a full scale sailable prototype that we could test but we didn’t have the time to do it.

‘We made a prototype of the interior. We made a prototype of the deck that we could work on that in a one to one scale. Normally when you launch one of these offshore racing boats whether it is an America’s Cup boat or a Volvo Ocean Race boat they are always half finished when they launch and then they start sailing with them and they change and they rebuild and they move and they get everything right.

‘We just couldn’t do that because then it wouldn’t be a one design boat. Our ambition was to get it 90% correct in everything and then knowing that some things would probably not be perfect.

‘The great thing was the things that were not perfect were mostly just practical things. They were not really performance related, for example the galley. We made a mistake with the galley. It wasn’t really a user friendly galley. It was actually quite hopeless to cook from.

‘Probably they were mostly I the past as well but we had an opportunity to do a better galley and a better toilet and both were quite poorly done so we had to do some changes to the toilet because it was simply not working and the galley was not user friendly and it was too hard to cook from so we had to change a few things.

‘We changed in all the boats and they were happy with that and then we forgot one thing.

‘We forgot to have handles inside the boat to hold onto and you need to do that. If you don’t have that you will fall over everywhere. I don’t know how it left the whole program but for some reason it was forgotten in the program, of all the details we were studying. It was discovered when the first boat started sailing and then we had a big program of where are the handles going to be, how are they going to look like.

‘Yes, so we had to find a solution that worked for both women and men and now they all have that so now they are all happy.

‘Most of the changes we made have been practical. There have been a couple of sailing things but not very much.

‘Safety things, we went a big step this time on safety so we have increased it a lot.

‘One thing we pushed very hard is heavy items in the boat so for example they are not allowed to have so many stackable items any more. A lot more things have to be sealed in one location so if they were to capsize or flip sideways things are not tumbling round inside the boat.

‘The safety level and equipment is very similar to the last race. We always equip the boats with most of the safety equipment. We have done that in the last three races so all the life rafts and all those things are from us so we provide that as part of the entry fee. This time they have a few more fire extinguishers, more medical equipment, more escape hatches in the boat. I think they are pretty good on that. We have better personal EPIRBs, with AIS locator beacons on people.

‘We had some small issues with the keels which were mostly related to a chemical, it was the fact the inside paint was supplied from the milling manufacturer was not the right paint and salt water and the paint were not a good mix. So we had to sand blast all the keels here and repaint them from the bottom out. It was not a disastrous issue but it was work. Of course some boats had it more, some less but we did it on all the boats so none of them had the problem.

‘Sails are all the same. They all got the sails the same day here. They had their prerace sails at different times but their race sails were given on the same day and they have seven sails each and then the next lot of four sails they cannot start using before Abu Dhabi so we don’t have any more logistical cost on that.

‘The sails are given by lottery so they can’t go and pick their own mainsail, if they have a friend who works in that loft, you know.

‘You have to think about everything because these guys are crazy, absolutely crazy.’

In Part III Frostad talks about lessons learned by race organisers and sailors in Leg Zero.