Team Vestas Wind has six weeks before leaving shed for Volvo start

by Sail-World.com on 16 Apr 2015 Team Vestas Wind's Neil Cox updates on the progress from Persico Marine as work continues on the VO65 ahead of their expected return to the Volvo Ocean Race in Lisbon.

There's still a lot to do, but things are moving quickly and in the right direction, as Coxy explains:

So the calendar shows us now that we are just under six weeks from needing to be in a position to leave the shed at Persico and load onto the truck for the journey to Lisbon.

It’s a little unnerving to think about this right now knowing what lies before us, but at the same time we have been making solid progress the whole way through the rebuild, and we are doing all we can to put things in place to reduce the risk of what could become problematic over the next six weeks.

The deck is on, the boat is out of the mould, all the primary structure is in the boat and a large percentage of the internal secondary structure and detailing is underway and we are closing in on wanting to have this all finalised before late in the month.

Watch the boat leave the mould here:




The hull surface has come out of the mould nicely and we have the paint team starting on all the surface prep work here, filling in any pin holes before the application of primer/undercoat, which, all being well, can happen by about the 16th of this month.

Before we get into all the systems install operation, we want to get the inside of the boat closed down in the sense that all composite work is complete and we have all the rule-compliant sealer coat and deck head vinyls in place.

With this done, we want to offer the teams from Diverse, Navtec, Livewire, Cariboni (working on internal components such as the electronics and hydraulics) as much uninterrupted runway through the boat as possible. Admittedly there will still be an exterior paint work program going on in parallel but they are getting the feeling they will be owning the night shift!

We are still receiving required equipment daily by the pallet load and have had the support of both Green Marine and VOR shared services helping with the transfer of both information and parts.

The race measurer, James Dadd, has been on site with us on multiple occasions over the last month as things narrow down to the pointy end of the schedule, and we are looking into dates that can work for getting some of the more critical final measurements taken before departure.



All the guys on the floor are doing an amazing job for us and the support we get from all the suppliers and Persico management has been fantastic.

Like all intense build projects, you can see the signs of wear on the guys but to their credit they have not yet shown any sign of things being in the 'too hard' basket, but the reality is we are going to have some challenging days in front of us to hold this all together as required, but we have a pretty determined group.

Hopefully, in the not too distant future, the elements of the rule-permitted work that we can take on as a team can get under way, and from here we can begin the reassembly of all the deck hardware and begin to feel that our boat is starting to look like Vestas Wind again.

Coxy

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