New era begins as first Volvo Ocean 65 comes through pull-down test

Team SCA new Volvo Ocean 65 structural test in Southampton docks © Rick Tomlinson / Team SCA

The first of the new one-design Volvo Ocean 65 racing boats has come safely through a rigorous round of testing – including a heart-stopping pull-down test putting the boat at an angle of 50 degrees – and is on track to be declared "ready to sail" by the end of the week.

Radical, high-performance, tough and designed around the demands of digital communications – the new Volvo Ocean 65s mark the first use of a one-design boat in the 40-year history of the Volvo Ocean Race.

The new 65-foot yacht was designed by Farr Yacht Design in the United States and built by a consortium of boatyards in the UK, France, Italy and Switzerland.

The fleet of new boats will be used for the first time in the 12th edition of the round-the-world race starting in just over a year's time on October 4 2014 in Alicante and will be tough enough to be used again in 2017-18.

The new boat left the Green Marine boatyard in southern England on Monday and touched the water for the first time that evening. It has since undergone extensive testing, overseen by class manager James Dadd, and it should be taken out for its first sail on Thursday before being given the green light and handed over to Team SCA at the end of the week.

The pull-down test, simulating a failure of the canting keel system, is far from the only hurdle that has to be cleared before the boat is given the green light to be raced but it is easily the most spectacular.

The new boat was heeled to 50 degrees while the keel was canted fully to the same side as an extreme way of testing the automatic keel centring mechanism.

"This is a significant test for the boat, and particularly the keel bulkheads and support structure," said Dadd. The Volvo Ocean 65 has significantly more internal structure and higher design margins than previous Volvo Ocean Race boats.

"It's also a good test of the canting mechanism, with a much higher load than when we are sailing, as in this test we are only using one ram instead of two.

"It's a case of taking the boat way beyond normal sailing loads."

Other tests have included a structural integrity bend test to check how much deflection is in the hull, an engine test and a cooling, oil and fuel system test.

While Team SCA – the first female team to enter the race in over a decade – are preparing to take delivery of their Volvo Ocean 65, further down the production line, work has already begun on boat number seven. The other boats will be rolled out over the coming months.

The shift to a strict one-design solution is a radical strategic move for the race – a move that drastically improves cost efficiency for the teams and their sponsors. It also puts more emphasis than ever before on the racing out on the water rather than on who has designed the quickest boat.

"If it hadn't been for the new One Design rule, then I probably wouldn't have done the race again," says Ian Walker, who is returning in 2014-15 to skipper Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing. "It's definitely going to be the tightest race in history."