State of Sailing: Part 2 - Volvo OR - Two classes a good idea?
by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com/nz 10 Sep 2018 03:52 BST
10 September 2018
Wild Oats XI - Day 2 - Hamilton Island Race Week - August, 2018 © Richard Gladwell
Part 2 of the Hamilton Island Media Conference featuring several of the world's top sailors who competed in the recent Hamilton Island Race Week.
They were mostly sailing aboard the supermaxis, TP52's and others in the Division 1 fleet.
A small group of Australian and international media posed on the current changes and challenges facing the sport.
The Panel included Iain Percy (GBR) - double Olympic Gold medalist and skipper of Artemis Racing at the 2013 and 2017 America's Cup Regattas. At Hamilton Island, he was sailing aboard the supermaxi, Black Jack.
Rob Greenhalgh (GBR) - Foiling Moths, 18ft Skiffs, and Volvo Ocean Race champion. Sailing aboard the TP52 Ichi Ban at Hamilton Island Race Week.
Wouter Verbraak (NED) - a professional sailor and navigator, sailed in four Volvo Ocean Races, Admirals Cup and Sydney Hobart. At Hamilton Island Race Week he sailed on Alive, the Reichel Pugh 66.
Sharon Ferris-Choat (NZL) - double Olympic representative, Volvo Ocean Race (2001-02), and Extreme Sailing Series - GC32 skipper. She led the all-female crew aboard the 40ft racing trimaran Ave Gaitana which sailed 1800nm from New Zealand to compete at Hamilton Island Race Week and will complete the return voyage two-handed.
Juan Vila (ESP) - six times Whitbread/Volvo OR competitor, America's Cup winner, Jules Verne Trophy winner, the top navigator in offshore sailing. At Hamilton Island race Week he sailed aboard the supermaxi Wild Oats XI.
Volvo Ocean Race and foiling
Change in the Volvo Ocean Race was signalled well before the 2017/18 race had concluded. To the surprise of some the new race management elected to run with two classes - the existing Volvo 65 and the new fully crewed version of the IMOCA 60. We asked Rob Greenhalgh, who has competed in four Volvo Ocean Races as to his thoughts on the changes.
"Two races ago we jumped out of the Volvo 70 and went to the Volvo 65 and everyone was very nervous then," Greenhalgh recalled. "There was always this vibe that the Volvo 65's were no good, and they were slow. To be honest, we have done two races in them now and they are good boats, they are fast.
"They are not Volvo 70's, but they are still fast and what was amazing how much faster we made the boats this time around, than last. That is a matter of learning the boats and changing a few things, sails get updated - and suddenly we are 2-3 knots faster on some angles.
"If we are going to have to build new boats, we may as well change the design. It [the new boat/fully crewed IMOCA60] is going to be a fast boat. It is going to be serious sailing - and we are looking at numbers which are in the 30kts downwind. It will be foiling.
"The problem is that no-one has been fully foiling in the Southern Ocean.
"The solo guys get their foils in very quickly when it gets hairy. Suddenly we are going to be pushing the boat hard, in the Southern Ocean, fully crewed - seven crew or five crew, who knows what. No-one knows quite what is going to happen.
"It is going to be expensive, which could put people off. But there are certainly opportunities there for teams to put together a good campaign, and have a strong shot at winning it.
"I think the boats [IMOCA60's]will be very good, they will be good offshore boats. They will be fast. How much they will be compromised for the inshore stuff - I'm not sure - we'll have to wait and see what the rules are and what the course is.
Juan Vila chimes in: "I think the IMOCA60's are proven and fast. From the Volvo OR point of view, the IMOCA60 is probably more appealing for some French sailors, and should get some French teams to join. That will make the race grow in terms of the number of competitors.
"It is definitely going to be a challenging class trying to sail with more crew than one or two persons. Obviously, with there being five on board, people are going to push hard. Maybe they won't have room for navigators - I don't know", he chuckles. 'Or we will need to get very fit.
"But it will be quite challenging to make those boats be foiling and sailing at 100% most of the time. So that will mean that teams will have to invest in design - so as Rob said they might find that it is more expensive, as there is all the design work and foil work that has to be done [not required with the one design Volvo 65].
"Some teams will want to do a lot of work in the appendages. There is a lot of preparation and early testing of these boards to find out which is better.
"It will probably be that the teams which start first will have an advantage. This time with the VO65's this teams which started early had a small advantage at the beginning, and then everything got smoothed out by the end.
"From the organisers point of view we can understand why they are going this way," Vila added.
Two classes on the Volvo OR - will it work?
For the next edition of the Volvo Ocean Race there will be two classes competing for only the second time in the event's almost 50 year history. The first time it happened in 1993/94 with 85ft maxi ketches and Volvo 60's, there were arguments between the top boats in each class as to who was really the faster and that the VO60's had been "slowed" by the organisers so they would not show up the larger maxi's.
We asked Juan Vila, who sailed in the 1993/94 race on a Volvo 60 Galacia '93 Pescanova, how he felt about having two classes in the race again?
"It is never good when there are two classes in the same fleet. You don't really know who the winner should be. The VO65 is a well-designed class and it would be very hard to change it. Everyone thinks, and I think too, that the IMOCA will be generally faster, but they have the possibility of breakdowns - so we will see how the results come out at the end. It could well be that some 65's are ahead of the 60's because of technical problems.
Navigating in the Whitsundays at Hamilton Island Race Week
One of the surprises for first timers to the Hamilton Island Sailing Week are the questions asked by Nature of the competitors - tidal race and overfalls, wind shadows and more. We asked Juan Vila, navigator aboard Wild Oats XI how he coped?
"It is very tricky", he replied. "The good thing is that you are always learning and learning how currents and wind behave. The key thing for a navigator is good preparation and developing an understanding of the weather. But for currents, it is mainly the observation because while currents are predictable they are not coming at the same time each day, as the tide changes at different times each day. So we need to adjust the tidal model with your own observations.
"We also need to be careful here with the shallow parts and the reefs and with the winds behind the islands. Yesterday we went around Pentecoste and we didn't know if we were going to have a full glass-out behind it or not. So we just have to play it by ear and see how the wind looks behind the island, and just try to do your best.
"You have to adjust your strategy as you go around the course and see things happen."
Cross over between America's Cup technology and other grand prix regattas:
Seahorse correspondent, Blue Robinson asked Iain Percy how much crossover there was on hardware and software used in the America's Cup that could be bought to this event and sailing on a supermaxi?
"One of the things that amazed me from the last Cup was that we were suddenly sailing a foiling catamaran on a reaching start, and my whole life starting a Finn or Star boat or an ACC boat, and it is still the same things that make a difference," Percy replied.
"Even the starting tactics in the reaching became very similar. It was about distance to windward, laylines and time and distance. It is funny how our sport whichever the boat, captures exactly the same challenges - which is great. I wouldn't like to see it change totally to a point where all those skills that we grew up trying to hone were suddenly no longer very important.
"Mind you grinding non-stop all day around the America's Cup course is something that we don't mind losing!" he quipped
"We have been able to bring some things like starting packages and stuff like that from the Cup - with a little adjustment required obviously for upwind starts. Some of the concepts that we put together are relevant to lots of different types of racing. That's been fun to try and apply. It's a bit hit and miss when it is all new. But its been fun.
"The Black Jack guys have done a good job of the stuff that is conventional - but the one thing that is a bit different here, as Juan said, is all the islands and that sneaky Spaniard keeps potting them!"
Merits of upgrading a supermaxi instead of building anew?
Bow Caddy Media's Crosbie Lorimer (AUS) had been on the water all week watching Wild Oats and Black Jack battle away, and wondered how many upgrades they have both had and asked how effective these were.
"One of the things you always see with new boats is that the new boats are always slower in the beginning and then you gradually learn their potential," Black Jack's Iain Percey replied.
"I think the beauty of these two boats is how over the years they have learned to refine them and sail them better. For sure if you have an AC50 from the last Cup or F-50 something similar, then you will just smoke these boats around a course, as there are some things which are simply quicker.
"But the refinement can have huge gains and that process is really interesting, and is something we all enjoy about sailing.
"There's no doubt that technology can beat size, but that does not necessarily mean that they will enjoy the Hobart race!"
Juan Vila also responded from his experience on Wild Oats XI:
" It's great to be part of the crew of Wild Oats. I would say pretty much the same things as Iain. For us, on Wild Oats XI it has just been constant improvement and as you can see there is a piece of bow on the outside of the yacht club, and a piece of her stern inside the yacht club that came from the original boat.
"I have only been with the team for a couple of years. But before that, the team have done constant improvement on the boat - taking up new ideas. I guess that is the way that the boat becomes more competitive for the Hobart races and the races up here. And after 13 or 14 years they are both still competitive boats.'
Leg 11 of the 2017/18 Volvo Ocean Race - was it fair to have a Traffic Separation Scheme playing such a big role in the outcome of the Leg and race overall?
Juan Vila was navigator on board MAPFRE in the 2017/18 Volvo Ocean Race. We asked if he thought it was fair that the three leading boats had to make a choice 18 hours from the finish as to which side they should pass of Traffic Separation Scheme - effectively determining the outcome of the race.
Juan Vila: "It was fair. One of the boats was going to win and be very happy. And they would say that it was 100% fair. We knew that it was a tricky leg, and that [to go inshore or offshore of the TSS] was a critical decision well before the start. We had been monitoring the weather patterns and we worked out what we thought was the best for us. One of our competitors went one way and the other boat, the other way. We couldn' t really cover everyone.
In any race, you can have an element of luck. We'd had some luck on other occasions - just like coming out of Newport, where coming from behind we managed to win the Leg. You can't say it was unfair. You have to look at it in the context of the race and that decision [Leg 11] was a tricky one.
Wouter Verbraak (NED) is a Volvo Ocean Race with a lot of experience in those water. we asked him which side of the Traffic Separation Scheme he would have gone?
Despite cat-calls from some of the other panelists to say that he would have gone inshore, Verbraak recalled how he saw it at the time.
"I was following the racing, and asking "what on Earth is Dongfeng doing?"
"The initial route was travelling between the coast and the Traffic Separation Scheme. Everyone was expecting the seabreeze to go further right. That would have been an advantage for MAPFRE and the guys out there," Verbraak explained.
"The normal course would have been offshore. But having said that I hadn't done the homework that Dongfeng and their shorebased navigator did.
"It is a game of very small things.
"Maybe a ten degree shift would have seen the offshore boats win. So it was very touch and go", he concluded.
All questions from Sail-World.com/nz's Richard Gladwell, unless otherwise stated
[The Panel's thoughts on Hamilton Island Race Week were reported earlier on Sail-World now updated and for For Part 1 click here]