The Volvo Ocean Race is one of sailing’s greatest design challenges, especially in a time when the yachts have to endure every conceivable weather condition on the planet. That the boats have suffered breakages, proves that the teams are pushing the limits, but there are consequences – for cost, event organisation and sponsor perceptions.
Last week, Groupama dismasted, leaving only 2 boats left racing.Volvo Ocean Race CEO Knut Frostad issued a statement about the level of damage that boats were sustaining. His statement included:
“…we are obviously concerned about seeing so many incidents of damage to our boats both in this leg and in the race as a whole.
It is not acceptable that in a race like this we have so many failures. It is not unusual for boats to suffer problems, and sailors and shore teams are used to having to deal with some issues with their boats, but this has been on a bigger scale than in the past.
“It’s important that we don’t leap to any conclusions about why these breakages have happened. Some of them are clearly not related. However, we will take the current issues into account as we make decisions on rules and technology we will be using in the future.
“We have already put in a lot of work, discussing with teams, designers and all other stakeholders about the boats and the rules we will use in the future, and we expect to be in a position to announce a decision on that before the end of the current race.”
For title sponsor, Volvo – the purpose of the race is to ultimately sell cars, and trucks, and buses and marine engines. The image of the race is carefully presented to be a balance between conquering extreme elements and safety.
For race oragnisers, the cost of the race for teams is a hot topic, and contingency budgets for logistics, spares and repairs for this race will increase those base costs significantly for some teams.
But both these considerations need to be balanced against the positioning of the race as the ultimate test of man, boat and designer.
Juan K, the designer of 3 of the boats that have made it to Brazil has made a public statement in response to the current situation. His statement includes:
There is a common, spread notion that ALL the participants of this VOR have structural problems, that the situation is unacceptable and that something needs to be done for the future.
A fundamental distinction needs to be made between the mast breakages and the rest, and while I think it is very important to understand what caused so many mast failures, it is a travesty of the truth to put ALL designs in the same basket when it comes down to the ‘other’ structural issues.
In the first edition of the VO70s, we had two triumphs to celebrate that as designers we are very proud of. One is obviously that our design was driven to victory by a very good crew and the other one is that our two boats [both ABN AMRO] were the only ones that completed the full circumnavigation without major structural problems. This celebration was faded by the public generalisation that because one boat sunk and others had structural failures, then ALL of the boats had problems and the rules had to be changed. Which in fact they did, for the worse!
The conflict between designer and sailor is one that is central to innovation. The question is whether or not the innovation should be limited in order to give greater returns to other stakeholders like stopover ports and sponsors.
