They make the journey possible

As the highest waves crash against the boats in the Volvo Ocean Race, the boats freefall from heights of four or five meters. The pressure on the side stays is often equivalent to the weight of about 12 Volvos and the seven-ton keel has to cope with gale force winds that constantly push the sails towards the surface. How do you manufacture something that will withstand such conditions?

Ericsson Racing Team designer Juan Kouyoumdjian, or Juan K, as most people call him, believes that many people would rather highlight what goes wrong during a stage, not what goes right.

“You can definitely build a boat doesn’t break,” he says. “But then you can be 100 percent certain of not winning. The Volvo Ocean Race is an extreme competition – the equipment giving way is unavoidable.”

Building a boat for the Volvo Ocean Race is a science compared to building a normal sailing boat. The key word for the race organizers has been innovation, and before the 2005-2006 Volvo Ocean Race they came up with a totally new design, the Volvo Open 70, or VO70. Whereas traditional sailing boats are mainly built of plastic, glass fiber or wood, these competition boats are often built of carbon fiber. The rules are relatively open in terms of material, but carbon fiber is light, flexible and durable.

However, Juan K says that building with carbon fiber also imposes greater demands.

“It takes longer to build a boat of carbon fiber, and it demands great skill,” he says. “The challenge is to join the different parts together.” Composite material, such as carbon fiber, is anisotropic – the fibers in the material behave differently depending on which direction the pressure comes from. This means, for example, that you can build an area in a carbon fiber hull so that it can bear the expected stress on that specific area. On the other hand, fibers of isotropic material, such as aluminum, have the same properties in all directions and the same durability everywhere. But they are too heavy for a VO70. However, using carbon fiber means that some of the carbon fibers that have been adapted to a particular stress give way more easily if that stress is greater than expected. So stronger-than-necessary durability means more weight and lower speed, and striving to find the right balance between weight and durability never ends. Minute precision is required, especially when some carbon fibers are joined to other fibers that may have been subject to different stress conditions. “Every individual in the team must know exactly what he or she is doing – and what the next person will do,” Juan K says.

He began testing different constructions in November 2006. And tests to optimize the boat will continue throughout the project. Different hull and keel designs are tested at Juan K’s office in Valencia, Spain, on what he calls his “super computer of 128 CPUs.” There, weather patterns along the competition route each year are simulated – going 15 years back. A virtual competition is run on the same dates as it was in in real life, then one day earlier, then two days earlier and so on, ,to get as broad an overview as possible. The computer sails 24 hours per day, seven days per week. “We simulate about 20 competitions for each year during a 15-year period. There are many digital Volvo Ocean Races before the real start takes place,” Juan K says.

Models of boats have also been tested in a French military laboratory, where they have recreated real conditions and then recorded digital information about the boat’s performance through sensors on the models. But the route for 2008-2009 has not been fully decided yet. So how frustrating is it for a boat designer to design a boat when you do not know exactly what conditions it will sail in? “This obviously affects the preparations, but I know that Volvo is working hard to confirm all the stops,” Juan K says. The biggest natural challenges are waves. In headwinds, it is as though the crew is ramming time and time again into enormous walls. In tailwinds, the waves come to resemble five-meter high ramps from which the boat falls again and again. “It’s like driving Formula 1 on a track with speed bumps and holes,” Juan K says.

The crew participates throughout the construction process. Three crew members are responsible for the mast, automatic control devices and the crew’s comfort, and Juan K speaks to them several times per week. He says that their input is decisive to the result – if they are unhappy with or unsure about the boat, that will affect the result. Richard Brisius, who is head of Ericsson Racing Team and participated in the 1989 and 1993 competitions, says that is what the entire project is about – a single team cooperating together. “There are many people with totally different competences working together,” he says. “We must constantly know where we are and where our competitors are. That’s the only way we can get in front.”