NEWPORT – The Volvo Ocean Race, the worldwide sailing competition that includes a leg in Newport, announced Thursday the future of the race will include both monohull and multihull boats. The series has opted to race monohull on the offshore ocean legs and multihull in the In Port Series.
“We had a lot of debate about multihull versus monohull – strong arguments in both directions. We decided on three hulls – a monohull plus catamaran!” Volvo Ocean Race CEO Mark Turner said in a statement.
Facing the Holidays with a Cancer Diagnosis
The holidays are often painted as a time of joy, tradition, and togetherness. But for…
Learn More
The boats will be introduced in 2019 and designed for use for at least six years. The first of the new boats will be completed by January 2019, with the whole fleet ready by the middle of that year.
According to the release, French naval architect Guillaume Verdier is designing the new monohull boat, while the process for designing the multihull catamaran has just begun.
“This new formula for the Volvo Ocean Race will, for the first time, test world-class sailors at the top end of both aspects of the sport – in what remains our core DNA offshore ocean racing on foil-assisted monohulls, plus inshore racing during the stopovers employing the latest ‘flying’ multihull technology,” Turner said.
Initially, eight of each mono and multihull boats will be made available to teams on a lease basis. The release said that a lease will remove an asset barrier that prevents teams from joining the race.
Team budgets will be an average of 10 million to 12 million euros ($11.2 million to $13.4 million) spread over two years, including several million [euros] normally attributable to activation costs.
“The provision of central services and equipment allows the sailors to concentrate on winning the race on the water, rather than duplicating costs across the campaigns,” Turner said.
Both boat designs will adhere to the “One Design” principle, which ensures that boat design cannot give advantage to any specific team.
Turner noted that eventually the race will most likely be entirely multihull, but “it was too early in the development curve, especially when building a large One Design fleet, to jump in to this now. Modifying an entire fleet with every technology step is not realistic.”
Chris Bergenheim is the PBN web editor.
