Yachting: Building begins on revolutionary Volvo yacht

Emirates Team New Zealand operations manager Kevin Shoebridge. Photo / Kenny Rodger

The start of the Volvo Ocean Race may be over a year away, but the die has effectively been cast for Team New Zealand's 2011-12 round-the-world campaign.

Construction of the team's VO70 yacht, funded by Spanish footwear company Camper, will begin today at the Auckland yard of Cookson Boats. The design was finalised after robust discussions last week.

Emirates Team New Zealand operations manager Kevin Shoebridge, who is overseeing the Camper project, says the design process is the most important part of the campaign.

He says it does not matter how strong the sailing team is - if they do not have a boat that can stand up to the wildly varying conditions of the gruelling round the world race, then they are not going to be successful.

"The decisions we've been making over the last couple of [weeks] are the decisions that will decide if we win the race or not. And it feels too early to be making decisions like that. But it's hugely important with a race that goes 39,000 miles [62,764km], a tiny gain can turn into a huge amount of time on the water."

With so much at stake, Shoebridge said there were interesting discussions among the team as they debated the merits of the different options presented by principal designer Marcelino Botin, of Botin Carkeek Yacht Design, based at Santander.

Before presenting the final options to Team New Zealand, Botin and his staff put the various designs through rigorous testing including computer animation programmes, wind tunnels and tank tests using scale models.

The scale models, which were built in England, underwent 300 tests over six days at the high-speed tank in Liege to test computer design projections on the quite different hull forms of the VO70 yacht. Shoebridge said his team had a mass of scientific and technical data to assist them in making a final decision on the design.

"They're pretty neat those conversations because they're a mixture of all the technology and design inputs and outputs and computer generation and stuff, but a lot of it also comes back to the knowledge of the sailing team that you have to help choose your boat."

Team New Zealand pressed the "go" button on the Volvo campaign only about four months ago, placing huge time constraints on the design process.

Luckily, Botin had already been working on VO70 design.

"It wasn't a fulltime effort until Camper came in, but we had done a lot of work before that, so that was good. Otherwise it would have been a real struggle," said Botin.

Botin, who designed the second-placed Puma entry in the 2008-09 Volvo Ocean Race, said designing a boat to stand up to the rigours of a round-the-world race was the most challenging project to be involved in.

"They've got to be able to perform in six knots to 36 knots, so it's a very wide range of conditions, a very wide range of sea conditions. You've got to decide how good you want your boat upwind and reaching, versus downwind.There's all sorts of trade-offs and compromises you have to make to try and come up with the overall package."

Boat builders will start on the mould, the first step in a process that will involve more than 30 tradesmen and more than 38,000 hours. The building is expected to take eight months, with the boat due to be launched in mid-April next year.

"The next critical part is the construction - it's a hugely important step. To build the boat down to weight, making sure it's strong enough and doesn't fall apart, that's the next big step to get over."