"We are not afraid to look at what a boat should be and say everything is going to have to be changed."
couple of metres long, chuck them in the water, see what they do, then chop them around a few times and see what we end up with. People always want to know what's next, but until we can clearly see the answer ourselves we are not going to say, this or that is specifically what we are going to do. We think that is the way to go but we are not here to boost our egos or have a job. Whatever it is has to make perfect sense so that nobody can argue about the logic or feasibility of it. Then the next step is building it. SRM: It is hard to imagine how the Sailrocket technology could be applied to offshore sailing. It would mean a big step change from the established norm? Paul Larsen: As these ideas start coming up they start to get exciting and you look at the boat you are building and you know it's not going to be like the sailing you have done before. Standing out on the deck with wave after wave slapping you in the face - to me that's like walking out on the wings of a plane to adjust the flaps. You could say it looks great and spectacular, but when you think about it it looks more like bad design. It doesn't need to be that way. The current solutions just aren't elegant. Banque Populaire has done 906 miles in a day so I am pretty sure you could modify her to well over a 1000 miles a day. If they put proper fast foils on it, optimised the rig, took all the trampolines of it and just made it clean - take off the windward foils and all the stuff they need to tack and gybe - then they would be well over 1000 miles. But I wouldn't build a boat to do a 1000 or 1100 mile day because those goals are too close to what has been achieved now - it would have to be something that is significantly better. You win races on averages - it's not about being outright fast. Being able to go downwind or being able to keep doing 30 knots in rough seas when everyone is having to slow it down, is a big part of it. We sailed a little Swedish trimaran for called a Seacart 30 for a long time and that used to win races by miles. It would rarely do 20 knots but it would do 16 and 17 knots all the time - nice and high upwind and deep downwind. That really drove the point home to me that it is about averages. Maybe the boat you build to win these races won't be a hell of a lot faster than normal but it will just do great boatspeed to windspeed ratios. SRM: Are you thinking of using a wing rig? Paul Larsen: Wings are good but they can be a pain in the arse. Can you apply them to offshore racing? If not then the rig question becomes about using a conventional rig to solve unconventional problems. So then you have to pretty much reinvent what a rig looks like. That is not an insignificant problem but it is what we did with Sailrocket. It was weird and different but I think we showed that we could pull all that off. Making an impractical boat actually quite practical was actually a big challenge. We are not afraid to look at what a boat should be and say everything is going to have to be changed. It's not because you want to change everything - it's so easy if you can take some already well developed technology off the shelf. Too often though we have to start from scratch. That's when you realise the value of starting off by building a scale prototype is so valuable. I had the whole experience with Team Philips from
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