Opposite page: the tangle of lightweight scaffolding and scissor lifts needed to work on such deep draft boats joins the many tons of equipment making up the Volvo Race boatyard in following the race fleet around the world – demanding set-up and strike schedules similar to what goes on in the Formula 1 paddock when nobody is there to see the less glamorous side of a ‘glamorous’ sport. And (right) the boatyard takes pride of place inside every Volvo race village. A proud moment (below) as the rebuilt VO65 Vestas at last rejoins the 2014/15 race in Lisbon, after a sad intermission when (now ex) navigator Wouter Verbraak discovered why digital technology is not yet quite ready to entirely replace homo sapiens with all of its often painfully acquired experiences...
Securing the future
One of the biggest successes of the last Volvo Ocean Race was the boatyard, centralising much of the work – and costs – of keeping a fleet of much-abused grand prix race yachts at the top of their game. Blue Robinson looks ahead to 2017-18 with boatyard manager Nick Bice
Seahorse: How did the VOR boatyard evolve through the last race? Nick Bice: For us the period of greatest evolution was before the event actually started. We spent a lot of time developing what we wanted to provide, yet not really knowing precisely how it was all going to work. A big part of that of course was how much the teams were going to trust us on what we said we were going to achieve.
34 SEAHORSE Alicante before the start during the
assembly period was probably the most difficult ‘stopover’. We had 50 people there, starting up the boatyard – but as the race went on the servicing obviously became steadily faster and more refined. SH: What did the boatyard do well… and what not so well? NB: The best thing we did was develop as a team, getting to the point where every- one respected each other, the project, the race, the teams in the race and all the other shore staff. What was the hardest thing was that it took a lot of our time to gain the full trust of the teams. It was such a huge shift from what the teams were used to, and what we learned was that we needed to educate the teams a lot more on what we were doing – not just one or two in each team, but the whole team. SH: Throughout this one-design race were you still selling the concept of fairness? NB: At times we were challenged, if it was still 100 per cent one-design – I believe we demonstrated it was. I personally got out the measuring equipment so that I could stand there and prove it to teams, rather than just tell them it was so. And, yes, we were always defending this position, as
throughout the race the teams would always find their niche. Dongfeng were especially good sailing downwind in light air and other teams had different strengths at different times; but this is yacht racing and the VO65s are tweaky boats. To continue on the same theme, the upcoming refits of the boats involve a totally transparent open-book measure- ment system. Any member of any team can be on site during the weighing or launch- ing. We are also bringing in Jack Lloyd, the former race director, who will effectively become the VO65 compliance officer so, as every boat comes into and progresses through the refit, he will be recording every piece of data. Actually, not many people realise how much time and investment have already gone into the refit programme. Volvo have turned one of Lisbon’s old fish markets into a state-of-the-art boatbuilding facility and the refit of each boat will take about 15-weeks and cost around €1million. It is definitely not a small deal. SH: What recommendations for boat improvements came from your team? NB: Most of the refit is based around relia- bility. The boats have done around 70,000
BRIAN CARLIN/VESTAS
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