It couldn’t be more perfect, not the interior of Magic Carpet e – though that too is as good as it gets – but how it came about. Naval architect Guillaume Verdier and interior designer Axel de Beaufort have known each other for many years; Beaufort is also a trained naval architect as well as a multiple race winner in the Mini 6.50s and larger classes. Now, however, he is better known for his design repertoire on land, including managing the Hermès Horizons design studio. So when Verdier required a contemporary, luxury interior within a weight budget of just two tonnes – for a 100ft yacht, remember – there was only one person he was ever going to call upon
around 200,000 hours of design and build go into any boat. Such a huge commitment all round, and I am so lucky that people trust me to do this kind of weird stuff. At the start we only thought about
performance, but then Sir Lindsay says we only have just two tonnes of freedom for the interior! I said to Axel de Beaufort that we should do it in Nomex, as they do in aircraft, but Sir Lindsay was very particular about the level of finish, a proper galley, two toilets, room for friends… and so not a dark shell like every other racing yacht! But we both knew how quickly two tonnes is used up! Well, we drew it up. Axel has a great team and I worked it as if I was the client… so we played with things, a lot of things. But it couldn’t look too old-style. Sir Lindsay is always questioning things.
It is a real passion of his – to ask. He is also fascinated by the numbers, and really getting down to the detail of a VPP. Then he walks away, before walking back with another question! He is incredible, so fasci- nated with these details. It is a real strength of his to understand the smallest details. Three areas that may be of interest to
talk about. The first is the concave fore- deck, and that is for structural reasons. There are such high loads in these boats
that deck buckling is a real issue. I wanted a ‘thin’ deck construction. So then you do a corrugated panel, but it is better to prevent buckling if you can make three or four corrugations. In practice I made two corrugations, so the bottom corrugation is the same curve upside down. I also try to put strength into the ‘shoulders’ of the deck, for really strong resistance to buckling. It is the same in an Imoca: make it really
strong on the two sides, with the centre of the deck as a trough. This lowers the CoG of that panel, and it avoids load going through it because it is lower than the shoulder; the shoulders, being higher, take all the loads, while the middle foredeck panel doesn’t see any load – and that is good. When I started we had a buckling factor of 2.5 with a flat deck, and now we are up to 4, and so it really is a key area to prevent buckling from happening. Still talking about the bow area, even
though the objective is for Magic Carpet e to sail in lightish winds, this boat is strong enough to do a transatlantic and slam hard in waves. This boat is faster than Comanche in most conditions too, so I also designed it to go offshore… Sir Lindsay calls it an inshore boat, but
it must still go through Germanischer Lloyd and other classifications. So where we might see 30 tonnes per square metre loads on the hull, I don’t want any core used there. I don’t like it. If the core frac- tures it is really hard to fix. So for Magic Carpet e I wanted single-skin construction. And with single skin, inside the boat you can choose how to set the frames, trans- verse, longitudinal or a mixture. With my Open 60s I have a lot of structure – it is a nightmare for the boatbuilders! Comanche was a nightmare as well, but
because of Magic Carpet e’s bulkheads and inside arrangements it was decided to fix transverse frames very close to each other – every 300 or 350mm there is a little frame, say 65mm high, all the way out to the chines. The builders at the yard were not my friends for a while!! The guys at Persico know my boats and
they say, ‘Wow! Oh no… Not him again!’ – but really it is so strong and still saves some weight. Saving 200kg is obviously a good thing, but if it kills the project and drives the boatbuilders crazy you have to be careful. And then to the canard – in time and
mental capacity it is the most expensive piece of engineering I think I ever did! To build it so that you can raise it, and cant it, and rotate it – at first, I thought it would be pretty easy, but nothing is easy once you get into it. It was like designing a complete small boat given the time that it took! I started it in 3D then I passed it on to be refined and that is when it really started to become a nightmare… Finally, the amazing keel. It is easy to
have the idea – it is hard to make it happen! Having a swing keel is OK, but having a swing keel with a swing bulb at the bottom of the fin is harder… and then we realised how good it would be if we could move it while we are sailing! And now we can. However, in IRC it would be super-expensive in rating to move it during a race, so I was a bit disappointed as that was a great option to play with. All the fairings are also pretty difficult to create to allow all the different axes of movement. For me the most pride is in how these
engineering ideas can come together – so thanks so much to Sir Lindsay and Ed and Danny, also for the patience to make it happen. I see it with Ferrari, they think they are at the limits of their patience – some- times they go for some pretty crazy stuff and then throw up their hands and walk away… To have the patience and trust that it will work, with all the other innovations, there are so many projects within projects
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