Pete Goss's new boat Spirit of Mystery is to be launched from Millbrook in Cornwall in two weeks' time (early evening of Saturday 21st, if you want to put it in your diary).
I've been down to the yard twice - if yard, as opposed to river bank, is the right word. It's a project created entirely from scratch, because Pete and his team have built everything. They put down hard core on the quayside, pulled out fallen oak trees, set up a makeshift sawmill and even designed and erected a shed to cover the emerging frames of the boat.
Spirit of Mystery is a 37ft lug rigged yawl based on a modified fishing boat that was sailed from Newlyn in Cornwall to Melbourne in 1854 by a crew of friends and relatives in search of better fortunes. The recreation is a much more daring affair that it might at first seem.
First, Pete and his boatbuilder Chris Rees had to do a fair amount of detective work to puzzle out what Mystery would have looked like, as no pictures or references other than basic dimensions existed. Chris made an interpretation on the best information available, added in some safety factors and lofted his design in the village hall.
The thing to my mind that will make the Spirit of Mystery voyage so daring, particularly compared to modern Southern Ocean voyages, is that it will be a foray into the world's worst weather.
It's not that well known that modern sailors, crewed or solo, have both the means and the motive to avoid really bad weather. Their boats are so fast that they do not need true winds over 25 knots and the space age technology at their fingertips usually lets them avoid the worst storms or at least the worst quadrants of them.
Not so Pete Goss and the crew he'll take: his brother, brother-in-law and his 14-year-old son. They will do as the original crew did and head south from Cape Town, pick up the 40th line of latitude and run it down (or is that up?) towards Melbourne, navigating with a sextant.
If they make a 200-mile day they will be positively hurtling. There will be no outrunning the weather. They will have to take winds and seas as they come, an idea that over the space of a little over a decade has become almost archaic. That demands strength from a boat that is fast going out of fashion in racing.
This is a truly fascinating project and, yes, of course I would say this, but to get the full story do pick up our July issue, which comes out next week.
This photo was sent to last week by John Burnie. With Antigua Sailing Week (and the season) at an end, this was the scene at Nelson's Dockyard - empty, apart from his yacht Indaba 'and a couple of cats for company,' he writes. 'Talk about Norman No Mates!'
So Mike Slade's ICAP Leopard has just claimed the transatlantic record. Well done to him and his crew, but I'm bothered by the small print, which explains that this is the powered record, allowing the use of electric winches, etc. I'm told that Leopard needs to run her generator or engine almost continuously when racing and was aptly described to me last week by David Schmidt of Sail Magazine as "a sail-powered motorboat".
A powered transatlantic record seems a very odd thing to boast about for a couple of reasons. First, the use of power seems out of kilter with sentiments (and technology) these days. Secondly, what's the big deal about a time of 7d 19h by a crew aided by powered gear, when Mari Cha IV's did it over a day quicker with no such assistance and one man under sail alone (Francis Joyon in IDEC) was a day faster than either?
My view on Leopard's record chimed with a comment from reader Laurence Woodward, who'd emailed me about sailors hitting whales and continued: 'I nearly drifted [in the Western Approaches] into a boat powered by the wind that needs a engine to tack. There's a debate. But I guess we are all just a bunch of hypocrites.'
Now this is a very interesting subject, and I think we do have to look very closely in future at the use of power in records and races. Francis Joyon proved during his solo round the world record last year that it is possible to circumnavigate at speed using nothing more than wind power, solar power and a fuel cell.
So it is possible to have greener round the world races. Laurence is certainly right that the yachts themselves are far from green and when I talked to Mark Turner of OC Events last weeks he agreed that sailors had to be "very careful about talking of sailing as a green sport". Like me, he thinks that a solar- or wind-powered round the world race should and will happen but at the moment it's not possible, oddly enough because of the slow speed connecting to the internet.
Present rules for most races prevent outside assistance so sailors must go online for weather information to be competitive. These rules could be changed but sponsors will still want video conferences and video files from on board. The Fleet 77 equipment used for this is still relatively slow and the equipment incredibly power hungry; it can take 20 minutes or more to send back 3 minutes of video.
So for now engines or generators are required to satisfy sponsors' requirements on a non-stop race. That may change as gear and internet connection times via satellites improve. And for sure we should be looking for ways to race in harmony with the elements. Reviving a powered Atlantic record is a worrying step backwards.
A few last stories from the Artemis Transat. First, the whales again. There were more collisions and sightings than it might appear - at least 20 sightings and eight collisions among the two classes.
I had this email from Laurence Woodward on the subject: 'I think all the sailors involved have a moral responsibility to sort something out. Merchant vessels are noisy due to the mode of propulsion and probably don't actually hit that many. For a yacht race to kill and injure so many is unacceptable.'
He adds: 'Both Ellen and the Volvo boys carp on about their green credentials (sad reality is all modern boats are a load of toxic crap never mind the rockets etc for our nav and communications) and with the Volvo Ocean Race off shortly maybe its time to put the house in order. I can only suggest modifying the net pingers some of the pair trawlers use to stop catching dolphins in the Western Approaches.'
Interestingly, when I interviewed Loick Peyron after the Transat he agreed that some form of deterrent ought to be part of the investment for these races - for all concerned. He suggested that if it were possible to safely create some kind of resonance from appendages that might do the trick.
"I did not have many collisions compared with others when I sailed the trimarans," he told me, "because I had boats with quite noisy daggerboards and they buzzed so maybe [the whales] could hear it." He also told me he plays music a lot "Handel, Vivaldi - and Purcell," he added with a twinkle. He said he'd play music louder if it weren't for the need to hear the sounds of the boat.
One other skipper I talked to had been advised never to speak of hitting a whale in any kind of communications, only an an 'unidentified object' because of the possibility of negative publicity. My guess we will have many fewer collisions with whales in the future anyway because of this realisation.
Absolute supremacy: that is the only way to describe Giovanni Soldini's domination of the Class 40 fleet in the Artemis Transat. He finished in Marblehead this morning, less than 8 hours behind the last of the IMOCA 60s.
Not that Soldini's victory was any surprise. The 42-year-old Italian sailing his Guillaume Verdier-designed Telecom Italia had complete control in the Transat Jacques Vabre race in November and is gaining an aura of unbeatability.
But of course there's a reason for this. Soldini is a past master in IMOCA 60s and ORMA 60 trimarans and comes to the class with an unmatched set of skills. The difference between his level of experience and those of a younger group of skippers, many of whom are hoping the Class 40s will take them onwards and upwards, is enormous.
The Artemis Transat has been a superb showcase for the Class 40s, in both the intensity of the racing in a variety of well matched designs, and their durability in some very rough sea conditions. Soldini's choice to join forces with this lower budget fleet makes it particularly interesting.
What the Class 40s deserve, and what British solo sailing needs as build costs for IMOCA 60s hit €2 million and running costs €1 million a year, is for some top level sailors to come in alongside Soldini, mix with a young and hungry generation of racers, boost the circuit with their profile and benefit by sharpening their own skills with close racing in smaller boats.
What is it like winning a race and establishing a new record in a time that's slower than when you won it before? That's what Loick Peyron did on Saturday when he won the Artemis Transat in Gitana 80 and set a monohull class record. He admits that it's a very different experience to when he won the race 12 years ago in the ORMA 60 trimaran Fuijifilm in 10d 10h - a full two days slower.
In any other sport, doing anything slower would be utterly perverse. And so it is in sailing, if truth be told, except for the inconvenient facts of supply and demand. The demand for ORMA 60 trimarans has dwindled, whereas IMOCA 60 multihulls have flourished So there has been an influx of former multi sailors, Loick Peyron among them, and you sense that Peyron is happy to find that he can change course and still be absolutely at the top of his career.
At 49, Peyron, is the maestro. He won Spi Ouest this year. He won the B2B solo race for IMOCA 60s in December. He is about to race in the Bol d'Or. Put Peyron on a maxi multihull or a hollowed out log and he could win. Pet't Loch, the little guy, is the supreme all-rounder.
But on the subject of returning to a slower type of boat he is particularly interesting. He says it's a challenge. "After multihulls it's less stressful and the funny thing is that, when reaching fast, for example, it is most dangerous on a multihull between 110 and 120°TWA, whereas on a monohull that is exactly the best and most comfortable angle. The only stress on a monohull is dead downwind under spinnaker.
"So it's less stressful and it's more comfortable but it's also more physical. On a multihull you have a lot less things to do. You carry and have to drag around less sails. On [IMOCA 60s] you have 9 sails compared with 3 on a trimaran and you pass all your time manoeuvring. OK, nothing is impossible, but you have a lot of systems - trim tabs, daggerboards - and more frequent adjustments. And because you are slower you cross more weather systems on the same course.
"Yes, there is a higher level than these monohulls, but it is much harder work here."
I've had lots of emails from readers about collisions between yachts and whales. These are some of them:
From Dave Howorth: 'There's one very simple possibility that should be given a try - run the echo sounder so the animals can hear the boats coming. Maybe it would need some modification - forward facing and different frequencies perhaps.'
From Lucas Schroder: 'I raced in the Transat 6.50 last year (NED 633 T-Mobile One). On the Les Sables-Azores leg of the race in 2006 two open 6.50s hit a whale. I figured, a 800 kilo boat can't do that much damage to a large mammal like that. But a keel fin and bulb travelling at speeds over 10 knots can - I guess - do a lot of damage. Isn't there a solution to this horrible problem of collisions, one that keeps the sport more in balance with the environment it is in?'
And from Barrett Carr: 'Having just witnessed a baby deer laying in the middle of the road last night, bloody and desperately trying to get up after being hit by a car, I find myself particularly troubled by the tragic encounters with marine animals during the Transat. It bothers me that the tone of the reporting is more indicative of these creatures being a hindrance and causing damage to boats, rather than their being the victims of an increasingly competitive sport.
'It would be interesting if someone could develop a means of alerting marine life of the danger of a keel and bulb approaching at 25 knots. Would a sonar pulse or a strobe light pulsing from the keel of a boat warn of a boat's approach?'
I would be really interested to hear from anyone who knows more about this. I doubt the use of echo sounders is much of a deterrent, though. The solo sailors, like most of us, don't ever switch them off, so I guess we have to conclude that they don't work as a foolproof warning.
I also wonder how a sonar device would work. I can see it being effective at very slow speeds or in the tranquillity under the water, but you have to be on board one of these boats to appreciate just how much noise they make bounding across the sea surface. Could something work despite the noise and cavitation of water? As I say, I don't know - what do you think?
What I think is really shocking, though, is that the number of collisions between yachts and whales on this race is probably the only clue we will ever have to the scale of destruction being wrought every day by ships. This is the price sea creatures are paying for globalisation: all those ships bringing you and I cheap goods from sweat shops in the developing world, which we'll use and then chuck away into landfill.
There are around half a million ships worldwide over 1,000 gross tons. If even 1% of these were to run into a whale each year, that is terrible carnage, and ship owners have no incentive at all to research a deterrent. It doesn't cause damage to ships or knock even a fraction of a knot off the speed.
So don't castigate the poor sailors for being the ones to notice and report and care: surely it is to the shipping industry that we should be looking for proper research.
By the way, the photo above was taken by Sam Davies aboard the IMOCA 60 Roxy earlier this week. She reported: 'I was on deck yesterday evening to photograph another beautiful sunset when a huge whale popped up right in front of Roxy! Luckily (for the whale) we were only doing four knots at the time and it had time to see me.'
Hitting whales at sea - this is the topic du jour, I think, courtesy of misadventures in the Artemis Transat. These collisions are frighteningly frequent if you look at the anecdotal evidence, and perhaps becoming more so as yachts get faster and faster.
It makes you think, doesn't it, how many must be killed or maimed by ships? Their crews would know nothing of a collision with a whale.
Looking back at the more well-publicised collisions with whales, here's the damage:
1964 OSTAR: Derek Kelsall hit a whale 500 miles NW of Plymouth in his trimaran Folatre.
1988 OSTAR: Mike Birch's trimaran Fujicolour bady damaged in a collision with a whale. After a similar incident David Sellings's Hyccup sank and he had to take to his liferaft.
1996 OSTAR: Ellen MacArthur collides with and kills a whale, which stopped Kingfisher and was found wrapped round the keel. The boat was OK.
1998 Whitbread: Knut Frostad reports a collision with a whale on Innovation Kvaerner which broke several ring frames. "It was like being in a car crash," he comments.
2001 Vendée Globe: Raphael Dinelli's boat damaged during collision with whale
2002 Around Alone: Thierry Dubois hits a whale on the leg from New York to Brixham, damaging his starboard rudder.
2002: Jean Le Cam's Bonduelle badly damaged off Finisterre during a qualification for the solo Route du Rhum
2005 Jules Verne record: Bruno Peyron reports damaged rudder on maxi cat Orange 2 after collision with whale in South Atlantic.
These have been some of better publicised incidents, but don't let me give you the impression that collisions are restricted to racers, or biased towards solo sailors. There are plenty of examples among cruising sailors too.
For example, a couple of years ago a British family were sailing in a 40ft charter boat in Australia between Airlie Beach and Hook Island when a 30ft humpback whale leapt from the water and landed on their deck, dismasting the yacht. They said it slid back into the water, "uttering a long eerie groan."
Maybe the light winds and an unusual number of high pressure ridges in the North Atlantic have altered the course and swirling eddies of the Gulf Stream, or maybe the relatively fair weather has caused a surge in marine 'migration traffic' to summer feeding grounds (do let me know if you have any expert insight), but whatever it is the North Atlantic has been teeming with marine life this month.
The solo skippers of the Artemis Transat have certainly found it so: another collision with a whale today aboard Sam Davies's Roxy, causing damage to the starboard daggerboard.
I spoke earlier today to Dee Caffari on Aviva. She says it's been an incredible crossing for wildlife - like none she's known.
"There has been absolutely loads of marine life," she told me. "I've seen loads of Portuguese Man o' War [jellyfish], turtles, dolphins. I haven't seen any whales, though. I don't know if it's the mix of warm and cold currents that means food is in abundance, but there's been a lot.
"Yesterday when we were crossing through the ice gate [at 40°N], wherever you looked you saw something in the ocean. It was bizarre. A Portuguese Man o' War came by that was massive, a real big beauty and I thought 'Bloody hell!' There were dolphins as well."
'The thought that an Open 60's keel cut a basking shark in half is truly tragic. They are the world's most gentle sharks -- you see them all along the west coast of Ireland and up in the Outer and Inner Hebrides, and the Scottish west coast. They are lazy, slow moving, and they just, well, they just bask on the surface. They are also endangered to a certain extent because they are so slow and lazy thus at risk from shipping. They are really interesting to see at sea, and pose little threat to anyone.
'I really, really hope that it wasn't a basking shark (and I'd be surprised if one was 40 feet) although I wouldn't want it to be a whale or any other marine creature either.'
Well, I agree with that. Hitting any marine mammal is not something any sailor wants to do either, and I don't mean for practical reasons, though that, too. But what to do?
This report came today from Thiery Bouchard on the Class 40 Mistral Loisirs - Pole Sante ELIOR: 'I have just run into a whale. The collision took place while I was down below eating. The bulb was embedded in the side of the whale. I went on deck immediately to see what was happening and I saw it in the middle of a pool of blood.'
This has been a bad fortnight for marine mammals in the North Atlantic. But it's still nothing compared with the destruction we wreak in our cars. An estimated 1.2 million animals are killed on UK roads every year and around 100 human deaths result from collisions with them.
Talk about tales of the unexpected. Vincent Riou, who was rescued from his Open 60 PRB yesterday in the North Atlantic after the keel was badly damaged, says he collided with a basking shark and cut it in two.
"I saw two portions emerge at the back of the boat," Riou commented, with forensic accuracy.
I find myself craving more information. Did he cut in half crossways or lengthwise? What did the 'portions' look like?
These boats are so fast they are increasingly sneaking up unawares on whales and sharks - there have been four collisions and at least 10 other whale sightings on the Artemis Transat.
But that's not quite as amazing as the leading edge of a canting keel chopping a 40ft shark in half. You can't class these incidents as normal marine collisions any more; this is roadkill.
It's a rough ride to windward in the Artemis Transat and, as Mike Golding explains in his commentary, likely to get harsher when wind meets back-eddies of the Gulf Stream. So spare a thought for poor Marc Guillemot, who is strapped up after breaking a rib during a wipeout on the first few days of the race.
Just imagine grinding winches, lugging sails around, stacking gear from side to side and even just moving about and bracing yourself on a boat that is slamming hard every few minutes.
It would have been easy for Guillemot to turn for home when he was so near but he didn't, and that's the successful solo sailor in a nutshell: easy isn't even in the recipe.
If you remember, Bertrand de Broc sewed most of his tongue back on in the Vendée Globe in 1992, Pete Goss operated on his elbow with a scalpel and mirror four years later and Yves Parlier trawled for plankton with a staysail bag and survived on boiled algae in order to complete the 2000/1 Vendeé.
So you might say Marc Guillemot's experience is good training for the non-stop solo race round the world in November - it demands skill, determination, stamina, a dose of pig-headedness and a very high pain threshold.
An email home from Phil Sharp made me smile today. The Jersey-based sailor and his co-skipper David Krizek have had an eventful race in the two-handed AG2R from France to St Barths, mixing with the frontrunners before slipping back to 20th.
Now they are within a day of the finish, Phil has been dreaming - as ocean racers invariably do - of food, glorious food. But it's no commonplace craving for a cheeseburger. Here's Phil's fantasy menu:
'Starter: The most expensive foie gras in St Barths Entre-Plate: Large plate of carpaccio with roquefort topping Pre Mains: Quattro formaggi pizza with extra blue cheese Mains: Chateaubriand (rare) with pepper sauce and large portion of fries Dessert: Deep forest double-trouble chocolate gateau Cheese: Boursin, savoyard, Brest blue, gorgonzola.'
May we suggest washing all that down with a bottle of Lafite and a nice Chateau d'Yquem, followed by a fat Montecristo No. 2 hand-rolled on the thigh of a Cuban virgin?
As the IMOCA Open 60s head west to Boston in the Artemis Transat Race, patiently awaiting enough wind to really open the throttle, they leave behind unresolved a great debate about how to choke off the power of these designs. The class is facing some of the most radical proposals since its inception.
The solo skippers who form the IMOCA class association have become so concerned about the increase in power and loads, and the spiralling build costs, that they are talking about making some major restrictions to what has been quite an open rule.
To take just one of the more conservative examples, Mike Golding's Ecover 3, I was told last week by designer Merfyn Owen that she is 20% cent more powerful than the previous Ecover, despite being the same weight and having an extra 400kg in the keel bulb.
The solutions being proposed are to cap mast height at a certain size, to reduce ballast or to limit keel bulb weight, so that the current generation of boats are fixed as 'highest potential' boats. But which option(s) the class chooses will have a huge bearing on the future development of the class, and skippers and designers are wary about about creating limitations that might activate the law of unintended consequences.
Everything about the new Open 60s boats has become hard work. Each tack or gybe can involve 16-20 different tasks, not including transferring to windward and stacking up to 800kg of sails, spares and gear. The gearing up has made these solo boats quite intimidating. When I spoke to Mike Golding a few weeks ago he told me that he felt the boats are "already moving outside the range".
The debate has been precipitated by the emergence of two ultra-powerful new designs, Pindar and the new Artemis. Neither of these boats, tellingly perhaps, made it to the start of the Artemis Transat.
Skippers I talked to last week expressed concern that the two most extreme boats to date had been designed to be sailed by least experienced solo skippers (the Juan Kouyoumdjian-designed Pindar was created originally in collaboration with Mike Sanderson, who had no intention of sailing her round the world, and the Simon Rogers-designed Artemis will be sailed by Jonny Malbon, who has yet to do a solo race).
Thus they are viewed as 'designer's boats', conceived without a moderating basis of solo experience.
Former Vendée skipper Seb Josse holds this view. He is racing a new Farr design, BT (pictured above by Thierry Martinez). The boat sailed in the Barcelona World Race as Estrella Dam and Josse has since replaced the mast with one which is shorter and stronger for the same weight.
Josse told me: "The bad side of such an open class is that people go too far, especially people who are not experienced. Maybe we are already going too far."
The class could, of course, do nothing and that, too, is up for debate. Michel Desjoyeaux sees the power equation as self-levelling. "My opinion is the open rule should be kept open," he told me. "It these boats [Pindar and Artemis] don't start or finish a race that's their problem."
Underlying these design debates is another fear: that budgets will grow beyond the reach of regional French sponsors and that an arms race of power and speed will shorten the competitive life and dent the residual value of the current breed.
So a lot is at stake including, in some cases, personal fortunes. Right now, there are short odds on a few new clauses being added to the rules.
Secrecy, and the machinations that go with it, is to be an official part of the race strategy of the Artemis Transat. The race organisers of the solo race from Plymouth to Boston are going to impose a 36-hour blackout on position reports from the fleet when they see a tactical crossroads ahead.
This "interesting idea", as race favourite Michel Desjoyeax calls it, will turn back the clock on tracking technology that has allowed the public and racing rivals alike to see competitors' moves every few hours. The blackout will cloak tactics in mystery and encourage the skippers to use the period of invisibility for some covert moves.
These sorts of secrecy tactics already go on. In race fleets that are tracked it is commonplace to delay a gybe, say, until just after a position report. Nav lights may be turned off temporarily to black out a tack or gybe if another boat is in sight, and the active echo transponder switched off. Solo skippers are all adamant that they would not compromise safety, but if they think the risks are low, they will sometimes choose to make themselves invisible.
Misinformation plays its part in an ocean race as well. Skippers fail to mention damage that may be holding them back, or they reveal it days after the event. They may send back exaggerated reports about grappling with a spinnaker in 35 knots to psych out others.
Sam Davies (pictured above), very familiar with these strategies from the hothouse world of Figaro racing, says: "You might report losing a spinnaker when you're hanging in with the others, or not report losing one. Reporting breakages is really tactical and it depends on the situation or because you don't want your family or sponsor to be worried."
Some skippers talk to, or email each other. Sam will be talking to Dee Caffari and some of the French skippers, but only about general things. "It's all censored," she admits.
The power of branding is shown in this great photo by Thierry Martinez of the three boats in BT Team Ellen. The three, from smallest to largest, is the Formula 18 Ellen will be racing in the Archipelago Raid in Sweden in June, the Extreme 40 skippered in the iShares Cup by Nick Moloney and the Open 60 being raced in the Artemis Transat and the Vendée Globe by French sailor Seb Josse.
The link between them all is that Ellen has plans to race on each during various events - and her company runs the sailing team.
Last year I wrote a pean of praise to Ellen MacArthur's and Mark Turner's OC Events for their organisation and the facilities that had been set up for the Barcelona World Race. As an appendix to that, however, I added that I thought that the Artemis Transat start in Plymouth this weekend would be a harder proposition altogether.
Could anyone possibly give Cap'n Jaspers, chip wrappers and billowing, damp sou'westerlies a rosy and exotic Mediterreanean lustre? Nah.
So forthwith I retract this with apologies and heartfelt, if faintly sychophantic-sounding, congratulations. OC has done it again.
What would once have been a draughty marquee in the middle of a car park strung with Cat 5 cables is now a two-storey marquee in the centre of the Barbican with a champagne bar, café and balcony looking out across at the yachts in Sutton Harbour. Again, a perfect Formula 1 style venue for bluechip sponsors and city worthies.
So, yes, very impressive but not quite as much as the curious absence of those predicted billowing, damp sou'westerlies. After a bone-chilling spring, OC have suddenly flicked the switch over to Mediterranean style weather, and are bringing in balmy easterlies for the start of what may turn out to be lightest and most benign Transat for many years. Mark Turner's powers are becoming spookily omnipotent.
You hear a lot about the power of the current generation of IMOCA Open 60s, and even more about their frailties - the keels that fail, rudders that disintegrate. To read of all these challenges, you'd be forgiven for thinking that racing them is a masochistic game Russian roulette.
What is rarely mentioned is what an absolute dream these boats can be to sail. I've sailed on every generation of these boats and, beasts that they undoubtedly are, the experience seems to get better with every one. Wind these boats up to full power in the right sea conditions and wind angle and you are treated to a quite unforgettable sail. Feather light and smooth on the helm, balanced, forgiving of trim and blisteringly fast, they are magic, like a hard-riding but sure-footed sports car.
This short video shows me steering Dee Caffari's new Owen Clarke-designed Aviva from Plymouth to the Eddystone and back last Saturday. We stormed out at 18-21 knots and back at 16-17 knots in 25 knots TWS from the SE. The boat is a dream to helm, smooth as silk and responds like a dinghy; the chief sensation of speed and power is the spray that whips up from the bow and fires across the cockpit. To steer one these boats is pure pleasure.
The test sail (Dee was making one last check of her generator, watermaker and comms before locking into Sutton Harbour for the week before the Transat start) also hammered home to me how much canvas these new boats carry. The mainsail seems enormous, especially after sailing on Sam Davies's older Roxy the previous day - in fact it's about 10% bigger.
Talking to designer Merfyn Owen, who's also here at Artemis Transat in Plymouth, he reveals a few more interesting facts. Dee's boat, a sistership to Mike Golding's Ecover 3, is 20% more powerful than his previous Ecover despite being the same weight. And the same weight includes 400kg more on the keel bulb.
What those figures mean, and I could imagine when I was aboard, is that while these boats sing and everything feels just silky when everything's going right, you'd have an almost superhuman solo job on your hands when a chain of events begins to go wrong.
