Ovington Boats are building a new Bieker 4 International 14 using Insensys optic fibre technology within its construction.

Martin Jones of Insensys – world leaders in optic fibre technology and its use for analysing loads – has commissioned the boat which will use the same technology used on big multihulls such as Ellen McArthur’s Kingfisher and Yves Parlier’s latest cat built for The Race. America’s Cup teams are also using the Insensys system.

The fibres will be embedded within the laminate and bulkhead structures to assist with providing accurate monitoring of the dynamic loads whilst under sail. F1 style telemetry is used to stream data to a Rib-based monitoring system for analysis.

Dave Ovington from Ovington Boats commented: ‘It is a first for us and I’m looking forward to looking at the results when it is all hooked up.’