Johannos

Vendée globe seems to do a lot better, probably because it's more of a race than a sponsor village world tour, with a few boats following it around to put some kind of 'extreme' story behind it. Stop selling the race to sponsors and start selling it to people again.

It's on Marc Lombard's website. Been looking for a design, this one might be it.

Interesting hull. CFD-Mini-2016 (1).pdf

Withdrawal from AC, shift of resources to the Ocean race, start development of a crewed imoca and sailing team, build it in the Netherlands to gain experience in high end race boats. When key positions in management and logistics, sailing, development, and build team are filled and have gained experience, start finding funds to get in to an AC campaign. Let's go!

Go back to the 70's and allow lifting foils and rudders. Ok, the 70's where never a hit by numbers, but offered close racing, plenty of extreme, and where probably the coolest boats around, even the underfunded ones. Most races had an older generation boat competing for the cost of an 65 campaign, and they where still in the picture. Probably more interesting than a rebranded anonymous 65 coming out of the same factory as every other boat. Just imagine an evolved VO70 classrule, even with only 3 new boats each cycle the class would still be interesting, on the extreme end of the sport, and unique enough to have their own rtw race. And probably be fast enough to be interesting in the other big races.

“We are the best boat builders in the world,” she said. Ah! That's why so many raceboats are being built over there!

Join what? All they have is a pr campaign.

New to the family, 40 years after mine was built.

There hasn't been built a serious raceboat in the Netherlands since the ABN Amro Volvo 70's though, and those where built by Killian Busche and his team. Anything built so far in the Netherlands is either quite crude in comparison or has been seriously overweight. But yes, Holland composites is a great company, and might be able to pull it off. An other option is Rondal, they have people experienced with raceboats, but are as a company more builders of rigs and components. The aerospace guys from Fokker and airborne might be a safer bet though, as they have more experience in tight tolerances and quality control. (But could they even build a boat?)

Just the hull with bulkheads in place and deck, which could easily be finished, but it won't be cheap(well, compared to an old pro25). It's already 10 years old by now as well, and the build quality could be better. Building a couple of new ones wouldn't be hard, everything except the keel mould is available.

Yes

I liked the VOR better when people took chainsaws to their keel just to get it measured. Boats finishing seconds from each other, and one of them falling apart not too long after in another leg. There is a lot of good racing going on, but thats not only in the VOR. It was the adventure that I liked. Hope that will come back a bit with the imoca's.

I would think airborne and possibly specto aerospace as well, they have 'claves and clean rooms, and a lot more of the fun stuff needed. Then just fly a bunch of boatbuilders in to put it together. Try to get Killian busche back to NL I would say.

At least one hull was made to have it standard, but that was from a different company who got subsidized, never finished nor sold a boat. Partly finished hull and deck are for sale, as well as the moulds btw.

Yes please! I'm not even started yet! (Don't ever become a boatbuilder guys, lots of cool boats, but no time to sail, let alone build your own boat!) I'll send you an email Dean!