Telefonica Farr designs can't take the heavy offwind?

[owe.jessen]

The VOR USED to have a lot of heavy running downwind but that is questionable now.Leg 1 could potentially be the only leg where that is encountered!

Well, I too think that running in strong winds is not as important as before, and that light-air performance has dramatically increased with the India-China destinations. Still there are at least 2 more legs were performance downwind will be important: Tsingtau to Rio, when they round the horn, and the leg from North America to Ireland.

 

[owe.jessen]

im surprised at the low wind speed that the issue is occuring. I could understand 25knots, but they are talking 15knots true and the boat starts nose diving. I would have thought there will be plenty of running in more than 15knots during the rest of the race. also interesting to hear that they are considering moving the mast back, thats fairly drastic!

As I understood it, they had inferior performance relative to the others in running with winds above 15kn, not that the boat would start nosediving (which would also be a function of the wave, and with 15kn there shouldn't be much wave that would concern a 70ft boat).

 

[Chimp]

what they are talking about is raking the mast back...this help lift the bow downwind.!
Shifting the mast step back would be pretty difficult.

Rake is what they mean.

MP is measured to the mast datum band 1metre below the boom height (2.5m above the water), not the deck height as normal, so raking the mast more will make MP too long as well.

 

[Lost in Translation]

interesting article on the Michel Desjoyeaux's Farr designed Open 60. He moved the keel back:

"Following the Transat, Foncia went back into refit and the keel bulb and foil were changed. According to MichDes the new package, that includes a longer bulb, has shifted the centre of gravity aft, effectively an alternative to what many of the other Farr boats have done in fitting a ‘moustache’, the reaching strake that wraps around their bow. The inference of this is that the Farr IMOCA 60s have a tendency to nosedive when pressed downwind. Desjoyeaux more or less confirms this: “It depends on the boat you want. If we want an OSTAR boat, for sure the boat was well designed. But if you don’t want to have downwind difficulties, we decided to balance the boat further aft.” The keel modification achieves much the same as the ‘moustache’ but without bringing on board extra weight.

As to the result Desjoyeaux states: “For sure the boat is a bit slower upwind than with the previous keel because she is balanced more aft. In fact downwind, it is the not the same picture - the differences are quite significant downwind and the boat is very high at the bow, etc. I think we have balanced the boat just enough not to have problems but not so much that we lose too much upwind.”

and then:

"And his observations between Foncia and the boats from different designers? “I think we are faster and easier upwind and we are not slower downwind in light winds, for sure. In high winds with the new balance of the boat we won’t have any problems against other boats. For sure we did have a nice lead over Generali last year. She was very fast upwind and very slow downwind and she had to come back to us in terms of balancing the boat. So now she is slower than us upwind and not faster than us downwind. So we have maintained an advantage.”

Sound familiar?

 

[Kestrahl]

I guess so far JK, BC and RP are doing better than Farr.

Does anyone know of a chart of team names and designers?Telefonica----------- Farr

Ericsson ------------ Juan K

Puma ---------------- Botin Careek

Team Russia --------- Humphreys Design

Green Dragon -------- Reichel Pugh

Delta Loyd ---------- Juan K (any other help this time around?)

Nice to have this in one place.

Good to see, Farr has had this race to himself in the past for a longer time than he really deserved. People have finally found there are alternative designers out there that could possibly be better? Its about 15 years late!

 

[hiroller]

Interesting point.

So as alluded to here: http://bymnews.com/news/newsDetails.php?id=45541

there is no limit to the number of rating certificates issued through the race.

They could potentially side the bulb further aft on the keel for the next legs that might have some heavy running

(China to Brazil and US to Ireland). There are enough extra sails on board a VOR boat to move forward to balance the new keel position for light upwind work, where as most of the sails on an Open 60 are furled on the mast.

 

[midboat]

yes, but isnt it a 3 point penalty for modifying the boat?

 

[hiroller]

Good question, I defer to the knowledgeable!

Still, TelBlue and TelBlack both finished more than 3 points behind E4!

 

[terrafirma]

Interesting point.So as alluded to here: http://bymnews.com/news/newsDetails.php?id=45541

there is no limit to the number of rating certificates issued through the race.

They could potentially side the bulb further aft on the keel for the next legs that might have some heavy running

(China to Brazil and US to Ireland). There are enough extra sails on board a VOR boat to move forward to balance the new keel position for light upwind work, where as most of the sails on an Open 60 are furled on the mast.

Surely they would have moved the sails and other ballast as far aft as possible whilst running anyhow so they need to consider other modifcations. Despite all this the issue with the boat should have been addressed prior to leg one. They have had an early 2 boat campaign, no excuses. This is my point, in my opinion the Telefonica Campaign is poorly run and managed, hope they can do better but I ouldn't be getting my hopes up, the Ericsson , Puma and Green Dragon boats will be a huge obstacle for them. Bouwe is forever optimisitc, even when his last effort Movistar was nearly sinking. (If not for Chris Nicholson's efforts it would have sunk earlier).

 

[Swanno]

History shows that the boat that wins the first leg, wins the race overall.

I wonder if it will be the same again this year.

 

[LoopyGirdleSniffer]

I suspect this time around that will change.

History shows that the boat that wins the first leg, wins the race overall.
I wonder if it will be the same again this year.

 

[alechte]

Interesting point.So as alluded to here: http://bymnews.com/news/newsDetails.php?id=45541

there is no limit to the number of rating certificates issued through the race.

They could potentially side the bulb further aft on the keel for the next legs that might have some heavy running

(China to Brazil and US to Ireland). There are enough extra sails on board a VOR boat to move forward to balance the new keel position for light upwind work, where as most of the sails on an Open 60 are furled on the mast.

Surely they would have moved the sails and other ballast as far aft as possible whilst running anyhow so they need to consider other modifcations. Despite all this the issue with the boat should have been addressed prior to leg one. They have had an early 2 boat campaign, no excuses. This is my point, in my opinion the Telefonica Campaign is poorly run and managed, hope they can do better but I ouldn't be getting my hopes up, the Ericsson , Puma and Green Dragon boats will be a huge obstacle for them. Bouwe is forever optimisitc, even when his last effort Movistar was nearly sinking. (If not for Chris Nicholson's efforts it would have sunk earlier).

The issue with Telefonica boats was precisely that they did ALL their training in the med and both were fully optimized for that. Generally light wind and flat water. Ericsson boats did ALL their training in Lanzarote where the breeze rarely dropped below 20 knots. It is pretty simple. Looking at the Telefonica boat set-up for out of Alicante, their running sails (TWA of about 135-150) probably meant that the boats favoured angles in the waves of the Atlantic which put the bow facing down the waves more that the Ericsson boats that could sail along the waves with their tighter-luff sails. Telefonica could not have known that they would face the problems they did until they got racing on leg 1. Of course they can

One thing you can bet on is that both teams would be making changes to their sail inventories in Capetown. E3 and E4 will be working on improving their light downwind sails and Telefonica boats moving towards better heavy-air reaching sails. It would not surprise me to see the whole fleet close up in performance as each leg progresses. However, each team will have its strong point in the conditions where they did the most training.

 

[Lost in Translation]

More bad news from Telefonica today in big downwind conditions. Seems like little to no improvement after the time in Cape Town.

Had a very tough 24 hours, whatever we have done went wrong. It was like fixing a fuse, which didn’t want to click on.
The Black boat sailed right passed us last night. We changed sails, but still slow, reefed main in /out several times, still slow and, worse of all, we ripped the main, not too badly, but we had to wait until daylight to fix it.
We sent Daryl Wislang/NZL up the mast with a halyard and two security lines, and he fixed it as though the sail was lying on the flat floor. Now, all of sudden, the boat is going again, very, very strange.
I don’t know how many times we checked the keel to see if there was something on it, but couldn’t see anything. Another mishap is that Laurent Pages/FRA) is out of the watch. He got smashed into the wheel protection and has hurt his shoulder. He was clipped on, but not in the right spot, he was washed back the length of his safety line, and he had enough pace to do the damage. He can move his arm, so that is at least a good thing. Keeping him in bed is the best we can do right now. We will check him once he is up again.
So, we are all in a bit of a moody feeling, as all the other boats sail faster and we have to make sure we hang in there. A tough day in the life of Volvo sailor.