#8 - Merfyn Owen

This week's guest is world renowned yacht designer and sailor Merfyn Owen of the design firm Owen-Clarke Design (OCD). Merf was the designer of my Class 40, #15 Koloa Maoli, as well as countless other yachts; monohull, multihull, cruising, racing, even rowing boats! 

We also have a racing recap including Guirec Soudee's successful new world record going around the world solo against the prevailing winds and currents (westabout). The Globe 40 has just started their final leg from Brazil back to France, and The Ocean Race has announced their next USA stopover port for the 2027 edition of the race. 

We also have a campaign update for Ronnie's Global Solo Challenge 2027 campaign, including some upcoming events, sailing schedule for 2026 and some sponsor shout outs. 

Please like, follow, give us a rating and share these episodes if you enjoy them. Feel free to reach out at capehorntoport@gmail.com, and check out www.ronniesimpsonracing.com for campaign updates. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello, listeners, and welcome to Cape Horn to Port, a sailing podcast. I am your host, Ronnie Simpson. Um super stoked on today's episode. Uh we've got a fantastic interview with a very, very world-renowned both sailor and naval architect, Murph Owen. Uh Murph is the designer of my boat, class 40 number 15, Kahlomeoli. He's also the designer of several emokas. Uh he designs the boat that Rich Wilson sailed around the world as Great American 4 in his uh second and final Von Day Globe. Um he also designed class 40 number 200, which is uh the boat Scowling Dragon that was uh, I think quite recently, you know, finished and launched out of Maine Yacht Center and uh still makes an appearance from time to time. Uh so we're super stoked on that interview. Uh, but we've also got some really, really big stuff to cover in the ocean racing world. And first off, Garek Sud. Uh Garek Sudy just finished his voyage around the world going the wrong way against the prevailing winds and currents. Uh he did establish a new outright record for going around the world the wrong way, and that is 94 days, 21 hours, and 58 minutes. Uh, and that knocks a huge chunk of time off, something like 28 days off of Jean-Luc Vandenheed's old record that he set on the big monohull Adrienne back in 2004, uh, which was just a bit over 122 days. So uh certainly this was a you know multi-hull record breaking a record that was previously held by a mono hall. So two very different boats with very different speed potentials. Uh, but also, you know, this was the first round the world going the wrong way, nonstop solo attempt completed on a multi-hull. Um, it's been a really, really difficult and um quite perilous journey in the past. Uh last two times this was attempted, Eve Loblevic capsized uh Big Trimaran right after uh Cape Horn back in 2017. And then also in 2022, uh Roman Piard and Alex Pella, they ran aground down in the vicinity of Cape Horn as they were sheltering from a storm. So just getting around Cape Horn going the wrong way, uh Cape Horn to starboard, as we say, unlike the podcasts, um just getting around Cape Horn going the wrong way is, I mean, extremely difficult and unique. And now that Gearek has set this record at 94 days, 21 hours, and 58 minutes, uh, again, not only did he set this record, but he also established a reference time for a big solo multi-hull going the wrong way around the world. And if if you have someone like myself, uh, you know, it's it's probably going to be very difficult for someone like myself to ever, you know, be able to fund an effort with a modern, fast enough record to really or a modern, fast enough boat and a proper budget to really take on any of the major classic uh ocean racing records, but these kind of oddball records, you know, going the wrong way around the world allows you to use uh quite an old boat and do it on quite a uh a small budget. And so I think what Garek has done is not only has he established this incredible reference time and this incredible record, but I think he definitely very well could end up inspiring some other uh adventurous uh and ambitious sailors to take on this record in the future. So um really excited to see uh not only Garek's record performance, but also to see what future voyages will be inspired by by what really is a new multi-hall round the world record. So huge props to Garek. Uh you know, his record breaking voyage started December 23rd, so just before I started reporting, you know, recording this podcast. And so uh as many of you will remember, our earliest episodes, all of our episodes, we've been following Garek's journey. And so, and it was an incredible journey. Not only did you have the uh getting around Cape Horn, which was, I mean, let's be honest, he really, really got a pretty good weather window to go around Cape Horn the wrong way. Uh, and then had a such a cool journey just going downwind in the trades through the uh through the tropics, through Polynesia and everything, and through the South Pacific, uh, getting some really cool photos and drone videos uh through the South Pacific, and then um ran into some challenging weather um, you know, off of Tasmania, and basically kind of had to stall the boat a little bit and then get south of Australia and um get around Australia and then get back into the Indian Ocean. And then it was in the Indian Ocean where he did, you know, suffer his biggest setback when he damaged his starboard rudder uh and then had to basically kind of baby the boat, especially when he was on a port tack. Uh, fortunately, once he got around the Cape of Good Hope, it's it's mostly starboard tack coming back up the Atlantic. Um he he did run into obviously some some challenging weather there at the end, uh coming into coming into France. But uh yeah, very very good and successful voyage for Gyarek. Uh huge congratulations to him. And again, I'm I'm I'm just I think really stoked to see uh it's such a groundbreaking voyage for him to complete that I'm I'm really stoked to see what voyages this inspires in the future. Um another big piece of news right now is that the final leg of the Globe 40 race has now uh started from Recife Brazil. So you do have uh eight boats back on the water. Uh that's with next generation boating. That's the German boat that is uh skippered by Melwin Fink, someone who really came to um prominence in the mini Transat. Actually, it's listed as Lenart Burke as the uh the skipper and Melwin Fink as the co-skipper. Uh small correction there. But the really interesting thing about the Globe 40 race, um right now you've got a tie. You got a tie for first and second with Ian Lepinsky's Credit Mutuel uh and Belgium Ocean Racing Curium, uh, which is had a number of different skippers on the boat, but it's primarily Benoit Huntsburg. And they're both tied on 19 points. They did quite famously uh get scored as a tie on the leg from Australia to Chile. And so you have seen these guys really battling back and forth, basically trading a lot of victories back and forth uh throughout the course of the race, especially as the third scal boat, which was the next generation boating, the German boat, uh, especially as the third scal boat was was broken for half of the race and and back on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean uh before rejoining the race. So uh really no surprise, but the the two scales that did the whole race are by far ahead on the leaderboard. And uh, but now it's a winner-take all final legs. So leaving Brazil and and then it's gonna uh yeah, you're gonna have a big trade trade wind voyage probably and and then try to figure out how close you cut the corner. Do you do you go further further north and and then over and make your easting, or do you then sail hard on the wind and look for a point to cross? It's really gonna depend on the uh obviously on the weather scenario and on the routing. So um very, very interested to watch the final leg of the Globe 40 race. Third place, you've got the Brazilian boat, Barco Brazil, fourth place, Wilson around the world. Uh that's with the Austrian woman skipper Lisa Berger, who is planning on doing the GSC. Still not officially confirmed. Uh that should should be confirmed after the race is over. Uh, fifth, you've got Freedom, another uh boat from France. Sixth is Jangata Racing from Great Britain, and then seventh is Whiskey Jack. Uh that's the boat skippered by Canadian Melody Schaefer. Uh so sixth and seventh place there, Giangata Racing and Whiskey Jack, they are still in uh quite a close points battle. So if Whiskey Jack can put in uh a really good performance in this leg and get out ahead ahead of Giangata Racing, they could potentially move up from seventh in the points to sixth, and that would be a great victory for them. And then um quite quite importantly, the next generation boating around the world, the German boat, while they have re-entered the race, uh they're gonna be guaranteed a last place finish because they didn't finish or compete in all the legs. So uh even though they actually will be able to pass the sixth and seventh place boats on the points tally, they are gonna be classified in uh eighth and last place simply because they they did not complete all the legs or even show up. So Globe 40 coming to a close. Uh hard to believe. Second edition of that race is coming to a close. But another round-the-world race, the really one of the biggest of them all, the Ocean Race, just announced some pretty cool news. They have announced that their U.S. stopover in the next edition is going to be in St. Petersburg, Florida, and that's gonna be from May 4th to 16th of next year. Kind of an interesting choice of port, kind of an interesting choice of route, uh, which would lead me to speculate that the race is probably not healthy and probably in major financial trouble. Uh, just speculation on my behalf. But uh, it is still the ocean race, you know. It used to be the Volvo Ocean race, so you don't have a title sponsor in the name. Uh the start is in January 2027, which is only really like nine, nine and a half months out, and there are no confirmed entries on the website. You also have quite an interesting route. Um, the race is gonna start in Alicante, Spain in January of 2027, and then it's gonna sail all the way from Spain to Auckland, New Zealand. So not stopping anywhere like uh the Canaries or the Cape Verdes, or not even going to Cape Town, South Africa. Uh, kind of interesting that they're going all the way to Auckland, and then from Auckland going around Cape Horn up to Itajay in Brazil, and then to St. Petersburg, which St. Petersburg, Florida, which I find to be a really, really interesting stopover, and um, and like not really in a great way. Uh definitely seemed like a flop when they came into Miami. It's like it's like no one really paid attention to it. And then but Newport. Newport was such a resounding success. And uh my this is a you know, just my opinion, but uh I think Newport is by far, like not even close. I think Newport, Rhode Island is by far the best place that you could take the ocean race. So uh to choose St. Petersburg, which again I I I was just looking at the chart, but I don't even think you can actually sail those boats in Tampa Bay or near St. Petersburg at all. So you've got to drop sails out in the ocean uh unless there's no breeze, maybe you leave the Maynot, but you've got a motor in a very narrow uh main shipping channel and then go off to port and stay in another very narrow channel to even get into St. Petersburg. So there's gonna be no local sailing of those boats um in the vicinity of the host port. There's not a real marina. I think they're gonna be like docked up next to a university down there, which sounds like it's the leg sponsor. So it sounds like, or excuse me, sounds like it's the stopover sponsor. So completely speculation on my behalf, but sounds like they traded title sponsorship rights of that stopover for dock space, which uh doesn't seem like something that a uh super successful race would be doing. Um it's really interesting too because the switch to the emokas was to conceivably to to boost the numbers in the ocean race. And you know, the ocean race, uh previously the Volvo kind of bottomed out at six, seven boats back in the Volvo 70 days. They switched over to Volvo 65s, the OneDesign boats didn't really increase participation at all. And then they switched over to the Emochas, and again, did not uh increase participation at all. And to me, it's quite amazing that you can have a race like the Von Day Globe with 40 starters and be over subscribed. And you've got people that get turned away and people that meet all the requirements, but simply there's not enough spaces for all the boats. So you've got 45-50 boats trying to do the Von Day Globe. And right now, I I only I think I only really count like Malaysia and uh DMG Mori. Um again, there's there's really no there's no boats that are like confirmed starters. If you go to the ocean race website and try to look up the the the confirmed starters, the it's not confirmed. Um so that leads me to believe that there's really only two, three, four, like a very small number of teams that have really confirmed their participation in the ocean race. You do have the ocean race Atlantic this year, and I think that race is gonna be really cool and might have a lot of boats. But as far as the the teams that are committed to doing the whole thing and going around the world, um yeah, it's really interesting that we're this close to the start of the race, and there's there's so few teams that have really confirmed their participation. Um, it's also very interesting that the ocean race on their website, they just announced the St. Petersburg, Florida stopover, and it says that they're still confirming stopovers and they'll post them once the route is finalized. So for a race that is less well under a year away to not have the route finalized or any participants published or a title sponsor, to me it doesn't seem like the ocean race is particularly healthy. So um interesting news there. It'll be really interesting to see how how the race pans out, though. Um obviously we all want to see a a big, huge, successful spectacle. So uh again, really uh anticipating and and can't wait to follow that and and see how it all turns out. Um, but we're gonna get right into it this week. Again, fantastic guest with uh Murph Owen. So great interview with him, really enjoyed it. So uh I hope you do as well. Well, good morning. First off, how how are you doing? Good, thanks.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

I'm back at work with uh enthusiasm after a great holiday.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Yeah, uh, I've I know that from our emails you've you've been all over the place, but I think that's sort of your your MO.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

It is a bit. Sometimes, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Yeah, I'm sure you've been uh certainly racking up the miles. What were you doing down in New Zealand before your holiday?

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Uh we've uh a project which might be building down there. So I met with a client and a project manager, and we went to a yard. It's uh 22-meter Calamaran. Um we run a tender process, and uh that yard is uh is the preferred yard, so we were in contractual discussions and negotiations and going through the specification, everything.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Yeah, very cool. I was following that on the social media, and um yeah, hope you had a hope you had a good holiday. And um it is interesting. I want to touch on class 40s, and I want to touch on my boats and everything else, but I think it's really a fascinating opportunity to sit down and and and talk with uh, I think such a renowned naval architects. And I know a lot of people that listen to this podcast, I know a lot of them personally, and they are your your hardcore racing sailors, a lot of them are guys that work on composites on race boats and and people that are sailmakers, etc. How did you get into your role that you fill? Like, how did you get into naval architecture?

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Oh, it's quite a long story. I'll I'll try and cut it a bit short. Um, so uh I was at university in London studying naval architecture. I'd previously been a um uh marine engineer officer in the Navy. Um I was putting myself through university, and I uh I read a magazine in the UK called Yachts and Yachting, and there was an advert in there from a fellow who wanted racing crew uh for a multi-hole um to do winter series in Lymington. And I answered an advert. I met him in a pub and um we became firm friends, and over the first winter we raced this boat, and when we'd finished racing, we'd sit in a pub and we'd doodled on beer mats about you know the boat that that he would like to have. Uh and we both realized that at that time multi-hulls were really limited in their ability um for various reasons, and we thought that between us we could do better. Anyway, I finished university. I finally a project which I started in my second year, was um a VPP velocity performance prediction program written on Fortran 77 uh to look at the performance of a multifall. And um uh it was as far as I know, and I'm good friends with a fellow called Clay Oliver, American guy who who wrote the VPP for um Dennis Collins Big Cat. Um and my VPP predated that. There wasn't anything around at the time um looking at uh multiples. In fact, VPPs even for monoholes were in their very early days back then. So I finished university and I thought that would be it. I really thought I was going to go back to the Navy. Um I took a year off. Uh, went to live on the Isle of Wight. I worked with a multiple designer called John Shuttleworth. I did some surveys, yacht deliveries, anything to turn a dollar. Um you'll know all about that. You just get on with it and and you just turn your hand to whatever comes up. Then I got a phone call one day from Rupert, the owner of this cat. Uh he was in Colombia and he just found a massive gas field, and he'd been promoted, and he had shares in the company, and he said he could afford a boat. Uh the boat that we planned, and if I could build it for this amount of money, then I should go ahead and make plans to do it. And that boat became Fiery Cross, which was a 35-foot-long, 34-foot-wide spine round, the first ever as-wide, as long spyround with full wings and a whole nine yards, really. And um, we built her down in Cornwall, and she entered the O-Star in 1988, and again, I thought that was going to be my only boat, um, but she did well, and subsequently I just got involved in building project managing and designing boats, and it just happened like that. But I I didn't give up, I wasn't able to give up financially um project managing, building, delivering, and all the other things that one does until really 1998.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Wow, fascinating. Uh, I had I had no idea that you got your start in in multi-hull design. I've always been just uh a massive fan of multi-hulls and just quite inspired by by how quick you can go uh on Academy Runner at. Trimer in so very very cool. Um and then what what was unique? I I saw some kind of uh social media post, but what was unique about this this new multi-hall that you're designing down in New Zealand?

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Uh well it it it's there's I don't think there's anything truly unique. It's generally when you know yacht designers or any engineers or designers say something's unique, they're setting themselves up for a fall. Because you'd probably find that Hershoff did it 100 years ago. 120 years ago. Um she is a different boat, but there's not anything particularly unique about it. She's a she's a caravan catch, um, which is unusual but not unique. She's aluminium, which is not unusual. It's not unique, but it is fairly unusual. Um uh she's designed for high latitude sailing for a client who lives in the Northwest Pacific coast, and um she's you know, I I think she's a good looking boat. She's got some unique quality, she's parallel hybrid. Um yeah, she's a modern um you could say she's a bit groundbreaking, but she's not unique.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Uh yeah, I uh I enjoyed looking at it, and that was the basic concept that I saw was that it was a big aluminum, you know, catch-rigged high-latitude boat, and uh yeah, it looks like a looks like a really cool boat. Um it was funny that you mentioned Nathaniel Harrishoff, you know. I was I used to own a boat called a Reynolds 33, and I remember when I was learning about Nathaniel Harrishoff's design and amaryllists and all that back in the day of just how incredibly quick they were going even 150 years ago with the the 10-meter cat that he built. Um really, really cool boat.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Yeah, and he he did some great work as an engineer, the the how the frames and longitudinals were designed and engineered and and cut um and all done by hand, no CNC machines. Um he he really did he really knew his stuff. He designed a boat with a fin keel and a bulb um you know before the turn of uh of the last century. Uh he was really quite the outward bound thinker uh and designed and engineered from first principles. Um and that's certainly you know, when I first started yacht design, um many yacht designers were not designing from first principles. Um they're designing they were more artists than engineers, and Nat Hershoff um uh I was always a big fan of because he was a real engineer, and um other heroes I've had uh when I was a young man that drove me into engineering it were Isambald Kingdom Brunel and um Barnes Wallace, and I've always been inspired by great engineers uh who begin things from a clean sheet of paper and work from first principles.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Yeah, very cool. Um so I think you know, certainly one of the topics I want to discuss while I have this uh incredible opportunity to sit down and chat with you. And again, thank you for uh for for being a guest here on the podcast. But one of the first things I really want to discuss is uh is my boat. So uh as the uh many of the listeners will know, I'm I'm the uh proud owner and skipper of class 40 number 15, Koloa Mayoli, for the next Global Solo Challenge. And that's a tough and rugged first generation Owen Clark design. So that's uh gonna be from the infancy of the class 40 rule. And uh Murph, I'd I'd love to hear about just how MyBoat came about, what the process was and and the commission and and the design and what you learned and everything else, and and just learn a little bit about the the process of of getting MyBoat into reality.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Well, I I suppose it really began um back with a fellow called Ian Munslow, a young guy um down in Plymouth when our office was based down there. Um and he wanted a mini transat boat, and we were designing and project managing um Ellen MacArthur's Kingfisher at the time. We had money in the bank. Uh we had a little bit of time on our hands, not a lot, but we had a little bit, and so I agreed to design a boat for Ian. Well, Ian built this boat, taught himself how to build, built this mini transat, did the mini transat a couple of times, uh, and then a few years down the track, um he's he came back to us and said, Look, I've got a sponsor for class 40. Uh I'd like to build a class 40. Where should we do it? And um and uh how should we go about it? And that's where that was the origins of your vote. Um uh the sponsor was an Irish company called Boland Mills based in Dublin. Um we had already built one class 40 down in South Africa with a really great builder called Uber Jasperson, and so we headed down there, Ian uh decamped from uh the UK and went to live down there and built the boat with Uber. Um and that is the origins of your boat.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

And why don't you just step me a little bit through the design of the boat? Um, what made you land on the design that you did land on, including being a little bit skinnier than than most of the class 40s as well? Like, how did you kind of land on that concept?

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Okay, so back in the day, um class 40, when it was first started, was written on a on literally seven sheets of A4 paper. The rule was written on seven sheets of A4 paper, and you you could have driven a bus through it. I mean, you you could have done, we could have put trim tabs on the keel, we could have done so many things that actually would have made your boat a little bit faster. But it the class was in its infancy, and I've I'd seen this happen to other boats, other classes, um, including a very large maxi class that we were involved with at one time. Um and it would have been the could potentially have been the death knife of the class. The original class rule was written so that it literally said this is not a development class. So it was not supposed to be like Imoka. It was supposed to be a box rule class, not a development class. The other thing was that the the French boats that were being built at the time, there was only a few different um boat models, boat types. Um the Jumbo, um, the Pogo, uh the Accilaria had not the first Accilaria one had not been built, and these boats were being pushed out at very low cost to attract a wide range of you know, to attract more people. They were they were very low budget boats, and so we were aware of that too. Now we had a good budget, and we could have pushed it a bit further, but that would have been the wrong thing to do. However, we did push it further than the written class rule on principle, but we didn't do it in a stupid way. At the start of the route to run, uh, when when Ian started the route to run, he was the only um he was the only class 14, for instance, to have an upwind code zero. And as the class rule was written, as it still is, we are limited to an upwind sail area of 115 square meters, but the way the rule was written, you could have what is effectively a J0, and that's what Ian had, and he had this on the end of a fixed foul sprit. None of the other boats in the class at that time had a fixed bow sprit that could have done that. They all had basically spinnaker poles that you pushed out along the deck through a you know through a portal. The boat didn't have any um any windows to save weight. The boat, uh number of things on the inside of the boat, the structural engineering of the boat, um, the keel. Uh we didn't paint the boat with a a gloss finish, the boat had a matte finish. So the boat was pretty light, but it wasn't down to class weight. None of the boats were down to class weight at that time, and that and that's because the budget just didn't allow you to be able to get to that weight that the class thought you could get to. So our boat was one of the lightest, well, probably the lightest, um, but it wasn't down at class weight. And part of that was because it had an SGI and keel. All the boats in that in those in that era had SGI and keels. Nobody had the money to build a fabricated high tensile steel keel with fairings. Nobody had the money to do it. The boats were limited in their budget. So that's that's the origins of that is the origins of your boat. Um the rig, our rig was by far the most complex and and you know high performance rig at the time. The rigs that were coming out of Lorimar were basically carbon tubes. Um, some of the class 40s back in that day had um carbon tubes with aluminium spreaders and diform rigging. We had a very beautiful sudden spars, full-on carbon race rig, rod rigging. Now, the rig that you have on the boat now, it's just it's a beautiful piece of kit. Um, so that that's the origins of your boat. It was based on a rule which is was seven pages of A4, um, basically full scat paper, and and um and a relatively low budget.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

And uh yeah, it's a cool story. And so uh again, if fairly interestingly, uh and and maybe you can clue me in a bit more, but but my boat, uh number 15, she is you know, a bit skinnier than most class 40s and max beam. So was she skinnier than most of her competitors at that time? And was that just to make it like better upwind and better in light air and better deep downwind, or what was the thought there?

SPEAKER_01 33:17

Effectively she was skinnier at the at the max beam, but she wasn't skinnier at the waterline. So if you'll see if you see her and compare her to the boats of the day, the Pogo and the and the uh the jumbo, for instance, she had the same effectively the same hull, uh kind of hull shape, but what we did was we introduced a chime. So she's got flat surfaces at the back, flat topsides at the back. Now the chine isn't a hard chine, it's a rounded chime. Um, and I can go into that reasons for that in a moment as well. That's very similar to actually a much later edition boat called Longboat. Um, and the reason was that we knew we were not going to get down to minimum weight. We just knew we weren't. It was it was impossible. Um and we looked at the weights of boats like the Jumbo, which were more than five tons, a class minimum weight of four and a half tons, and we we did everything that we could to reduce both the weight of the boat and the vertical center of gravity of that weight. And one of the ways of doing that is you've got a boat which is a if you design a boat to effectively 4.5 meters wide, if you then trim the hull topside, so effectively you get a chime, you take out a bunch of deck and a bunch of hull, and and when the boat's heeled over at 15-20 degrees, that hull isn't doing really anything for you. Um, so uh that was the reason why the boat was was narrower. It wasn't really narrower at the waterline, it was just narrower overall, and it wasn't until we could start to design boats because the money was available there to build the boat a more complex structure and be able to get down to class weight, it was only then that it really made sense to go to the maximum beam of the boat and to have and to do the same thing, so effectively widen the waterline length and then take it past max beam and then effectively make it max beam by putting in flat top sides and a chine. Uh, it's a big misconception that chines are are. I mean, it's just there's such a lot of this in the yachting world misconceptions. Chines are not a thing of themselves. Chines are just something that develops from uh from from reducing the hull shape, from reducing the maximum beam, and then that develops into a chine. It's not something that you design into the boat, you design the rocker and the camber and the geometry of the boat, and then bang, you slice out the hull that you don't need, and lo and behold, there's a chine.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

Oh, very, very interesting. And and uh, you know, I just want to say congratulations, I think, on such a great design for for those that are not aware. Uh my boat, when it was new, uh, as Murph alluded to, it was uh it was called Bolin Mills after an Irish property development firm, and it was skippered by Ian Munslow and pretty much right out of the box uh finished third place in the Route de Rum in 2006 when it was brand new. So quite a fair bit of speed, uh especially compared to boats of a similar vintage. But Murph, I think one thing that's so impressive now is just how relevant that boat still is in many ways. Um you came and and saw the boat last year when you were at Maine Yacht Center, and as you can attest, she's in really, really great shape. She's been very, very well maintained. Uh huge shout out to the previous owner, Dave Linger, who's been very well maintained. Um in Maine Yacht Center, of course. But uh I again she's still very relevant for the race I'm doing right now. And and as you saw, the your first generation Owen Clarks have have really become this very popular candidate to go do this new race, the Global Solo Challenge. And so what what is it with that that that makes these boats so desirable to still be relevant and still have owners buy them and put money into them 20 years later and race them competitively around the world? Is that that just because they were tough or because they were good all-around boats, or like what what is it that you see that has has made those boats continue to stay relevant and be campaigned?

SPEAKER_01 38:00

You know, we always we always um right up until uh very recent only our very most recent designs, we always aim to design a boat which was polyvalent. In fact, we had to design a boat which was polyvalent because all our clients were um all our clients have always been non-professionals. So we've never had a professional French skipper. They don't tend to stray out of their immediate orbit. Um uh we've so we've always had boats which were not designed predominantly to do the route de run, which is how the French boats, the new French boats have developed since 2000 and well, really since 2006, after that first route de rum. The the French have concentrated on that because that's where their sponsorship money comes from. It comes in four-year cycles. So the boats have been optimized to do the route de rum. And we've never been able to do that because all our boats have been owned by um by what we would call in the UK a Corinthian sailor. So, and most of them have not done the route de rum. They've some of them have had their boats for Transat Jacques Vab, but most of them are doing a wide variety of the more inshore races like Normandy Channel Race, Azores race, um Round Britain, things like that. So our boats have always had to be designed to be polyvalent. Your boat is polyvalent, which makes it um uh which makes it um more relevant for a round-the-world race in which you're gonna see a wide range of conditions. The other thing that plays well to your boat is that all the early generation boats, and I'd say right the way up to 200 uh eight, nine, uh, up to our fourth generation boats, are just tougher than the new generation. And that is because what happened was in about 2008, 2009, um, more the expectation was that you had to spend more money on your class 40 in order to get for it to be competitive on in the European circuit on short races and on the route de run. And so uh boats were built, were beginning to build, be built down to the weight for the first time. But with that building down to the weight comes a fragility. Um and you can definitely break the new boats. Um the the boats since 2000, 2010. If if you're if you are not seamanlike in your decision making, you can definitely break them. Um and that's certainly true of the of the of them of the modern scales. You have to be seamanlike in your decision making, just as just as the Volvo 70 guys used to have to be strategic about when they pushed and when they didn't. The reality about your boat, however, is it is a tough old bus, and you can push that boat hard, and that gives you um and the and the I think psychologically, I don't know if you agree with me, but psychologically, in the knowledge that you can push the hot boat hard, that makes it interesting on a on a round-the-world race. There's there is there's seconds per mile to be gained by having the freedom just to let go in certain circumstances. Um Mike Hennings and I did that in the in the uh in the uh Atlantic Cup a few years ago, where we beat a uh Mac 40.3, a very well-sailed, very well-known 145, um, to um to the Nantucket light ship by just pushing much harder than they could. And so there is some mileage in that. The other thing that the global race gives you, um, and this has always been true about global races, uh, including the Vonde Globe, is that it's a long race, and there is no guarantee of finishing, but you're more likely to be able to finish in one of our older generation boats than in one of our newer generation boats. It's true. And the other thing is that that length of race gives the older boats and the good sailors more of a chance, it's more of an even playing field. You put a good sailor on an old boat or a not so experienced, not so good sailor on the new boat, and you stick them on a long race like the like the Global Challenge, and you know, it it's it's game on from for both boats. Just because the other guy's got a newer boat doesn't mean he's gonna win by any means. And it certainly doesn't mean he's gonna finish.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

Yeah, absolutely. And that's that's one thing that as you were discussing, you know, you were talking about being able to gain seconds per mile by by pushing and etc. But I think really my mentality is is that the tougher boat is just gonna give me a little bit more peace of mind that I can push it, but not even necessarily to gain every second, but just to have the higher statistical probability of being able to finish the race. And I think that on a race like the Global Solo Challenge, um while I do want to put in the best sporting result that I can, especially after my result last time of dismastering, it's just really important for me to finish. And that was one of the big reasons for me buying number 15, uh, one of your old boats, is that I I think this is a really strong boat that. That can get me to the finish line, and that's just such an important part of this whole entire equation.

SPEAKER_01 44:05

Absolutely. Yeah, and we see that um we see that in other races where where um where low budget campaigns come in with the uh you're not a first-time entrant, but with a first-time entrant, where the where if you finish, you have a completely different story than if you don't finish, right? Yeah it gives you it gives you it sets you up for the for the for the next for the next event. Finishing is finishing is everything. I mean, no one has a God-given right to finish any of these races. Um it's an amazing thing to get a boat to the start of a race like this. It's just uh I mean full kudos to you, Ronnie, for getting to the start last time. Um just to get to the start, unless you've done this kind of thing, it's hard for people to understand what it takes, the commitment, the sacrifices, your own sacrifices and those of those around you to get you to the start. But to a finish, just finish is an incredible achievement.

SPEAKER_00 45:19

Yeah, and um, yeah, and that's that's very, very firmly the goal is to uh to get to the finish of this race. And so on that note, um, you know, we've been discussing the boat, and and one thing I do want to clear up for the listeners is as you were mentioning the term polyvalent, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that's a French term for just meaning that it's good all around. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 45:45

That that's correct, yeah. Good good all-around boat, e um uh fast, easy miles. Easy miles. That's uh one of the great things about a class 40. That classic shot from the from your from your camera looking out over the back of the boat, with the weight just streaming out the back, and the boat is just coming along, easy miles, and that's what it's like sailing transoceanic. Most of the time, it's about doing easy miles. You have your very tough days, certainly in the south. Bay of Biscay, you have your really soft tough days, but I think you'd agree with me that most of it, most of the transoceanic sailing is about easy miles, fast, high, average speed, not the top speed, it's about average speed.

SPEAKER_00 46:39

Yeah, oh, a hundred percent. And that's one of the big things that always figures into my psyche is that you know, no one cares if I hit a 24.7 knot surf. No one cares about that. It's about if you can average 10 knots around the clock day in, day out, and and get to the finish line ahead of the competitors. And and furthermore, just to touch on something, as as you very correctly stated, uh I figured it out that it was and these are pretty rounded off numbers, but it's also something like 90% of sailing is not traumatic. It's only the very small percentage of days that are really horrible. And yeah, you have some days that are that are very light but not you know scary. But the overwhelming majority, I think over 80 percent of the time that you're out there is honestly good sailing. It's the the the days that were that were really difficult really were honestly the the minority of days out there. Uh huh. But Murph, while I have you here, one thing I uh and I'm not just trying to pick your brain for free here, but uh what are some of the things that as the designer of my boat, what are some of the things that you would be focusing on to make my boat faster for a GST, keeping in mind that this is not a class 40 race, I do not have to be compliant with class 40 rules, I just have to be able to pass my safety inspection, I have to be able to be in compliance with all the safety rules, but all of our start dates are based on IRC handicap. So anything, whether it's uh composite rigging, which I think I've ruled out just in terms of reliability, but whether it's composite rigging or a ninth sail or additional water ballast in the back or you know, lithium batteries, conceivably everything is on the table. Um what are some things that you'd be looking at on my particular boat to to make it faster for a GSC? What could make your boat faster outside IRC?

SPEAKER_01 48:46

Well, the first thought I had as you were talking was about reliability. I mean, that's really the first thing, obviously, to spend your money on. Um and that would include quality of sales. But if we're talking just about um uh design elements, uh something that I recall was that your rig originally uh didn't have a fractional position. Uh I don't know what whether actually one's been added, but it has. It has? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 49:21

Yeah, we have uh main yacht center added uh they they added sort of the little block on the rig that was laminated in, and that's where they dead-ended the pad eye to do the two to one for the fractional code zero and spinnaker.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

Okay, all right. So you've got that. That's the first thing. Um the second thing is the way the class was designed, the way the class rule was written, it was written with 750 litres of water ballast. If um if I was designing a an open 40, I'd have more water ballast, and I'd be able to shift it more laterally, um, not laterally, uh, longitudinally along the boat. So, yeah, I would I would add another water ballast tank to the limit of um something like 10 degrees. That would that would just pay that would that would that's the very first thing I would do. Add another water ballast tank. Um what else? I had something else in mind there. We should look at the the sale wardrobe for the south and what you have in the way of sales off that fractional position. Um uh because it's pretty rare in the south to be able to run with masthead sails and the the fractional sails, things like uh uh a jib top type sail, which you can keep up in in really strong winds, and also the the as you you've been down there, you'll know it's really hard to choose a sail area in the south in the waves. Sometimes you're either overpowered, and other times it feels like you're underpowered, and being underpowered is as dangerous as being overpowered in in waves. So we should look at that as that that's a sail that you can use um as a as a like a jib top type sail with um up to two reefs in the mainsail to keep you driving and to um uh to use primarily in the south, that would be a fast sale. Is there a sale limit for the race? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 51:37

No, that's one of the things is that there's not so so typically uh typically you know you're you're capped at eight sales if you're racing with a class 40 race, but because this is not a what you would call like a class 40 class race, we're not bound by the class 40 rules. This is not a class 40 race. So I could carry 15 sales if I wanted to. Um I think there might be there might be some some stipulation, you know, under IRSC, but even then again, it's not it's based off IRC handicap. I don't think it's run strictly to IRSC rules. So as far as I know, there is not an actual sale limit.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

Well in IRC now we're allowed to run a jibtop off the bow sprit anyway. So um that's that's something you could do is uh is a jibtop sale uh off the bow sprit, fractional. Um on the on the Amokas um before they introduced the um before they introduced the sale limit, we were the first uh we were the first guys to put locks in a mast, which allowed us to change. Well, we were the first we were the first boat to have a masthead rig, and we're the first boat, and of course they're all mastheads now, but um the first guys to put locks in the rig so that we could change from masthead Genoa to masthead jibtop. And we also had a fractional position where we could put a fractional jib top. Uh, for the Atlantic races, the sail we use the most was the masthead jibtop. Um but for uh for the south it's too much. So you you you have a fractional jibtop, and it's just a beast of a sail. I mean, it's a great, it's a make a make a big difference to the boat. Um uh what else have we got? Um lithium batteries. It the technology is so good now, and the weight saving is there to be had. Um, so the other thing that that I think in terms of um of boat management it allows you to do is is it it gives you quite a nice buffer on on power. So you know you're not you're not stressing about the fact when the batteries get down to 50 or 60 percent. Uh if you're busy doing other stuff, you can let them go down below that, and you you've got absolutely no worries, you know. You it 20%, even stupidly 10%, if you're busy on doing other shit and you don't well just swore. Um if you're busy doing other stuff, um it just uh gives you an uh that freedom to to not worry as much about the electricity side of things.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

Yeah, and and it's some great, great things that you just mentioned, and we definitely plan on on taking advantage of those uh potential optimizations. Uh I do plan on going with with lithiums, and as you mentioned, uh when we do lithiums, right now we've got uh five group 24 batteries. We've got four for the house and one for the starter, and each one of those is something like 54 pounds. And if we go to a solid state lithium battery replacement, we're gonna go from 54 to 18 per battery. So instead of having 270 pounds, we're gonna have something like a third of that, something like 90 pounds. So we'll save close to 200 pounds with that, and also we'll have more capacity and be able to run them down deeper, as you mentioned. Uh and then with the the sale wardrobe, actually um we plan on doing quite a bit more optimization, but we've been working with Mark Washeim from OneSales North Atlantic, which I'm sure you know Mark very well. But uh Dave actually put quite interestingly, he put a fractional furling A5 on the boat, and he also put a fractional furling A7 on the boat. So he's got kind of a a tiny little southern ocean kite on the boat. Uh I also plan to get some type of fractional code zero as well as the masthead zero and then the big big masthead running kite. Um and then the water ballast that you mentioned, I've got a question about that because we touched on that briefly in person last year. But would you if we add more water ballast, is it true that I can't run all the water ballast at once? If I add another tank, I would just have to fill that tank and then fill the existing tank halfway. Is that correct? Like if I were to add more ballast and fill it all up, would I potentially create more riding moment than the boat was designed for and then break the rig or compromise the reliability?

SPEAKER_01 56:20

We could we could take a look at that, actually, because again, there's there's plenty of um there's plenty of uh uh the the rigs are not the the the older rigs are not as fragile as the newer rigs. So we could take a look and take a view on that. Um it's a relatively easy calculation. So we could um uh I could come up with a hydrostatics for it, and then we could pass it through to the guys at um Southern Sparks. Easy and easy enough to do. Um the truth is that on uh in any rig design, okay, you you the you know you you exceed say uh the you exceed the the loadings on a dash 22 rod um so you fit a dash 30, but you might have a very large gap between the dash 22 and 30 in reality, and you're you know you're well inside the safety limits of the 30.

SPEAKER_00 57:21

Yeah, very cool. And then um just from a I I consider it performance and reliability, and this doesn't have too much to do with um the boat itself, but one of my biggest priorities is to actually just try to get the absolute best autopilot I can on the boat that helps me go straighter, quicker, you know, half a knot quicker around the clock or whatever, but just getting the best autopilot I can and and then hopefully being able to push harder and and have very few crashes is one of my big goals. But on that note, uh what do you think about different rudders or bigger rudders to make the boat a little bit harder to wipe out? Is that something that would pay dividends on this boat, or are we not going to see much of a gain there?

SPEAKER_01 58:07

Yeah, you could do that. Um, you mean the boats exist in a long time with its its current rudders, and its current rudders are are uh unlike the latest class 40s, they're inboard a little and they're also forwarding the boat a little. So not a little, quite a lot actually, compared to um uh you know transom hung rudders. And the the purpose of that is so that they don't ventilate. So that's a budget thing. If you if you wanted to do that, you're starting to you're starting to spend money because you'll you'll need a new set of rudders and new set of bottom and top bearings. Um and you might have to reinforce the boat a little bit as well. Yeah, that's one of those things. But it's a possibility. If you've got the budget, it's absolutely a possibility. It would allow you to push harder in the south with more confidence, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 59:06

Yeah, that's that's one of the things that it definitely I've I've been talking about and and contemplating in my head, but the reality of actually doing that again is going to be entirely um constrained by what our budget is and and how much sponsorship and funding that we can uh become connected to. But you know, one one thing with I think this boat, and correct me if I'm wrong, but with the um as the boats have gotten newer, they've really moved the rigs further and further aft in the boat. So you look at my boat, I think the rig is quite far forward compared to a newer boat. And with that, I think you get, you know, a bigger mainsail by comparison to the headsail. And so I think it's uh what I'm trying to say is m it's a very mainsail-driven boat. And if you're not sitting there with the main sheet in your hand ready to ease it at a moment's notice, that's when you can find yourself suddenly pointed in a different direction than you intended. And so that's something that's not always possible to do because you're solo and you're on autopilot and you're sleeping, so you can't be obviously sitting there with the main sheet in your hand the whole time. Um and then you just sail with, you know, another refin or something. But I'm just trying to make the boat maybe have a little bit more margin of safety before we spin out.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:18

Yeah, the the big the big deal about these boats, and it's it's even true with the with the boats, like say the boats with the rigs that are further back, is that uh when you're reaching, you really have to drive them from the front. So it's keeping sail area at the front and reducing sail area at the back. Uh it's always been like that, but it's more so on the early designs. You have to you have to um you have to reef reef early and uh uh when when when you're reaching, it it's that's how it is. And it's it's truism uh on actually on the ILC boats. I just did a trans pack on the TP52, and you you get the inshore guys and they're you know uh and they're saying, okay, no, we've got to keep the main up, we've got to keep the main up. And it's absolutely not the case. I mean, tens of thousands of miles of offshore sailing tell me that, but also all the theory that I know of of balance of the boat tell me that. Because if you're keeping the main up too much, too, if you're trying to keep the main up, all you're doing is loading up the rudder, and on any high-speed boat, as soon as you can feel that there's load on the helm, that rudder is just acting as a water brake, it's just drag. What you need to do is you need to keep the helm light, and so it's you know, you know, this it's super important to be switching in and out of pilot all the time, checking checking the helm, make sure that it trims good, but absolutely just unload the main, unload the rudder, and drive the boat with the headsells. Um, your point about pilot, I'd absolutely completely forgotten about that because we we've been working with advanced pilots for so many years, it just didn't even come on my radar. But sure, your pilots, your helmsman, and the you know, any of the modern pilots, the B and G or the NKE uh or the Madcap, those pilots make such an amazing difference. Um, yeah, absolutely the uh the best pilot that you can afford, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:32

I mean, yeah, I've got NKE stuff on the boat right now, and I've I have historically uh just every single time I I go to purchase one of these used secondhand solo boats, all my boats have had NKEs, and just as a result of that, I've purchased a bunch of boats with NKE stuff. So I've and I've been quite a fan of the NKE stuff, honestly. I really have. Um I've had I've had good uh good luck with it and good reliability, but um in my brain, and you can't talk me out of it, I just want that new Madden Tech. I want that new Mad brain, I want that thing so bad, and and so I I talked to those guys at Mets and I've talked to another a number of other people, and I think just strategically I'm really trying to um set the campaign up to have the financial resources to just go go wild and get the best Madden Tech with the NKE stuff as backups. Um and you know, it's funny that when you were talking about uh you know always reefing the main earlier and and just sailing with a smaller main and uh and a bigger, a bigger sail up front. Um probably one of your old mates, but Mike Golding is the first person that told me he said that's how you have to sail these boats is uh reef the mane early and keep the kite up and and that's a real key to success. So I I I really like your your tip though. That's something I'm not always as conscious of, but just to go out there and disengage the pilot and drive for a moment, moment and get the feel of the rudder and then use that as a tuning tool and then put it back on pilot. I think it's a great tool.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:04

Yeah, it's it's dead easy to be lazy, but every time you just get into the cockpit, um, even if you're not even if you're not trimming sheets or whatever, just take the pilot off for a sec, put your hand on it, just feel it, put it back on. It doesn't take a moment, it's just it's just uh to get into the routine of things. Um here's a go. Um the Mike Golding thing. So uh when you're doing this and you're driving the boat with headsels um and you've got reefs in the main and the main's all twisted off, you've got to make absolutely sure that the runner is uh the the topmast runner is on hard and locked. Now we've sailed hundreds of thousands of miles, you know, on these boats, but Mike had a dismaster in 2008, and I've never seen it on any other boat, never seen this happen. I did speak to somebody afterwards about it who had seen it happen on a big maxi with a line. But Mike was sailing in in the 2008 Bonday Globe, he was in the lead at the time on Ekova 3, and he was with the jibtop with two wreaths in the main and uh driving hard, and in I can't remember now, but 30-35 knots, boats going super quick, a massive gust comes through, and uh massive gust, 50, 55, 60, whatever. It was a very big gust, and um the boat just took off. Mike got into the cockpit, and as he arrived in the cockpit, the rig went over the front of the boat. During the clear up afterwards He looked around to try and see if he could work out what he had broken. And what he saw was on a Harkin 65 runner winch that the mark for the top mass runner was about two meters down towards the block. The line had actually pulled through the winch and the self-tailor and gone two meters, and then the rig had gone over the front of the boat, and that was the failure point. I never heard of anything like it in my life. Now, with almost any other sailor, you might say, Oh, well, I didn't have enough turns on the winch. That's just an absolute impossibility. And the reason is because we're both brought up as BT Global Challenge sailors. So we fully load every winch right the way to the top, and it goes in the self-tailor, and it goes with a locking turn every single time. Every single time. It's just routine, it's like your heart beating or breathing. It's just how we we sail. Um so I know for a fact that there would have been six turns on that winch and a locking turn, and it pulled through. So that's the kind of loads that were involved, and that's what caused the rig failure. So actually, now when you're pushing hard in the south, I think the only thing you can do is make that winch effectively uh a um a cleat and not just put a locking turn in, but actually put a hitch so that it can't pull out.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:35

You know, I've it's it's funny you say that because I I do that whenever I'm in big breeze. I make sure I have as many wraps as it'll fit and it goes through the soft tailor, and then I actually put like a couple of hitches around with the runner tail just so it can't possibly pull out because I've heard I've heard of of other I I know other sailors that have even dismasted even though they did everything right. It was still the load when they when they were going super fast and then they hit the wave in front of them and the boat loaded up, that was when the rudder just completely pulled it through the winch and they lost the rig. And I I've I've known a couple of sailors that have had that happen. So I'm I'm pretty religiously careful when it's very windy and you're bombing downwind to make sure that you really do actually tie off the rudder. Uh but that's a that's a great story. And you know, it's it's I look at the old photos of of Mike Golding, but also like um Dominique Wave and um Rich Wilson and everything, and I I look at particularly that boat, the old Mirabo and the old Great American Four. I look at that boat ripping on the poster at Man Yacht Center, and it just looks like a bigger version of my boat. I love that it's it's it's that vintage of Owen Clark design where I see that I can see the DNA of your design uh spread across the board, and it's it's really cool to see my own boat uh from a good drone shot because it looks like a little version of of Mirabeau and Great American Four. Um Mike, uh or excuse me, Murph, it's really interesting to sit here and talk about my boat and everything else, but uh shifting gears a bit. How has the class changed? And you were talking about 20 years of evolution, and I know that really you know, I think you said it or someone else said it, but when my boat was new, it was on the starting line of the route to Rom, and someone compared it to showing up with a gun to a knife fight. It was quite radical and revolutionary. But the class changed and matured so fast, and I think there was a massive jump just from that generation to the next. And now we have these gal bows, which are just 30% faster off the breeze or something than the old boat. So um how has the class changed and how have you adapted to that over the years, keeping in mind your creature number 200?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:56

Well, that 2006 comment, I always happened to be on the boat at the time, and it was a fantastic thing uh that was said. Um and it was Mishtej, Mishdejou, you said it. Anyway, how have things changed? Well, as I said, when we started, you could um the it was either the jumbo or the pung or the pogo, pogo one, was 220,000 euros X sales, X electronics. But that's the kind of budgets that we were talking about back then. That's what we had to design to, and so uh and that's what the builders had to build to, not a great deal of money. Uh Boller's mill was 270, so we didn't knock it, we didn't we weren't stupid about it, but it was a bit of a gun to a knife for sure. Um the class had the opportunity with a change of rules in 2009. Um I should say in 2009 the class reached a point where actually there were more non-French sailors in the class than there were French sailors. Brits, Italians, Americans, etc. etc. There was a tipping point there where it went fully international, and there was a big rule change in 2009, and everybody knew it was coming. And the my belief is that they missed the opportunity, uh, and I'll I'll say why I think they missed it. Um, in 2009 we had the opportunity to increase the cross weight, the minimum class weight, from say 4,500 to 4,750, 4,800, which is where the acillarias were. That's basically the weights of the acillarias. They couldn't produce an acillaria two or three down to the minimum weight and still keep it structurally sound and make it cost effective. But the acylaras were the acolyas and the pogo twos were the largest number of boats in the class by by miles, and it allowed um Corinthian sailors, non-professionals, to race in a Grand Prix racing event with a boat which was competitive. But about 2008-2009, much larger sums started to be spent on building semi-custom and custom boats, uh, including the Mach 1, which was a breakthrough boat, and boats started to get down to 4,500 kilos. And if you weren't at that weight, um, then on a route to run, you you you you know, you're not going to be competitive. And so, and it could all have been done very simply, the same way as Imokka does it with their measurement, um, is it you just use corrector weights, it would have cost nothing to do it, and in terms of the performance of the boats, it would have made hardly any difference. You're talking about a corrector weight in the middle of the boat, low down, it would have made hardly any difference whatsoever, but they didn't do it, and that's because honestly, the technical committee in the class was very French-driven, and it the genre of the class went away from being a non-development class, which was actually physically written in the rule as non-development to a development class. It went very French, and at that point, class 40 still remained cost effective because you couldn't build the boats out of carbon and etc. etc. There are rules, sale limits, there were things in there which did reduce cost, and they played at the edges of keeping costs down by saying, Oh, well, you can't have uh Madden Cat pilots. They gave you a limit on the money that you could spend on a pilot. But the reality was the vast majority of the cost comes in building of the boat, and they had this chance to make the boats heavier, which made would have made the boats less complicated to build, and it they they didn't choose to do that. And so at that point in 2008-2009, with our own boats and with the French boats in particular, you can see one, a rapid rise in the cost of the boat, and two, an inability for the production boat builders to build boats down to the weight, which basically made their boats uncompetitive, which basically made them which put them out of business. They couldn't build these even Pogo for a while weren't building boats, and that meant that the amount of Corinthians in the in the class dropped significantly, and that meant that the class went tipped back the other way, and as it is now, most of the sailors in the class are French, uh semi-professional or professional. Um that's just the reality, and that all changed from started in about 2008-2009, my belief. Um and where we are now, it's it's an amazing class. And for the amount of the for the for the cost spend, the boats are incredible boats, but there is no doubt about it that class 40 is a development class. And uh and and we see now with the latest scales, including our number 200, the the cost to build a boat is is significantly more. I mean, it's significantly more than it was even in 2008-2009. And the other challenge is that that class minimum weight is still the same, but the but the surface area of the boat, because it's a scowl, is increased by 20%. So you're building a bigger boat and you're expecting to get it down to the um the minimum weight, and that just makes it incredibly expensive to build the boat, and it also limits the number of boat yards where you could potentially do that, limits the people that can build these boats, which is not a problem, which is wasn't the case in you know when the class started. You could, and we did actually, we built several boats. Mike Hennessy's first boat was built in a barn in in Tottense. Um you could build it pretty much anywhere with any you know half-decent boat builder could build the boat. That is not the case now. So that's how the class has changed. But yes, the scowl are amazingly fast. And um I was just having a conversation the other day with a fella about IRC scows, um, the potential of you know trickle down from from class 40 to IRC, and he said, Well, that's all very good, but but they're not they they're not very quick in light airs or downwind. And I went, Well, actually, that's not really the case. Um, they are actually amazingly quick in light airs, and and in practice, and in and in the theory, in in in you know, in the CFD and and in practice, they're they look like they shouldn't be, but you when you actually look at the numbers, the wetted surface areas, the waterline beam, especially as soon as you get a little bit of heel on them, they are really quick. And um and yeah, basically the scowl is just quick all round. I mean, a pointy bow can't cannot be competitive with a scowl. Just can't. You've got to have a scowl in your if you're gonna be competitive in class 40.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:12

Now it's really interesting that um that you said that. Um I remember several years ago there was some you know post on one of the websites on sailing anarchy or something, and it was it was about a big Reichel Pugh Maxi Scal concept of racing Trans-Pac, and this was before the Scals had become so ubiquitous in the Mini or the Class 40. Uh do you think that we're gonna see the Scal Bow transcend into general handicap racing like IRC designs?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:45

100%. I mean, if if you go back to 2004, when when uh if you look at the boats, you go back to 2000, not 2004. Um yes, 2004. If you look go back at the beginning of the class 40, and if you look at the mocha 60s back in the day, if you compare them to what people are racing around the cans and IRC boats in general, if you look at those boats, the boats that we've been designing for like 30 years are uh high fruit number, that's like high speed, high fruit um uh foils, hulls. If you look at what we were doing back then and you look at IRC now, they've only been catching up in the last few years. I mean that's the truth of it. Um the the likes of Guillaume, you know, Guillaume Verdier has showed the way 10 years ago with his uh offshore non-Imoca, non-class 40 designs. It will trickle down eventually to IRC, ORC, ORR. It will because it it's just fundamentally quick. As designers myself, Guillaume, um uh Manoir, we're designing fast from first principles. When did we're designing to a rule, but that rule is developmental, it's open, it's not designed to restrict the speed of the boats as such. And so we've been allowed to develop holes and foils in some cases in areas that the rules constrained by rating, by IRC or RR, just haven't been able to go. And we've been doing that for decades. Um and so is the scalbow going to be is is the scalbow gonna replace sharp bows in the future? Yes. Absolutely. And and if you look at the if you look at the performance of Planard 4 in the uh in the transatlantic race, um it could be coming sooner rather than later. It just takes I mean sailors sailors follow fashions in hats a lot. Right? And also they tend to be conservative. And dare I say it, they are more conservative on your side of the Atlantic than they are on our side of the Atlantic. Owners, you know, they're spending their own money. You see, you can't blame them. But this revolution is coming. It'll probably come in Europe before it comes in the United States, but mark my words, it's coming because scales are quick upwind, quick on a reach, quick in light airs, and quick downwind. There are some limitations, downwind in in sea states where things change. Um and and the way you sail them is different, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't mean that they're slow, even in even in moderate to heavy conditions, down breeze. So yeah, it's a revolution and it's coming down the tracks probably quicker than uh quicker than um people think.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:12

Yeah, it's uh really interesting to hear you you say that. And I was just gonna reference the uh uh Palinad 4, the Sam Manuard Mach 50 that's just been so incredibly successful in its early races, and that's something that I've been following with quite a lot of interest here on the podcast where we do uh kind of recap a lot of the a lot of the ocean racing stuff. And we are gonna start to uh we are gonna start to wrap it up. I'm I'm I could sit here and talk all day, but uh uh we're gonna keep this to a somewhat reasonable time and and also let you get back to your your, I'm sure, busy day getting caught up. But uh is there anything else in particular that you're working on that you're excited? Like any any new class 40s or scals or revolutionary things, or like what what uh or even just uh an old classic kind of design or something different that that really intrigues you that you're working on? What what's a project that makes you excited to clock in right now?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:16

Well the there's I get excited by design and I'm not limited by um I'm not limited by uh uh what we normally do. So a couple of years ago I did an ocean rowing boat and uh uh which is a tiny you know 20-foot boat, but it's um all carbon, and I did all the engineering and tiny little thing, and it's it's not in not in publicity or you know, it's not a big PR thing. I did it because it was an interesting project, and I really enjoyed that because doing the detailed design of something quite new, I'd never done a rowing boat before. That that made me buzz. I really enjoyed that. We're about to we are working on seven projects at the moment. Uh one is a race boat project, which I can't talk about. Um, it's a big boat, um, it's exciting, uh it's not revolutionary, but it's for something that's really very interesting. So that's got my um that's got my uh uh I'm really excited about that. Uh, and then we've got a bunch of um blue water cruisers, and one would think that having having designed in mockers and you know class 40s and whatever, that a cruising won't wouldn't be interested, but interesting, but actually quite the opposite. Uh, every boat's different, the clients are super interesting. Uh, we're doing one boat at the moment for a fella who holds the record for kite surfing with a sledge, the fastest um uh the fastest traverse of Antarctica using a kite. And this guy's a uh high latitude expedition sailor. He sailed his own boat from from uh Australia all the way to through the Northwest Passage, he's done the whole thing. Just working with people like that is just it's really fun, and all the boats are different. Every every boat we've done is different, and the the 22-meter cat that we've just done, damn it, that's the first catamaran that we've had we're gonna have built for something like 30 years. As soon as we designed our first monohole in 1993, the British multi-hules community kind of blacklisted us. It that's how it was back then. It was oil and water, you either did monoholes or multis, and as soon as you did a monohole, that was it, they didn't want to know you. So it's gonna be 24 years. No, 34 years since we've had a multi-hole built. It's great. It's look it's uh I'm I know I'm really lucky. I love just doing semi-custom stuff. Anything that's anything that's um different as well help makes me makes me want to get up in the morning.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:16

Yeah, that's uh it's it's it's so cool to see your face light up when you when you talk about some of these uh these projects that really really excite you and um You know again we we are a little bit uh constrained on time because I I could easily sit and and listen to you talk for three hours, but uh I would be a bit remiss if I didn't uh mention your your sailing accolades as well as as as well as uh designing the boats and and being a part of the build build process. You've you've done quite a lot of sailing and quite a lot of high-level sailing and racing. Uh do you have a lot of sailing planned for the year? Or any racing?

SPEAKER_01 1:26:57

Uh yes, I do. It's a little unusual, but um, yeah, I'm uh I'm sailing on a 1941 Spartan Stevens uh uh sloop in the uh in the Bermuda race. Um after the TP last year, we did a series of races up in Maine with the with the crew and then some training in October. It's a really good team. Um it's not a professional team because we're not allowed to be a professional team in because we're going after the lighthouse trophy. Um, but it's a serious, serious campaign, and it's with an old mate of mine that I did a double-handed transatlantic race on a class 40 with. So it's a bit of a sublime, or ridiculous to the sublime, from going from racing transatlantic on a class 40 to racing with him fully crewed on a on a 1941 Spartan Stevens. That's my main race next year. And it is that with Alex? Yeah, it's with. Alex Miller.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:01

Cool. Very cool. And are are you going to find your way uh passing through May Yacht Center at any point?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:07

Well, actually, our boat, Ash and I, our boat Santana is in May Yacht Center, right close to your boat. And I think we'll be up there in May to do some work on the boat. We're actually, I was just what's happening with Ash earlier as to plans about what we're going to do this year with Santana and stuff. The plan is to cruise this year and then race put the boat back into racing trim, get the racing sails out of storage and go racing next year, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:37

Very cool. And Murph is referring to his wife, Ashley Perrin, who I know a lot of uh sailors on the West Coast and really all over uh are gonna know Ashley, and actually I'd love to have her on the on the podcast at some point. I'm very, very familiar with who she is, but I actually don't think we've ever officially met, which is interesting because we kind of ran in the same circle there for quite a long time, and I've heard her name four million times, and I don't think I've actually met her in person. So we should have dinner or breakfast or something. Yeah, I was just gonna say, as you know, uh I I was honored to uh to host Murph for one night when he was passing through town last year, and uh, as you know, you've always got a always got a spare bed, and we can go down to the pub there and grab a meal. So it'd be great to great to catch up whenever you guys are in town and uh talk boats and and obviously enjoy getting to know each other more. But again, Murph, I just want to thank you so much uh for your time. Uh I know it took us a while to to connect because you were in New Zealand working on one project and then you were in South America on holiday, and and you're just uh always, always traveling around the world. Uh I'll actually be over in your neck of the woods, I believe, next month, uh flying in to do a race briefly, the Cervantes trophy from Cows to La Hab. So I'll be there racing that with a with a friend uh early May. So get a little bit of England time late next month. But um, Murph, I just want to thank you again for your time. Always a pleasure to talk to you. And I think this is gonna be a really interesting just podcast for our listeners and and just for people in general to listen to. So thank you again for your time and uh really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:21

Cheers, Ronnie. Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. Thanks. Thanks very much.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:27

Well, thank you again so much to Murph Owen of Owen Clark Yacht Design. If you would like to get in touch with Murph, um just look him up, Owen Clark Design. And uh he's always happy to talk to sailors, uh, especially potential clients that are interested in in pursuing some projects and could use some some design expertise and services. Um Murph is as world-class as they come, and I'm so stoked to have him kind of uh on our team as we prepare for the 2027 Global Solo Challenge. Uh, it was great to have a discussion with him there. And again, dependent on budget resources and then timeline of when we get the budget and resources and how much we can find, uh, we're gonna take on some projects. And so I wouldn't be at all surprised to uh to end up working with Murph and hiring him to do some various case studies or to run some numbers or potentially to design new rudders or something like that. And I think that would be super fun to work with Murph 20 years after my boat was conceived and built and modernize it a bit more and just continue to optimize the boat, you know, within the parameters that we have to work in. And so on that note, we're gonna do a little bit of a campaign update. Um tomorrow's the first day of April, and so we're we're really beginning to enter uh boat yard prep season and and launching season, and after a cold winter here in New England, uh, you know, sailing season is gonna be on us before before we realize it. So uh I've I've kind of started a big push to get the boat ready in time for the year, as has Maine Yacht Center. Uh just yesterday it warmed up and they sent Seth out there to start doing some some grinding and glassing. We had one very small composite repair that we wanted to take on, and it was basically it was right in front of you know the keel, so where the where the keel meets the main bulkhead there. It looked like a small crack. Um Seth started digging into it yesterday, and it appears to really be nothing. Uh, it was basically sort of where I think there was some some tabbing there, maybe putting in the main main bulkhead or something like that. Seth said maybe a couple fibers from something got kind of broken loose um during the construction of the boat or at some other point, but regardless, kind of did some exploratory grinding. It really looks like literally nothing, but we had to grind into it uh to figure that out. But at any rate, the guys at Man Yacht Center are going to be doing a well thought out and engine engineered repair, which is gonna use uh six layers of glass, uh vacuum bagged. The whole area is probably eight inches across, ten inches across by a few inches high. So, you know, you're talking a couple of square feet, and again, it was a super, super, super small crack that uh that we wanted them to fix, just something that we noticed when the keel came out, and um which is really great. The boat appears to be in just such fantastic shape, even even after a lap of the globe. Uh and even even that was a really, really, really minor crack. Uh, and that's almost the extent of our real work list on the boat itself. Again, the keel we pulled out primarily just to inspect it, or I should say solely just to inspect it. Um, and then again, the keel, it looks fine. So after inspecting the keel and then consulting with Murph Owen, the designer, basically um, we all felt very, very confident that my keel is um, yeah, it's it's fine to use again. And my keel is of the relatively bulletproof variety, but it's also of the more simple, more heavy variety. It does put me on a little bit on the back foot in relation to, say, a near sister ship like First Light, the boat that Cole had. She had a much lighter fabricated keel fin, which is gonna be way more expensive to put in, but also more expensive to replace, and it's gonna have much more of a useful service life. And so I think the the new owner now, Elizabeth Tucker, uh definitely is gonna want to look at that and make sure that thing's ready to go around the world again and within its kind of service life. And and if it's not, yeah, it's a faster keel, but it's it's way more expensive. And again, kind of everything with Koloa Maeoli is that Kahlo Maoli is the boat that isn't the best in everything, isn't the fastest boat in the world in every way, but she is the good, uh tough, dependable, old first generation boat that that was local that I could acquire and operate on a really reasonable budget and get to the starting line of a GSC and give myself a huge chance of finishing within my budget parameters. So I think we're still feeling really, really good from that perspective. Um so yeah, keel's gonna be going back on soon. Uh small composite repair on the boat. I am going to start preparing uh for a quick bottom job just to get us through this year. I'm gonna start preparing the bottom tomorrow for that. Um it's a bit of a rainy day today, although it's starting to clear up. Maybe I'll go over there actually once I finish recording this. Uh but tomorrow and then Thursday and Friday, and then also next, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and in the next week, uh, I really plan to prep the bottom and uh definitely get on a new coat of bottom paint. Thanks again to my bottom paint sponsor, Seahawk Paints, uh part of Axo Nobel. But we'll be getting some BioCop bottom paint from them in black and also the yellow color coat as we freshen up the bottom. Uh we did just put a new chart plotter in there, a BNG chart plotter. We have a radar dome that we're about to add to the rig before the rig goes up. Uh, I just had my sponsor, Chris Manson Hing, who's also going to be the next guest on the podcast. I just had him up here uh just I guess last week or the week before that. And he came up and not only surveyed the the running rigging with me and went through the boat with me, but also uh we dropped off a lot of line to replace all of our halyards. So we just added a new one-to-one spinnaker halyard, two to one masthead code zero halyard, two to one fractional code zero halyard, uh, as well as we've got some line, still gonna get some more chafe sleeve, and then we're gonna splice up a new main halyard as well. Uh, really stoked to get a lot of new running and rigging on the boat. Uh I really can't thank Marlowe ropes enough. They've been absolutely fantastic uh to work with, and it's just such such a premium product. And and again, it is it is that uh it's not the cheap stuff off the spool that you find in every channelery, but it's the really, really premium stuff that you find in the boat yards and working with the best rigors. But having said that, they really do have a lot of applications that are uh so useful to so many different levels of cruising sailors, recreational sailors, etc. So definitely check out uh Marlowe ropes. Hoping to get the keel uh put back on the boat uh and then the rudders back in here, probably in the next uh couple of weeks. Get that quick coat of bottom paint on and then let that cure and do a little burnish. Uh, try to make the bottom as fast as possible, as we do have some racing coming up this uh this summer. And then probably at the end of the month, we're looking at putting the boat in the water. I am actually uh probably gonna be on a delivery, and then I'll actually probably be over in Europe doing a bit of racing as the boat is actually splashing in the water at the end of the month. Um, but then as soon as I get back from that brief trip to Europe, which I'll uh yeah touch on in another in another episode, uh after I get back, then basically we're gonna try to get the rig back in the boat, get the sails back on, and hopefully be sailing in probably late May. Uh, and then late June head off on my qualifier. And then again, we've got some racing in August and September. And uh we have recently confirmed that we will be back in the Newport boat show in September and then the Annapolis boat show in October. So looking like a really busy season of sailing, uh, doing a lot of uh events and sailing with sponsors and trying to get the community out there and and and really just build community around the campaign. And on that note, uh I've been doing quite a bit of public speaking lately. I just had a couple of events, uh, both really great events. The first one was I was the the keynote speaker at the Northeast Ocean Racing Symposium in Waltham, Massachusetts. Uh that was just about 10 days ago, uh, on the 21st. Fantastic event. It was great to run into a lot of the real ocean racing skippers uh here on the East Coast and crew uh here on the East Coast that participate in the you know, Marblehead Halifax, Bermuda One Two, the Bermuda Race, etc. So uh really great event. Um, I want to thank Roy Greenwald and everybody who put it together. Um, and I was really honored to to speak alongside a lot of really other esteemed speakers. Um, you know, David Southwell, the the owner and skipper of Alchemy, uh gave a performance on heavy weather sailing. Uh Damien Foxall, the 11th hour racing, you know, sustainability lead, as well as 11 time round the world ocean racing veteran, um, Volvo Ocean Race winner, uh Trophy Jules Verne winner. Uh he's won a leg of the Solitaire du Figaro. Got to hang out with uh Damien and and reconnect with him and also Chelsea Freeze, the the meteorologist and weather router for Colbrower. Um she was there and um Lisa McDonald, former Volvo Ocean Race skipper who now works for Predict Wind, she was there. So really got to meet some some really interesting people and kind of form some connections with some really cool people. And so uh yeah, thank you again to the nort to the Northeast Ocean Race and Symposium for having me up there. Uh and then it was just a couple of days later, last week, we went down to Newport, Rhode Island, and um I gave a chat with with my old friend and colleague Herb McCormick, uh formerly of Cruising World Magazine and and multiple other publications, but uh talked about my race with the Sail America Industry Conference, which was uh last week in Newport, and again met some really, really cool people, reconnected with some sponsors, um, and again, reconnected with the the people that run the various boat shows, both in Newport and Annapolis, uh, but also great to connect with uh with everyone from there. So thank you to Adam Cove and all of his great work that he does with that organization to put that together. And then uh yeah, April 12th, we've got an event right here in Portland, Maine at the Shipyard Brewing Tasting Room. So we certainly hope to see you there. Um should be a great event. Uh, that event's hosted by the Cruising Club of America. So do come check us out. Um if you're enjoying the podcast, please feel free to send me a message. Uh CapeHorn to Port at gmail.com. Uh please do go check out my uh various channels, Ronnie Simpson Racing on Instagram, also Ronnie SimpsonRacing.com, our campaign website. Uh gonna be a lot going on here specifically in April and May, and and then we're like right into the summer. So uh thank you again for listening to Cape Horn Deport. Pretty long episode, I think this is actually tied for our longest one, but uh I think it was a good one. So I hope you enjoyed it, and we're gonna see you soon. We're gonna start putting out episodes about every two weeks is a good pace. Uh our next episode, we've got Chris Manson Hing and Hiroki Nakayama, the Japanese skipper from the Global Solo Challenge. So thank you again, and aloha.