Today Dee Caffari, inspirational record-breaking yachtswoman, received some welcome news from her shore team as they announced the completion of her brand new Open 60 Aviva in New Zealand.
Today Dee Caffari, inspirational record-breaking yachtswoman, received some welcome news from her shore team as they announced the completion of her brand new Open 60 Aviva in New Zealand. Caffari is currently in the middle of the Atlantic competing in the Transat Ecover B to B in her 10 year-old Aviva. She has raced her older generation boat throughout 2007 gaining valuable experience in preparation for receiving her brand new boat, which she will race in the 2008/09 Vendée Globe.
The new Aviva will be twice as powerful and one ton lighter than Caffari's current boat. This new boat will give Caffari a competitive edge as she prepares to join the other 27 entrants in next year's round-the-world race. There will be 17 new generation boats competing in the 2008/09 Vendée Globe, the world's most gruelling, solo, non-stop round the world race. By competing, Caffari has the opportunity to become the first woman to sail non-stop solo around the world in both directions and achieve a "double first".
The Open 60 design is one of the most complex in yacht racing, gearing the boat for maximum performance whilst being handled by a solo sailor. At the start of the Aviva Ocean Racing campaign in January 2007, to facilitate the build of her new Open 60 in a relatively short period of time, Caffari's team created a technical alliance with Mike Golding's Ecover team. The alliance was formed to enable both teams to benefit from sharing key technical data and tooling to produce two high performance sister ships.
The new Aviva has come out of the same mould as Golding's Ecover III and in the spring of 2008 both teams will meet up in Portugal to test the two boats against each other and find the optimum setup for solo Open 60 yacht racing. This will give both Caffari and Golding a unique opportunity to establish the peak performance of their respective boats for the 2008/09 Vendée Globe. This is the first time two British sailing campaigns have formed an alliance of this type and will help the two skippers challenge the French stranglehold of the round the world race.
The new Aviva is an Owen Clarke design and was constructed by Hakes Marine, New Zealand. The project was managed by Joff Brown with the build starting in May 2007 and taking over 25,000 man hours to complete. Brown will now become responsible for preparing the new Aviva for the 2008/9 Vendée Globe.
Caffari will be flying over to New Zealand to take delivery of her new boat in the New Year after she has completed the Transat Ecover B to B. Caffari is currently in 12th position and is expected to complete the transatlantic race towards the end of next week.
Caffari said from onboard Aviva in the Atlantic: "This is the most amazing Christmas present ever! Only a few years ago I was cleaning the bottom of this type of boat. I even cleaned Michel Desjoyeaux's boat during one of his Vendée campaigns and now I face the prospect of racing against him in the same race, in my very own Open 60!
"Over the last year I've been gaining experience in my current Aviva but I've been frustrated knowing that no matter how hard I try I will always be in a slower boat. The new Aviva will be right on the pace, as Mike showed in the sister ship Ecover III in the recent Transat Jacques Vabre. I now have the tool with which to use some of my hard earned experience from racing this year. I can't wait to take the new Aviva for our first sail together. It will be the first of many to come over the following months."
Joff Brown, project manager for the new boat build, added: "It's extremely satisfying to see the new Aviva go from the design board to completion and it's a great feeling to let Dee know that her new ‘baby' is ready and waiting for her. The team here have been watching Dee learn so much in all her races in the last year and I know she's going to love this boat!"
To follow Caffari's Aviva Ocean Racing campaign and view her diary log on to www.avivaoceanracing.com.
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Technical specification for the new Aviva:
Sail number - 222
Designer - Owen Clarke Design
Builders - Hakes Marine Construction, NZ
Launched - December 2007
Waterline length (LWL) - 18.26m
Length overall (LOA) - 20.1m
Beam - 5.8m
Displacement (tonnage) - Restricted
Draft - 4.5m
Total sail area upwind - 300 sq m
Total sail area downwind - 580 sq m
Mast height from deck - 27m
For further information contact:
Caroline Ayling
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7202 2840
Mobile: +44 (0)7801 351950
E-mail: carolinea@karen-earl.co.uk
Kelly Russell
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7202 2862
Mobile: 07786 516570
E-mail: kellyr@karen-earl.co.uk
Notes to editors:
Aviva plc
Aviva is the leading provider of life and pensions to Europe with substantial positions in other markets around the world, making it the world's fifth largest insurance group based on gross worldwide premiums at 31 December 2006.
Aviva's principal business activities are long-term savings, fund management and general insurance, with worldwide total sales of £41.5 billion and assets under management of £364 billion at 31 December 2006.
The Aviva media centre at www.aviva.com/media includes images, company and product information and a news release archive.
Further information on Dee Caffari and her Aviva Ocean Racing campaign can be found at www.avivaoceanracing.com.
Technical alliance
In March 2007, Dee Caffari's Aviva Ocean Racing campaign and Mike Golding's Ecover campaign formed a technical alliance. This alliance, between two of the British entries in the 2008/09 Vendée Globe, is based on the two teams using the same tooling and taking part in a period of two boat testing. Both new boats were built in Hakes Marine, Wellington New Zealand from the same mould.
In spring 2008, in Portugal, both boats will be tested against each other, changing a variety of parameters to produce two yachts that are fast and competitive for the 2008/09 Vendée Globe.
Joff Brown, Aviva Ocean Racing project manager and boat captain
Joff Brown supervised the build of the Open 60, which was designed specifically for Dee Caffari's 2008/9 Vendée Globe campaign. Brown has been instrumental in a number of top class Open 60 campaigns. Brown is a professional project manager and regatta sailor originally from Norfolk. He studied yacht manufacturing and management for four years at Southampton Institute until 1998. In 2000 Joff joined the shore team at Mike Golding Yacht Racing to prepare a Finot designed Open 60 for the racing calendar, which included the Vendée Globe, English Transat and Transat Jaques Vabre. He then joined Green Marine in 2002 as project manager on the construction of several race boats.
Brown joined Motorola Ocean Racing Team in February 2004 as the project manager and looked after the preparation and maintenance of the ‘Hellomoto' Open 60 for the 2004/5 racing programme. This is the boat that Caffari has been using as her training boat in 2007. He was recently involved in overseeing the build, for Neville Hutton Boat Builders, of the ‘Hugo Boss' Open 60 in the UK.
Merf Owen, Open 60 designer
Merfyn Owen was selected by both Dee Caffari and Mike Golding to undertake the design and build of their Open 60 yachts, Aviva and Ecover III, which will sail in the 2008/09 Vendée Globe. Golding originally tasked him to create a boat that is both fast and user-friendly. It is this valuable tooling and knowledge process that forms part of the technical alliance. The new boats will ensure that both skippers can compete for one of the top places in this race.
Owen is a chartered engineer and member of the Royal Institute of Naval Architects. He has played an integral role in formulating the new Volvo Open 70 class rules and has extensive experience with swing keel yacht racing design. Owen's introduction to the Open 60 class began in 1993/94 when he took a sabbatical from the design business and sailed the world's first Open 60, ‘Thursday's Child', from Australia to the USA, via Cape Horn. He was then asked to manage two BOC/Around Alone campaigns, in 1994/95 (‘Thursday's Child') and 1998/99 (‘Team Group 4'). He is a former around-the-world sailor himself, skippering a boat in the 1996/97 BT Global Challenge and he has twice rounded Cape Horn.