The Cork boat is the first of the new OCD (Owen Clarke Design) third generation Class 40s is taking shape in the Plymouth yard of Stig McDonald, just a few miles down the road from OCD’s main UK office. The yacht, as yet un-named, is being beautifully built by a team of guys that includes artisans who, until recently, had been responsible for the construction of the latest Ericsson Volvo 70s. Part of this group comprises former mini sailor Ian Munslow, who raced his first generation Owen Clarke Class 40, Bolands Mill, to a third place in the 2006 Route de Rhum. The new yacht is due to be launched in April 09, in plenty of time to work up towards an entry in the Route de Chocolat at the end of the year, where she will be skippered by Irishman Cian McCarthy. Cian is himself no stranger to short-handed racing having twice raced Tom Crean, his OCD designed/McDonald built Mini 6.50 in the race to Salvador, Bahia.
This completely new design began from a clean sheet of paper and takes into account the modifications made to the Class 40 rules in 2007. It is without doubt the most technically advanced Class 40 yacht created to date. She is again the result of a collaboration by Owen Clarke Design and Americas Cup/Team New Zealand designer Clay Oliver. This is the same pairing responsible for the creation of the Open 60s Ecover 3 and Aviva, skippered by Mike Golding and Dee Caffari.
In addition, OCD again utilised the talents of French hydrodynamicist and BMW/Oracle design team member, Michel Kermarec for the evolution of the rudder, keel and bulb. The sails are designed by Stephane Fauve of North Sails France, built in North’s UK loft and for the first time in this class the sail plan and rig were computer modelled utilising Flow and Membrain, as well as RigCalc (developed by mast builders Southern spars, New Zealand). This is CFD (computational fluid dynamics) combined with finite element analysis technology that OCD have incorporated into their design programmes since the early days of their work on Open 60s such as Kingfisher. John Levell and Roger Scammel, better known for the composite and hardware/systems engineering on Ellen MacArthur’s 23m trimaran B&Q Castorama and Thomas Coville’s Sodeb’O, complete the line up of prodigious talent associated with the design of this exciting new yacht.
Allen Clarke, designer and partner in Owen Clarke Design will be attending the Paris Boatshow and the Class 40 technical meeting on December 10th, where he will be available to talk about the design process and features of the latest Owen-Clarke 40.
