Design and Construction
The VO65 was mandated to be fast, powerful, and durable, and the one-design rule delivered parity while lowering campaign costs anchor. It takes seven months and 36,000 man hours to build, assemble, and paint each hull, with 120 boatbuilders and 70 suppliers involved in outfitting. The class is genuinely identical boat to boat and relatively simple in its systems, which is what makes the ground-breaking one-design achievement at this scale so remarkable. Farr's team brought deep Whitbread and Volvo Race design experience to the project, and the president of the firm judged the VO65 an enormous success, with the boats very reliable in service.
Rig and Handling
On the water the VO65 sits somewhere between a VO70 and a normal keelboat, but with markedly more acceleration and power, and at top speeds everything is fully loaded anchor. The helm is surprisingly light even into the upper wind range, yet with both rudders in the water there is a lot of windward helm; heeled to 20–30 degrees with only one rudder engaged, the steering turns light and very responsive. The keel swings from 40 degrees to centerline and back to 40 degrees the other way, and if it does not rise in time the underwater foils stall. Twin reversible retracting asymmetric daggerboards demand careful trim, and leeway is immediately felt when they sit wrong. The jibs appear relatively small, and the small jib with full main is a poor combination; in 25 knots the boat is overpowered in the medium jib, so a reef goes in to keep her on her feet between 20 and 30 degrees of heel. Surprisingly, she feels faster reefed because of the power aloft. Managing that power is a teeter-totter, and when out of control the crew must change sail configuration.
Accommodations and Sea Behavior
This is a wet and noisy boat by nature. Spray comes instantly over the deck as she loads up, and below decks all motion is magnified anchor. Even upwind without pounding, it is incredibly loud inside, and the violent slapping of waves against the exposed underbody is ever present. Because a crewmember cannot see when the hull is about to launch off a wave, a person can be thrown clear across the boat. Water ballast is the tool for damping the otherwise jerky motion: the twin 800-liter aft tanks and single 1000-liter forward tank can be filled, though aft water makes the transom drag and bubble while forward water makes the bow dig into the waves.
Known Issues
The dominant service-life issue is the noise and violence of motion, which is structural to the design rather than a defect. Test sailors report that the whole boat shakes and that waves striking the bare underbody produce violent slapping; below, the magnified motion means a launch off a wave can throw someone across the cabin with no visual warning anchor. The designer's view is reassuring on structural counts: all failures to date have been either self-inflicted or explainable, with no large-scale systematic failure across the fleet.
Refits and Ownership
Between the 2014–2015 and 2017–2018 races, all eight VO65s were brought to the same standard at an estimated upgrade cost in the seven-figure range. The designer expected changes for the next edition to be relatively minor, constrained by the budget both existing owners and any new builds could manage. The class's one-design identity and identical systems keep ownership predictable, but the scale of any refit remains governed by that shared specification.
The Verdict
The Volvo Ocean 65 is a purpose-built ocean racer that translated a conflicting brief into a rugged, fast, and genuinely equal one-design fleet. She rewards skilled handling with light steering and immense power, yet demands respect for her motion and noise.
Pros
- Proven rugged and reliable in round-the-world racing anchor
- True one-design parity with identical, relatively simple systems
- Light, responsive helm when heeled with one rudder engaged
- Effective water ballast to damp jerky motion
Cons
- Extremely wet, noisy, and violent in motion below decks
- Risk of being thrown across the boat with no visual warning
- No large-scale failure history, but all issues to date self-inflicted or explainable only in hindsight
