Farr Yacht Design in Annapolis worked to a broad and often conflicting brief. The firm’s president called it one of the most demanding jobs the office had undertaken. The result is a boat that has proved as rugged as it is fast. Between its first and second races, all eight boats were brought to a common standard.
Design and Construction
The VO65 had to be fast, powerful, and durable. Its one-design rule delivered parity while lowering campaign costs. Each hull takes seven months and 36,000 man hours to build, assemble, and paint, with 120 boatbuilders and 70 suppliers involved in outfitting.
The boats are genuinely identical from one to the next, with relatively simple systems. Achieving that degree of one-design consistency at this scale was groundbreaking. Farr’s team brought deep Whitbread and Volvo Race design experience to the project, and the firm’s president judged the VO65 an enormous success, noting that the boats had been very reliable in service.
Rig and Handling
On the water, the VO65 sits somewhere between a VO70 and a normal keelboat, but it has markedly more acceleration and power. At top speeds, everything is fully loaded.
The helm is surprisingly light, even into the upper wind range. With both rudders in the water, however, there’s a great deal of windward helm. Heel the boat to 20–30 degrees so that only one rudder is engaged, and the steering becomes light and very responsive.
The keel swings from 40 degrees on one side, through the centerline, to 40 degrees on the other. If it doesn’t rise in time, the underwater foils stall. The twin reversible, retracting asymmetric daggerboards also demand careful trim; if they’re set incorrectly, the resulting leeway is immediately apparent.
The jibs appear relatively small, and the small jib paired with a full main is a poor combination. In 25 knots, the boat is overpowered with the medium jib, so a reef goes in to keep her on her feet at 20 to 30 degrees of heel. Surprisingly, she feels faster reefed because of the power aloft. Managing that power is a teeter-totter: when the boat gets out of control, the crew must change the sail configuration.
Life and Motion at Sea
By nature, this is a wet and noisy boat. Spray comes over the deck as soon as she loads up, while every movement is magnified below decks. Even when sailing upwind without pounding, the interior is incredibly loud. Waves slap violently against the exposed underbody, and the noise is ever-present.
A crewmember can’t see when the hull is about to launch off a wave, so someone may be thrown clear across the boat without warning. Water ballast helps damp this otherwise jerky motion. The system comprises twin 800-liter aft tanks and a single 1000-liter forward tank. Filling the aft tanks makes the transom drag and bubble, while forward water makes the bow dig into the waves.
Known Issues
The main service-life concern is the noise and violence of the motion. That behavior is inherent in the design rather than a defect. Test sailors report that the entire boat shakes, while waves striking the bare underbody produce violent slapping. Below decks, the magnified motion means a launch off a wave can throw someone across the cabin without visual warning.
The designer’s assessment is more reassuring on structural matters. All failures to date have been either self-inflicted or explainable, with no large-scale systematic failure across the fleet anchor.
Refits and Ownership
Between the 2014–2015 and 2017–2018 races, all eight VO65s were brought to the same standard. The estimated upgrade cost was in the seven-figure range.
The designer expected changes for the next edition to be relatively minor, limited by the budgets that both existing owners and any new-build projects could manage. The class’s one-design identity and identical systems help keep ownership predictable, although the scale of any refit remains governed by the shared specification.
The Verdict
The Volvo Ocean 65 is a purpose-built ocean racer that turned a conflicting brief into a rugged, fast, and genuinely equal one-design fleet. She rewards skilled handling with light steering and immense power, but demands respect for her noise and violent motion.
Pros
- Proven rugged and reliable in round-the-world racing
- True one-design parity, with identical and relatively simple systems
- Light, responsive helm when heeled with one rudder engaged
- Effective water ballast for damping jerky motion
Cons
- Extremely wet, noisy, and violent in motion below decks
- Risk of being thrown across the boat without visual warning
- No history of large-scale failures, but all issues to date have been self-inflicted or explainable only in hindsight
