CAMPER announced today that construction of the VO70 yacht is due to start on 9 August at the Cookson Yard in Auckland.
Boat builders will start building the mould, the first step in a process that will involve more than 30 tradesmen and over 38,000 hours.
The hull and deck will be constructed from carbon fibre over a nomex honeycomb core, to produce a light but strong hull capable of standing up to the tough 39,000 nautical mile race.
The yacht – with deck hardware, electrical, electronic and hydraulic systems fitted – will be trucked to the Emirates Team New Zealand base in early April. Keel, bulb and rudders will be fitted before the yacht is rigged.
Three months of sea trials off New Zealand will follow, testing handling and reliability before shipping the yacht to Europe in July.
The team’s operations manager Kevin Shoebridge said: “We have almost 20 naval architects, structural and mechanical engineers, CFD (computational fluid dynamics) engineers, sail and mast designers and software developers based at Auckland and Santander working on the CAMPER project.
“Multiple hull designs and sail combinations have been run through a CFD computer program which computes air and water flow. The sail design team has already had two sessions in the Auckland University wind tunnel."
Read more about the Emirates Team NZ campaign for the Volvo Ocean Race 2011.