| UK. New Groupe Finot design Open 60 'HUGO BOSS' to be built in Lymington |
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| Wednesday, 30 August 2006 | |
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Alex Thomson: In May this year I announced my plans to build a new Groupe Finot design Open 60 to be launched in spring 2007, in time for the Barcelona World Race 2007. The brand new state-of-the-art Open 60 project will be led by highly experienced Jason Carrington and built by Lymington (UK) based boat builder Neville Hutton and will replace Thomson's current boat after the VELUX 5 OCEANS race. With over 35 years of experience in the industry and in excess of 30,000 boats to its name, I really felt the Finot-Conq design team has an unrivalled pedigree in yacht design. They have an outstanding record in the Vendée Globe, my ultimate goal in 2008. Of the five races run since the inaugural Vendée Globe in 1989, four of the winning boats were Groupe Finot designed and I feel that this team has the most to offer the project. Our project manager, Jason Carrington, is arguably one of the best project managers and composite boat builders in the world and having built Volvo 60s and 70s and competed on them, he certainly knows his stuff. Neville Hutton has a proven track record in boat building, and together with Finot-Conq we will build a new boat, which is at the cutting-edge of technology and is totally custom built to suit my style of sailing. I have been able to get pretty involved in the design of the new yacht, but that will obviously be less so for the build process, as the majority of it will take place whilst I'm competing in the VELUX 5 Oceans race. But that's where the guys will come in, and I know Clarkee, Ross and Scott are all pretty excited about working with Jason and Neville. "Jason and I have put together an expert team of boat builders who have worked with the America's Cup and the Volvo Ocean Race," comments Hutton who lists Ellen McArthur's Kingfisher amongst the projects that he has worked on. "It is very exciting to be involved with an Open 60 campaign. They are very fast, extreme boats and the people who sail them are highly talented. It's a pleasure to work with someone like Alex who exudes so much enthusiasm that it all rubs off on the rest of the team." According to Jason, the new generation Open 60 will be wider and more powerful than the previous generation. "There is not much more that we can reveal at this stage, but we certainly have a few ideas which we will be discussing with the Finot-Conq design team." says Carrington. "We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but I am really looking forward to working with both Finot-Conq and Neville. The project will get more and more exciting as it develops and I feel the whole team is committed to produce a special boat for Alex." As for me, well its now just over 8 weeks to the start of the VELUX 5 Oceans, and the tension is definitely building! I hope to see many of you in Bilbao. www.at-racing.co.uk |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 30 August 2006 ) |
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