Boat show

The Volvo Ocean Race is the premier fully crewed yachting race. Other events follow a round-the-world format, but only this one offers competition for professional teams on-board state-of-the-art composite racing yachts.

As a test it is without parallel; some rival races feature amateur crews and so proceed relatively slowly, others feature fast boats but crews of just one person — which is immensely testing at a human level, but the boat itself will rarely be driven at 100 per cent.

Hence for the designers, engineers and builders the Volvo Ocean Race remains the ultimate test. The product is spared nothing in the drive to win.

The race, which runs every four years, starts from Vigo in Spain on 6 November, and a new class of boat has been specially created by the organiser.

The Volvo Ocean 70 may be only some 10ft longer than its predecessors (the VO60s), but the comparison ends there. In terms of key parameters the new boats carry double the sail area (aka horsepower) and are balanced by highly loaded, hydraulically canted (or movable) keel fins that support a 4.5-tonne bulb at the tip.