BOAaTBUILDER The magazine for those working in design, construction, and repair NUMBER 127 JUAN KOUYOUMDJIAN OCTOBER/NOVEMBER FAST POWERBOATS, PART 2 2010 THE NEW MARINE HYBRIDS $5.95 U.S. DESIGN CHALLENGE WINNERSBY DAN SPURR AND TRIXIE WADSON ‘Above—Among Juan Kouyoumdjian’s ‘most notable achievements have been the design and engineering of back-to back Volvo Ocean Race winners. Here, the esigner illustrates the Volvo 70s" (21m) ‘canting bulb keels on a board in his office. Hel go fora third straight winner, with Puma, the shoe- and sportswear maker sponsoring its second challenge. 72. ProressionaL, BOATBUILDER JUAN K We visited twice with the swiftly moving target that is Juan Kouyoumdjian, the 39-year-old Argentinean at the head of one of competitive sailing’s hottest design offices. The lights, it seems, are always on at Juan Yacht Design in Valencia, Spain, More than 20 consultants and Staff cover design, naval architecture, and engineering, and at just 39 years of age, principal Juan Kouyoumdjian (o0-y00m-jobn) has established himself 4s one of the world's most sought-after designers of high-performance sailing yachts. And the lucky beneficiaries? ‘Among others: the 2008-09 Volvo Ocean Race winner, Ericsson 4; the 100' (30m) canting kee! Speedhoat and TeamOrigin’s 2010 TP52 (158m) for the America Cup. When I first visited Kouyoumdytan in 2008, JYD had two main clients TeamOrigin and Bricsson Racing Team, But the 33rd Auld Mug was about to become a legal quagmire. The tb floor design offices on Dr. J. Domine Street looked out over the western Mediterranean’s largest port and 12 hopeful America's Cup bases Painfully, the Alinghi-BMW Oracle feud whittled away the competitors, ‘and the Cup challenge was eventually resolved in a two-boat Deed of Gift ‘match, just offshore from Kouyoum- djian 's front window. Trixie Wadson caught up with the designer last June ‘ofind out how be navigated through ital —Dan SpurrChanging Clients, Making Winners Since opening his independent design office in 1997, Kouyoumdian has completed a nice body of work for private individuals as well as cor porations and syndicates, like an Admiral’s Cup yacht and the Open 60 Pindar More recently, the 100" Speedboat was built at Cookson Marine in New Zealand, for an American client, Alex Jackson. Due 10 the recent financial terisis the boat wasn’t raced often, and rumors circulated about possi- ble design flaws. In June, with Mike Sanderson and a hot crew, she eared line honors for the second time in the Newport-Bermuda Race “The situation sight now is that at the top end of the competition it is very different than a few years ago, explains Kouyoumdjian, “Then, designers were very keen to compete in the racing world, but that is not where they This Kouyoumdjian- designed Star-ciass boat was built Justin time for fain Percy and Andrew ‘Simpson fo win gold at the 2008 Boling Olympics. More Juan Yacht Design Star boats are built by Mader in Germany. Juan Yacht Design’s commission from “American Alex Jackson called for alk ‘out speed and the potential to take Jine honors in the popular midale- distance races like the Transpac and ‘Sydney-Hobart, and the Newport Bermuda Race last June, where Speedboat did indeed cross first. There are virtually no concessions to crew comfort; every detail is configured 10 Improve performance. The deck, for ‘example, is cambered to save weight. made their business. Racing gave them a reputation or name, but they went to production boats [to make money], Now, the top end of racing is a business in itself It’s been the other way around for Juan Yacht Design, which just finished its first production boat— a new Bénéteau First 30 (9.1m) together with long-distance sailor Michel tuned up the 30 in Bénéteau’s First series with a potent T-bulb, twin rudders, aft chines, and 4 mainsail boom that reaches (0 the back of the semi-open transom, ‘A lot of the good ideas hap- pen when [I'm] sailing,” says Kouyoumdiian about the genesis of the design. He remains a competitive class sailor and cites the boat as ‘a good inducer of ideas the contact with other sailors of the id needs and problems they might have had—even though sailing the Star in Italy earned him the extra compl cation of a broken rib last spring, “I certainly don't block myself If I'm sick of work, or if there is a period where I don’t feel I'm very productive,” he says, "Ijust don't hesi- tate. I get the hell out, That's a culture Kouyoumdjian's team. Desjoyeaux He values a lot as come up to solve specific that we promote here in the office Octoner/Novenner 2010 73The Bénéteau First 30 (9.1m), Kouyoumadjian’s frst production sailboat design, was developed in collaboration with French sailor Michel Desjoyeaux. During the last Volvo they all got quite burned out, and one guy took almost two months off, then came back, refreshed. “I think it's very important when you are in a cre- ative world to first promote those ‘creative moments, those moments of tranquility when ideas can come to you; and second, t0 recognize when you actually have pushed it too hard, have stretched it too much in terms of work, and know when to stop. Those are two things we weren't very good at a few years ago, but I think we have gotten better lately. Perhaps that is why i's great hav- ing an office in Spain, where they still honor daily siestas and shops are closed on Sundays, In America there is the culture of hours. For example, lawyers charge you by the hour. I think that’s not the right culture. Particularly when you are in a world where results mat: ter, hours don't mean anything. A lot of people might judge somebody's performance by the amount of hours they put into it, We tend to think about it the other way around, Sometimes when we calculate our fees, part of them are related to direct costs that we know, such as licenses and rent. But we also establish a fee that makes us feel motivated and happy 10 do the job. In Europe they understand tha, ut in America they want to know, ‘But how many hours is tha” 1 don't like that. I think fees have to be related to how much it is worth to you Most of JYD's projects are race related, and the results are measured by performance. Kouyoumdjian says, ‘ou cannot put a dollar per differen al of performance. For example, in the Volvo last time, the Ericsson CEO told me, ‘It doesn't matter if our boat 4s a halt a knot faster, or point one of 4 knot faster, that point one of a knot is priceless. Because it's the difference you need to win the race.” Youth, Education, and Training Kouyoumdjian grew up sailing in Argentina. His father was an acchi- tect who liked to sail competitively ‘The family’s first boat was a wooden 30-footer, followed by a Doug Peterson-designed Half Tonner, This was the miid-1970s, and Juan was 100 young to crew, but he did learn to sail. The family belonged to a yacht KOUYOUMDIIAN ON FAILURES “When you mention Volvo boats and the America's Cup, they have to be considered separate from produc- tion boats. Same with Open Class 60 trimarans; you can't put them in the ‘same basket as production boats. The structural limits are pushed in full conscience. The professional skippers have very litle conflict with the risks, because failures are part of the game, The biggest problem is the owner who wants a racing boat that is not 4 Volvo or Americas Cup boat, and not a production boat, either. For these high-performance boats in the middle, there is a lack of standards, and a lack of understanding on the part of owners, skippers, and project ‘managers of what they have on their hhands. “Ferrari makes street cars and cus- tom cars, but not everyone can buy 74 ProvEssional, BoATBULDER one. They have a contract with the owners to assure themselves that they are maintained and driven in a par- ticular way; otherwise they are not liable. If you built yourself an equiva- lent boat and are not prepared to 0 to the level of logistics, level of the maintenance, level of the crew that boat requires, sooner or later it is going to fail. That doesn't mean it was badly designed or badly con- ceived. It was simply a disconnect between the design and conception of the build and the purpose of the boat. There is a huge gap. It is very clear in the Volvo and America’s Cup, and itis very clear in the production boats, and that’s why the safety fac- (ors are what they are. In the middle itis not clear at all “The TP52 (see the main text, page 77—-Ed has gone through a few ‘years of success, and now there is a jot of renovating of the older boats, ‘One- and two-year-old boats are for sale at reasonable prices. A lot of ‘owners are keen to buy them and go yacht racing. Maybe he buys a two- year-old TP52 that was designed for the Mediterranean Cup and wants to do the Sydney-Hobart Race in it, Well, they are not going to go past the first night, because there is a clear misinterpretation of the purpose for ‘which these boats were designed and built. “Sometimes we are contacted by a potential buyer who says, ‘I want to buy the boat you did for so and so. It is two or three years old. Could you help me optimize it” We say, "No, we cannot do that. The purpose ‘of that boat was for something else.’ ‘The problem is that the buyer simplyclub and Juan became active in the Optimist’ youth program, racing nationally and internationally until he was 13, He stopped racing and played golf for a couple of years, "Then I realized yachting was good for me, and I got back into it, cing a Lightning. 1 was second in Lightning World Youth Championships. The crew was Christian Frers, son of the brother of yacht designer German Frets; Mani Frers, German's son, crewing the middle; and myself, doing the bow. ‘asks somebody else 10 do it, and a lot of those boats get modified by another designer, without consult ing the original designer or original yards. So you end up with boats losing keels, and everyone says the designer is bad. We have been lucky not to have suffered from that particular problem. But I speak to a lot of designers, and 1 know they are frustrated about this. There needs to be a clear understafding of what these boats are designed and built for, and right now that is not the case. “You can't predict everything. And you can't make these high- fend boats not to break. It's impos- sible, Take an AC boat [AC90 (27m)] ‘or TP52, for example; if the crew goes out sailing with the purpose of breaking them, they will break them. You have to work in close proximity with those who are using the boat, That is the only solution, We trained a lot. 1 was 16, Christian 16, and Mani 17. 1 also was sailing J/24s and Stars, competing in the 1988 World's in Argentina. Also sailed a One Tonner named Daphne. [Argentina is very different than the rest of South America; Argentina has a great culture of yachting,” Kouyoumdjian graduated from the University of Southampton in England in 1993 with a degree in naval archi tecture, and was offered a job by Philippe Briand (La Rochelle, France). Most of the work there was for the You design a boat that is based around loading, cases that are clearly expressed by those who are going to use it. And then when it has been built and put in the water, those who will use it must use it within the loading cases they have described to you. There is no other solution. If you go beyond that, will break. 1am really sad when journalists and others point thei fin- gers at the designer and say, ‘It is your fault. You're a bad designer Jhecause this boat broke. “I have been told several times during the last Volvo, 'You have to design boats that won't break.’ I say, "You can't. It's a foolish dis- cussion, Is like the racecar driver who goes out on a bit of a curve and hits the wall and says, “The transmission shouldn't have broken.’ But earlier he said, ‘Give me the lightest transmission because T want towin)” Juan Kouyoumdjian In the 8212 boat, Kouyoumdian and ‘Nicolas Rosas sail for Argentina in the 2008 Star Worlds in San Francisco. The ‘esigner has been racing in the Star class since he was a teenager in Argentina. At 116 he was second in the Lightning World Youth Championships with his crew: Mani Frers (yacht designer German Frers's son) land Christian Frers (son of German’ brother), He believes there are important lessons a designer can learn from racing and Interaction with top racing sailors French America’s Cup team, Le Defi 95, but also included a production boat called the Standfast 52, and the custom yacht Mari-Cha I “The America’s Cup wasn't very good for us,” he recalls. “One boat fell off the crane, It was a failure. So 1 Started to move on, In 1997 T opened my own office in La Rochelle.” TThe first boat he did on his own was a 26'(8m) day boat called Trebat, for a local yard in La Rochelle. His break came in 1999 with the com- mission to design a S0-footer (15.2m) to compete in the Admirals Cup, in which three-boat teams from diffe cent countries compete in a series of races, For that he hired two employ- ees, “That was a big project for me, he says Kouyoumdjian gave Krazy K-Yore IT a freestanding mast, described in the Internet sailing newsletter Scuttlebutt as *...essentially a carbon-fibre -beam set athwartships with lightweight Kevlar fairings fore-and-aft” that was designed to twist. Its legality under the International Measurement System was called into question, and after much wrangling, its original certificate ‘was rescinded, because the computer model employed (0 calculate ratings was incapable of assessing its fea tures. In its place, a second certificate was offered owner Stefan Kandler, with theoretical adjustments that increased the yacht’s rating. Rather than accept, Kandler and the French team withdrew from the competition While that turn of events was unfortunate for the owner and Kouyoumdjian, it demonstrated that the young designer from Argentina ‘was clever, innovative, and seeking ‘ways to edge past the competition. As usually happens in the yacht racing world, whenever a designer success- fully exploits a loophole in a rating rule, a noose closes the hole—mainly Octoner/Novemper 2010 75because it is easier and le: sive for the fraternity of established owners to continue with their exist- ing designs than for everyone to have to suddenly ante up, in this case, for unstayed wing spars. For the 2000 America's Cup. the French team Le Defi retained Kouyoumdjian to contribute to its design program, and he feels his efforts in “speeding up" the boat were recognized. The office began to receive a lot of varied propos- als, He accepted one: a 116-footer (3.5m) for a friend in Hong Kong, The brief called for a state-of-the-art ‘ocean racer not to be constrained by any rule. The result was a carbon fiber hull with a total displacement (of 66,000 Ibs (30,000 kg). Maximum waterline beam is 11" 4" (3.4m), wings increase deck beam to 26 (8m), The wing tanks are capable of holding five tons of movable water ballast, which supplements the cant ing keel to increase righting moment. Kouyoumdjian says Maiden Hong Kong's tungsten bulb is half the size of a lead bulb of the same weight The mast also can be canted, up to 7°, and rotated up to 60° each side. Twin poles, to which the shrouds are fastened, are swung outboard 10 increase the staying base of the mast, She has a fixed foil forward with trim tab that is independent of the single rudder, For the 2003 America’s Cup, IYD was approached by both the Italian Prada team, and the Swiss Alinghi team. “I thought that never in a million years would a Swiss team in 76 PROFESSIONAL BOaTBUILDER such a short time be successful,” he And Prada had done so well lin previous Cup events} and looked so mighty, if we are to win the Cup, welll win it with Prada, So we went with Prada, Alinghi, of course, was the surprise Then in 2005, Kouyoumdjian and his chief competitor in the world of offshore yacht racing, Farr Yacht Design (Annapolis, Maryland), were both contracted by Larry Ellison's BMW Oracle team, It was an uneasy partnership, but the boat performed very well and seemed destined to emerge from the challenger trials as the sure choice, but the crew choked and lost to Emirates New Zealand, which in turn lost to Alinghi in the finals, youmdjian: “Boat speed was very good. I sailed the boat, and most of the sailors will tell you that. We were leading the round robin until the very end. If we hadn't lost that race against China, we would have finished first in the round robin, without having to sail against New Zealand in the last race, which would have completely changed the standings, We had been winning all of the races fairly easily. All this prepara- tion: new fins, new masts, new sails. And suddenly we lost to the Chinese because our head foil broke T remember going back to the hharbor that day, and the whole pro: gram fell apart. We were far from being a team; a little thing like that just shut us down completely. Then we had t0 race against New Zealand and did a very poor job. I've never been involved ina massacre like this betore In the semi-finals, BMW Oracle had to race Prada from the Nalian Luna Rossa Challenge. “Before that, says Kouyoumdjian, “we'd beaten Prada ‘twice, comfortably. And suddenly we g0 against them 41, These are the same boats, the same sailors! ‘There's a lot of mental [discipline] that goes into those races, and we didn't know how to keep it up, Later, team director Chris Dickson asked Kouyoumdjian to continue working with BMW Oracle Racing, Interest in JYD amongst the other teams was strong, and the firm received three other pro” posais. In the end, he agreed to work with TeamOrigin from the United Kingdom, ‘Origin just seemed right,” he says, “L had a very good relationship with Mike Sanderson [then team director] through the Volvo. And I had nothing but admiration for the skipper [Ben Ainslie]. It was a fairly easy decision. What Kind of Cup? As anyone following the Cup knows all too well, bickering between BMW Oracle's Larry Ellison and Alinghi’s Ernesto Bertarelli ended up in the New York Supreme Coun, Which interprets the Deed of Gift that governs America’s Cup competition. To make a long story short: there was no conventional America’s Cup Jn 2009 in which multiple challengers Vie for the right 10 take on defender Alingh tastea took place last February in Valencia after two races BMW Oracle's 90" trimaran and spectacular wing sail clobbered Alinghi's catamaran. ‘That meant that 10 challengers. from New Zealand, China, Italy, United Kingdom, South Africa, France, Germany, and pain were left out is the cold, TeamOrigin, bankrolled by Si Keith Mills and Charles Dunstone, nd lose but he declined, a two-team event {and Farr Yacht Design for the 32nd ‘America’s Cup, held in Valencia, Spain, in 2007. Though the boat showed great promise and was expected to win the right to challenge the defender, Alinghi, a series of misfortunes and missteps took her out of contention,While the last Cup was delayed by courtroom battles between the BMW Oracle and [Alinghi syndicates, the British contender, TeamOrigin, kept its team sharp by racing an older Cup boat, an eXtreme 40, and currently a JYD-designed TPS2 (15.8m), shown here—a boxule yacht class founded in 2004 for owners wanting a fun and relatively affordable grand prix program. had 100 people on its payroll when things fell apar. As of last July, BMW Oracle had yet to decide whether the yacht for the 3ith Cup would be a monohull or a multihull; so, like all the other syndicates, TeamOrigin’s new CEO, Grant Simmer, formerly with Alinghi placed a holding pattern on design ‘commitments, “From a logistics point of view Kouyoumdjian says, “the Defender group wants to do lots of events, so a monohull makes the most sense. But from a televised marketing sense, a ‘multihull would be good. Deciding on a multihull might pull away a few of the classic teams, such as Prada, but then might gain another two or three We are in a difficult transition right and I think the Defender is right to take some time to really explore the ‘options, ‘One outcome of the delays in the last Cup is that some syndicates now keep their crew in shape by com: peting in other classes of boats, TeamOrigin, for one, campaigned in the eXtreme 40 multibull circuit, and the TPS2 monohull class. “We designed one in five weeks, Kouyoumdjian says, “without the rule because the rule was changing at the same time, We started building the fourth of December at Salthouse Boatbuilders in New Zealand. The anuary final rule was finished in mid but our guesses were good, so all right, For TeamOrigin to do a "1P52, our goal was not just to win the Audi Med Cup, but to get a brand ew team in gear, 10 work together like many of the other teams already have. Teamorigin was the first TP52 built with the new rules to optimize full carbon composite construction Two Olympians, Ben Ainslie and lain Percy, head up the sailing team, ‘The fist race was in Cascais, Portugal and Kouyoumdjian was happy with their feedback. But there was a skit mish over the rules, The chief m fortable with the bulb we had, so he changed the rule to force us to get the ‘wings off, and we did a new bulb that was done in time for Marseille. They called me after the first three races of Marseille, and they felt the boat was doing good. with the starts, but with time they will They had some issues get to score, The boat is up there, and we're all learning a lot of things. So far, it’s ticking all the boxes the TP52 project was meant to tick. Volvo Ocean Race Fortunately for JYD, there is the 39,000-nm Volvo Ocean Race in cant ing keel 70-footers (21m). The firm designed the last two Winning entries, Ericsson 4 and ABN AMRO One. For the 2011-12 event the list of stopover ports and the rules were established earlier than for the previous round- the-world race, but Kouyoumdjian’s concerns remain similar ‘volvo Event Management is a company that was formed by [auto- maker] Volvo 10 manage the event. ‘The ultimate purpose of Volvo is to sell their products, They also want to level the playing field by giving smaller campaigns that come in late a better chance against established teams like Ericsson, They don't want Octoner/Novemper 2010 77ABN AMRO One, designed by J¥D, won the grueling Volvo Ocean Race in 2005-06. fone team to run away with the race early, as happened with ABN AMRO, ‘Therefore we find ourselves in a very dear conflict of interest between ourselves- ‘who would like to win the race before the finish—and an organization that doesn't want us to do that. For 2008-09, the original VO 70 Rule was adjusted, the key points of which were a narrower range of overall weight (13.6-14 tons); maxi mum weight of keel, including fin and bulb, of 7.4 tons; a ban on bomb doors where the keel exits the hull, to prevent flooding; all spinnakers must be furling for crew safety; and a ban on titanium hydraulic rams for canting the keel, James Dadd, chief measurer, reiterated the philosophy behind the rule true to the stated philosophy of pro- ducing ‘fast, single-mast, monohull keelbouts of similar performance, suit able for long-distance racing offshore at the highest level of the sport. The 10-leg 2008-09 race began in Alicante, Spain, and finished in St Petersburg, Russia ‘Though’ Kouyoumdjian is reluctant to tell how that venue influenced his Ericsson 4's The intention has been 10 stay designs, some observers With Ericsson 4 in the 2008-09 Volvo Ocean Race, Juan Yacht Design had another winner. Note the twin fois in the raised position forward of the mast. ‘She's seen here on leg 9 of the race, between Marstrand and Stockholm, ‘Sweden, 78. PROFESSIONAL BOATBUIDER In the right conditions, the Volvo 70s regularly exceed 20 knots, launching remarked about her very flat bottom, suggesting the team wi betting on lighter air. But as Kouyoum- djian continually affirms, the structure had to hold together in the violent conditions of the Southern Ocean, which is a huge engineering cha lenge. "You're only as strong as your weakest link,” Kouyoumdjian is fond of saying, “so you have to dimension the boats for when they sce those peaks.” Builder of the Ericsson boats was 53-year-old Irishman Killian. Bushe, who lives in Ljungskile, Sweden, and whose specially built shop is in Kista As with the America’s Cup boats, few details were released to the public about design and construction, for fear of losing a competitive advantage but the hulls are basically carbon” epoxy pre-pregs with honeycomb Spars also are carbon and are 3DL (three-dimensional lamination), For 2011-12 there are mostly refinements to the rules, not radi- cal changes. But JYD ing the angles, and the Volvo Race Management & ing less. The organizers frown on any exclusivity contracts; and so, among other reasons, Ericsson decided not fo enter a boat this time, In their place, JYD will design for Puma Ocean Racing and Telefonica. A third, Groupama Insurance, has entered into a restricted agreement with the Muliplast yard in Vannes, France, While a build with Multiplast would be like going home to France for Kouyoumdjian, the homecoming is sails is work- im is expecting noth not to be. “It's a shame,” he says. “We're not allowed to have very direct contact." Nevertheless, the office is flat out, A popularly controversial design detail is Kouyoumdjian's incorpors tion of bubbles at the keel-hull inter section, a feature he's. given to his Volvo boats as well an earlier TP52 named MUI MUL He explains: “I's a feature we have been doing for many years now canting:keel boats, its just a depres- sion or hollow that you include in the section between the appendage and the hull that changes the pressure field at that section; and as a conse: ‘quence of that, the drag of the inter section is reduced. You have to know how © do it, or you can increase drag. In aviation the section between ‘wings and fuselages has been studied. We came across it on our own, We Particularly elficient in spent a lot of time making bubblesthat created higher drag. I's not the invention that’s always so important Its getting it on a boat and making it work; that’s what really counts. Staff and Computer Power There are 23 people, mostly per- manent consultants, working at JYD. They include three PhDs in flu dyna who takes care of programming, run ning the cluster, and analyzing results seven naval architects; @ mechani cal engineer; an industrial engineer, and an aeronautical engineer with a PhD in composite structures. They hail from many different countries: Uruguay, France, Sweden, England, Scotland, and, of course, Argentina Kouyoumdjian says, “I think T am the least qualified guy! Juan's twin brother, Gonzalo. joined the firm a few years ago. A civil engineer, he built gas pipelines in South America before earning a master’s degree in finance at New York University ‘Nathanael Herreshoff is @ hero,” Kouyoumdjian says, “and he worked 4 PhD in computer science computer power that is required to do these calculations.” Indeed, staf? hydrodynamicist Roderigo Azcueta and computer scientist Richard Ems proudly show off the custom computers with 25 terabytes (1 tera byte = 1,024 gigabytes) devoted just to CFD. The machines are in their own climate-controlled room with his Brother. I'm proud t© know such an icon in yacht design has gone through a similar setup. Others [who worked with their brothers] include German Frers and Olin Stephens. 1 can only say good things about our partnership. Before Gonzalo’s arrival, Kou- youmdjian says half jokingly that he called the firm “nonprofit” because earnings were reinvested in com- puters and software. In fact, it has eamed a profit in each of its 12 years, because, he says, “we put all our hearts and energies into every proj- ect. responsibilities is making sure the firm doesn’t spend more than it earns, The third partner in the firm is, Kouyoumdiian’s wile, English-born Kelly, better known as The Boss ‘She basically runs the accounts and contracts," says Kouyoumdian. “We just spend the money and design Nevertheless, among Gonzalo's the boats, and everything else that is required is done by her. Which is great, because I am very bad lat bookkeeping and financel, and now T don’t have to worry about it. There and are about the size of two large refrigerators, AWe do tanktesting, but we never go 10 those facilities asking them to answer a hydrodynamics problem, n says. “We always go to Kouyoumdi them to confirm, to increase our level of trust that what we are simulating numerically is correct, We never take was a time when we were growing very fast, and I thought, ‘I'm not a yacht designer anymore. [ spend all my time answering e-mails” I decided we must either hire a yacht designer to replace me, or a manager.” Kelly filled the role of office manager: Kouyoumdjian: “The way we organize, each project has an int nal coordinator. That person makes sure the exchanges with the yard and suppliers are done correctly and on time. The biggest problem now is that because the industry is so saturated, particularly at the high end, we have had to tum down projects becau: some supplier was running late, We have had to terminate our relationship with some suppliers because we felt they had taken too much on. JYD outsources very little work, preferring to handle all aspects of a project in-house—from prelimi: nary design to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies, through structural engineering and construction drawings, “We rely heavily on CED,” Kouyoum- jan says ‘We have invested in the ‘Andrea Avaldl, an aeronautical engineer who runs his own company, ABStructures, also handles JYD's structural design. He's one of the semi ‘Independent consultants who work in the firms offices on specific projects them a shape in one-seventh scale and ask them to tell us how much itis going to drag. We take them a shape and we simulate in exactly the same scale in the computer, and we ask, ‘Are we in the same ballpark or not? We have realized that the preci- sion of the numerical simulation is so great that we rely heavily on CFD.” For computational fluid dynam: ics, the staff uses COMET-RANS/VOF (Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes, volume of fluid) code and a Linux cluster. Other tools include MAAT, CATIA, Condor, and proprietary soft ware developed in-house around Pro/ ENGINEER Wildfire, For structural optimization during the last Volvo and the 32nd Cup, JYD invested in Altar's OptiStruct. Andrea Avaldi, an Italian aeronautical engineer,Avaldi’s own company, ABStructures, just completed a refit of two Open 60s He collaborates regulatly with software ‘creators fo fest new versions, review and suggest features, and share race data, Avaldi has interesting observations about the upcoming Volvo Ocean Race. “There is safety of the fleet if they sail in a pack. But the organizers have cut themselves off from a media angle by making it neatly impossi- ble for women to compete. Also, the time in port will be less, to emphasize lower costs, so the boats need to be more reliable due t0 smaller shore teams with less time for repairs. ‘As a sailor himself, he believes in ‘good communication ‘with the sailors onboard. "For Eriesson, off Taiwan, they'd hit something, and water was coming onboard. They called me during the night, and I talked them Uhrough a solution.” Avaldi also wants 10 have a stron- ger interface with boatbuilders. While his company engineers the boats and specifies laminates in-house, he'd like to bring more people from construction together with the designers. “For us, it is fundamental to interact with the builders. I respect the opinion of builders; they bring hands-on expe- rience. I want things we designed to be clear and exact, but in person they might identify an area that needs changing. The last word is on the construction side. About communication, Kouyoum- djian laughs: *For the last-two-and a-half years it has been a challenge 10 keep 23 people motivated, and at the top of their game, because in our game they bave to be at the top of their game. By sharing so many hours, so much time with these peo- ple, you see how some have grown up to be very good engineers; some Of them are very clever people, There are great moments of joy, moments of brilliance when things get put together, For example, I might come up with a concept that triggers some- thing from someone else—ahal And three or four different departments will get together to develop a brilliant idea. It doesn't happen often, but it happened two or three times recently. Decisions then are made really quickly and easily, and it's good, —+— In Valencia, Spain, the workday begins late and ends late. Lunch break is in late afternoon. Restaurants often don’t open until 9 o'clock os later, A night on the town easily can end with the rooster’s crow. At Juan Yacht Design, the lights remain on well into the night. From the courtyard below you can see men at their workstations, and when their day ends is difficult to know. To excel in the rarefied game of high-performance yacht design, it pays to be smant; it pays to have the best tools; and, when you're working every edge, it pays to simply outwork the ‘competition About the Authors: Dan Spurr is Professional BoatBuilder'S editorat- large. Trixie Wadson, a Canadian freelance writer and photographer, spent the last year in Valencia, Spain. Her bome since 1995 has been Rhode Island,