Sailboat: Volvo Ocean Race One Design 65

The Volvo Ocean Race is a yacht race around the world, held every three years. Today it carries the name of its current sponsor, Swedish automobile manufacturer Volvo. The 2014-1015 edition has departed Alicante, Spain, in October 2014 and will finish in Gothenburg, Sweden, after about 9 months. It consists of 9 legs for a total of about 40000 nautic miles sailed on the world’s most treacherous seas via Cape Town, Abu Dhabi, Sanya, Auckland, around Cape Horn to Itajaì, Newport, Lisbon and Lorient. 

Each of the seven teams consists of 9 (12 for the all-female team SCA) professional crew who race day and night for more than 20 days at a time on some of the legs. They each have different jobs on board the boat, and on top of these sailing roles, there are sailors that have had medical training, as well as a sailmaker, an engineer and a dedicated media crew member.

For 2014-2015 edition the teams have all the same one-design boat, which is the brainchild of Farr Yacht Design in the United States, with a consortium of four boatyards taking care of the build process - Green Marine in the United Kingdom, Decision in Switzerland, Multiplast in France and Persico in Italy. The Volvo One Design 65 boat is 65 feet long for an empty weight of 12,500 kg and a rig height of over 30 meters, and the same boat model will be used also in the next 2017-2018 edition.

This model is my LDD version of the boat. Since it is a model designed and thought to be digital, some of its aspects probably could have not be done as-is in a real brick model, since they would not stand up to gravity. Nevertheless, in a real model most of them could be replaced, for example the same kind of sails used in Lego pirate ships could be used instead of brick-made ones.

The boat does not show any of the seven 2014-2015 team liveries but is built in a standard gray. As you can see there is a crew of 8 sailors, male and females, with an equally generic grey uniform.