TELEFONICA BLUE - VOR70
Year: 2008
When the Spanish Yard, King Marine received in 2007 the order for the construction of the Volvo70 "Telefonica Blue", immediately asked Trimarine to take charge of the construction technical management and to bring in our own team of skilled composite builders to reinforce the yard operatives. Trimarine had already worked with King Marine in it's Alginet (Valencia) facility the year before, managing the construction of ESP-97, the second America's Cup Class yacht for the Spanish Desafio Challenge. For this edition of the Volvo Round the World Race the Farr Design Office worked exclusively for the Spanish Team and the two sister ships "Telefonica Blue" - built in Spain - and "Telefonica Black" - built in New Zealand - are the only projects for the race in which the Farr Design Office participated. This was a big change from the preceding edition of the Volvo Race in which the yachts designed by the Farr Office were the absolute majority, a choice that allowed the Team and the Designers to make an intensive research and optimisation effort of the vessel, its structure and the construction process. During the summer of 2007, the Yard together with the Designers and Trimarine were involved in the preparation and testing of panels and laminates with different types of materials in order to verify in real terms the suitability of the processes and laminates. The construction of "Telefonica Blue" started in the autumn of 2007 and finished towards the end of June 2008 when the impressive white and blue hull was taken to Alicante where the Team had its shore operations and training base. The VOR70s that take part in the 2008-09 edition of the Volvo Round the World Race have already demonstrated during the first six Legs from Alicante all the way to Boston via Cape Town, Cochin, Singapore, Quindao and Rio de Janeiro to be extremely fast sailing yachts, capable of impressive sustained average speeds with distances of over 600 miles in 24 hours.
