Photos by Thierry Martinez thmartinez-photos.com

Photos by Thierry Martinez thmartinez-photos.com



On a warm spring evening, the ultra-light ASSA ABLOY race boat sailed
under full spinnaker, reaching through the world's famous and historical
Tower Bridge. This was the first of two new boats being revealed to the
cheering public and more than one hundred employees, friends and family
worldwide, gathered for this special occasion.

Godmother Elisabeth Rehn had the honor to break the traditional bottle on
the bow and said, "Sailing under the Swedish flag, built in Britain and
manned by a multinational crew led by a Dutch skipper, ASSA ABLOY is truly a
good representative for the international integration."

Photos by Thierry Martinez thmartinez-photos.com

Photos by Thierry Martinez thmartinez-photos.com



ASSA ABLOY has built two identical boats in order to maximize speed and sail
testing using one boat as a benchmark. Only one of the two boats will be on
the start line of the Volvo Ocean Race in Southampton on September 23, 2001.
The second boat is scheduled for launching in a few days.

The ASSA ABLOY Racing Team is truly dedicated to make the boat go faster. To
that end, the boat has been built as light as possible. It is an extremely
demanding task looking for innovative solutions on every small detail, and
adding up the grams spared to save a few kilograms. The hulls were built
using the "female mould" construction method. This method has allowed the
team to leave the boats unpainted, thus saving weight during construction.
It is the first time ever that a boat of this kind will remain unpainted,
only to be varnished. The total weight saving is estimated at 80 kilograms.

Photos by Thierry Martinez thmartinez-photos.com

Photos by Thierry Martinez thmartinez-photos.com



At Green Marine in Southampton and Lymington, up to 50 people have been
working on the construction of the boats over a seven-month period. In
total, it took more than 25,000 man-hours per boat. Technical Director and
Swedish Whitbread veteran Magnus Olsson has further developed the basic
Bruce Farr design for the boat. Olsson worked closely with Construction
Manager Jason Carrington and the team's technical partner, Semcon. This
Swedish design and development company has been carefully analyzing, testing
and developing various technical solutions in order to get the best results.

"We have aimed to develop the best parts of earlier designs and have been
working on solutions that are both light and simple to handle on the boat.
The deck layout is inspired by the W60 boats EF and Silk Cut, which were
designed with both the long legs and the shorter ones in mind. Sailing on
the boat for the first time this week has proved our ideas to be realistic", said a satisfied Technical Director Magnus Olsson.

The first boat will sail to Gothenburg, Sweden, after the ceremony;
the second boat will arrive a week later to start an intense period of two
boat testing leading up to the start of the Volvo Ocean Race in September.

Team site: www.assaabloyracingteam.com