Lifting the skirts on America's Cup boat design - ace TNZ designer shows his stuff for ocean race

The first look at the Volvo Ocean Race boat design mockup. Photo / Brian Carlin / Volvo Ocean Race

This is a peek at where the America's Cup may be heading.

Guillaume Verdier, the designer behind Team New Zealand's foiling success in Bermuda, has revealed his vision of a new 60-foot Volvo Ocean Race boat in Portugal.

Emirates Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton has hinted that cutting-edge foiling boats will be retained, but monohull versions will contest the next America's Cup rather than the catamarans used for the 35th event in Bermuda where the head organiser was Russell Coutts.

Foiling is revolutionising water sports. This even includes surfing where one of the main pioneers, American big wave surfer Laird Hamilton, linked with 2017 America's Cup defenders Oracle to swap information.

The ocean race will use foiling monohulls for the ocean legs, and smaller foiling catamarans for the inshore legs. Given Frenchman Verdier's powerful position within TNZ, the unveiling of a mockup of his ocean racing monohull will be seen as significant in America's Cup terms.

What the new monohull may look like in the 2019-20 Volvo Ocean Race. Photo / Volvo Ocean Race

The ocean race's chief technical development officer Nick Bice said: "We contacted several designers and asked them to submit their ideas...we had some pretty serious soul-searching to decide what we wanted to do. I went to New Zealand and spent a day with Guillaume to get to know him, and we decided he was our man.

"So now, with the new two-year race cycle, a team can compete in an IMOCA event events (like the solo Vendée Globe and two-up Barcelona World Race) in between, maintaining profile for a sponsor and making it much easier for them to commit to two cycles of the Volvo Ocean Race. That's what we want to try and achieve.

"It's going to be a very cool boat; imagine coming into the finish, in a harbour in 20 knots of breeze and you are going to see this thing fully airborne, foiling, at 35 to 40 knots."