The annual Yacht Racing Forum of 2019 took place in Bilbao, Spain during 25^th and 26^th of November. A host of key stakeholders participated including yacht designers, yacht builders, pro sailors, academics, event organizers and equipment manufacturers, all from the forefront of technology and the most important international yacht racing events such as America’s Cup, Ocean Race, Olympics, IMOCAs etc.

The University of Southampton represented at this very prestigious event by MSc student Mr. Menelaos Xanthis. He presented about work used for his MSc dissertation on “Keel failures:  A probabilistic structural reliability study using Monte Carlo simulation”. This project was conducted under the supervision of Dr James I.R. Blake and was presented in the session “New Talents in Yacht Design”.

Several topics of great interest were discussed during the forum. In the field of sailing management, the main topics where about managing events, races or sailing teams, but also about the future and evolution of sailing racing regulations.

In the design and technology field, the most prominent and recurring theme was the evolution of foiling. It was a common belief among the participants that foil size and importance will not stop to grow in the foreseeable future, and also because of the complexity of the system, electronics will be employed more frequently.  

              Of course, as in every other aspect of human activity, the topics of the environment and the climate were prominent. Of particular interest were the topics of environmentally friendly equipment including hulls, clothing etc, and especially the inability to produce recyclable hulls of high racing ability, but equally the impact that events and gear can have on the environment and how this can be mitigated.

It is also worth mentioning that as discussed in the meteorology and climate session, the changes in weather patterns are expected to impact heavily the ocean yacht racing events. Icebergs will appear more often and in areas where previously were not observed, and also the hurricane season will be less predictable, as will be the path of hurricanes. All these phenomena are expected to open new routes not previously accessible, but also potentially endanger participants in racing events.  

The forum concluded with the announcement of the Racing Yacht Forum of 2020 which will be hosted in Portsmouth.

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How we deal with the seemingly endless tide of discarded plastics within our environment and in particular our oceans is an immediate challenge. Several teams of current Ship Science students participated in a competition organised by the Western joint branch of ImarEST and RINA. The challenge was to find a design solution that could cost-effectively collect and remove macro plastic from the ocean. University of Southampton teams were placed first and second. Diogo Figuiera Nunes, Alex Pardoe and Tom Kenwright proposed Oceanum Nova. A concept design for a fleet of catamarans that would act as mobile platforms for plastic removal. The USP of their design was the fact that it brought together many different designs that have already been tried and tested and were therefore confident that they would work.

We face many maritime engineering challenges with regard to dealing with the legacy of past generations as well as the challenges of how we reduce future ship emissions. Modules such as a our SESS6074 Marine Safety: risk, environment and law equip students for the wider challenges of the future.

Our Master of Engineering degree has been updated to reflect the future challenges we all face in engineering in the maritime environment. We now have six pahways reflecting the challenges of decarbonisation, increased autonomy and digitalisation.:

(i)Advanced Computational Engineering

(ii) Marine Engineering and Autonomy

(iii) Naval Architecture

(iv) International Naval Architecture

(v) Ocean Energy and Offshore Engineering

(vi) Yacht and High Performance Craft

In future posts we will explore something of the exciting aspects of each pathway at Southampton.

Ship Science graduate, Calum Healey was part of the crew of Pata Negra, a Lombard 46, which was competing in the RORC transatlantic race.  They finished second overall.

Callum conducted research into the relative performance of two centreboard designs for the Merlin Rocket for his final year dissertation.  He undertook tests at full scale in open water, recording data to determine the performance differences.

The video below shows an interview with the crew of Pata Negra having arrived safely in Grenada.