“I’ll admit, it’s still hard to watch the boat leave the dock sometimes,” says former Volvo Ocean Race sailor Mark Towill. Since meeting during a Transpac campaign over 15 years ago, he and his teammate Charlie Enright have sailed thousands of miles together aboard two Volvo Ocean Race campaigns, championing sustainability along the way. During the 2023 edition of The Ocean Race, however, their boat will be setting off without him, and though that’s been an adjustment, it’s just one of many big changes for their team.
After the wrap of the Volvo Ocean Race in 2017-18, some big changes were announced for the crewed around-the-world event, the biggest of which was the addition of a second fleet. In recent years, the event has been sailed aboard VO65s, a one-design fleet with identical boats managed by a traveling boatyard, which was rebuilt in each stopover city to do maintenance, gear checks and repairs. When the event kicks off in 2023, now under the name “The Ocean Race,” the VO65s will still be present, but they’ll be joined by a fleet of IMOCA 60s. Despite a similar LOA, the new boats couldn’t be more different, not just from the VO65s but from each other as well. Unlike the uniform VO65s, IMOCA 60s are governed by a box rule, which means given certain guiding parameters, teams can design their boats however they like. This wasn’t a total departure from the norm, as the VO60 and VO70 fleets that sailed the VOR from 1993-2012 were also governed by a box rule. But for
