ABN AMRO 1

Juan Kouyoumdjian was sailing the 2003 Star Europeans in Cascais when Roy Heiner said to him that he was putting together a Team and that because of the rule change from 60’ to a canting keel 70’ he thought Juan was the right designer for it. This was such an incredible opportunity that Juan accepted immediately and very soon after that they met in Holland and made a master plan on how to win the race.

The sponsor, ABN AMRO was very excited about the plan that Roy presented and the project grew into something very big with 2 boats to enter the race. To his credit, Roy understood that his role was bigger than being the skipper of one of the 2 boats and contacted Moose Sanderson to do so and Killian Bushe to build the boat. A specific yard to build the boats was put together as well as a youth program to select the young sailors of the 2nd boat as well as a management/admin team.

The efficiency with which Roy managed to put all of this together in such short time and good ambience is remarkable. The design was done in close cooperation with Killian, Moose and the crew he had put together. It was the first project where Juan used RANSE CFD and the beginning of the setup Juan developed to today. It would have been impossible to achieve such a dominant design, under a very novel concept at the time of canting keel without the input and co-design of the crew, particularly Mark Christensen, Brad Jackson, Tony Mutter and Stan Honey.

Juan says; "If one would put together a dream team to win the VOR today, this crew will still be it!" After the VOR, the black boat continued sailing for a year, very successfully, while the Sponsor decided if they would enter the next race. Eventually they decided to retire since they cold not see how the result of the previous race could be improved by winning 3 legs before the finish.

RACECRUISE CLASSICMODERN INSHOREOFFSHORE FREEDOMRULES
  • LOA21.5 m
  • Beam5.82 m
  • Draft4.5 m
  • Displacement14 T
  • DOWN W SAIL AREA672.24 m2
  • Year of Launch2004
  • Awards

    Volvo Race Winner 2005 - 2006

Following incarnations

Below are the following incarnations of this boat
Black Betty
Turkish Airlines Racing Team