Challenger 4

Volvo

Length
18 m/60 ft

Monohull

Sail

Description

Challenger is a modified Whitbread 60 Round the World Race boat (later known as Volvo 60's). She was initially intended to compete in the 1997 edition of the race but when funding issues put paid to the America's Challenge campaign in Cape Town the boat returned to California and went into long term storage only occasionally venturing out onto the race course for the Newport - Ensenada Race and a couple of Transpac's. During this time however a lot of interesting modifications were made to adapt the already sleek Alan Andrews design towards short handed racing. The result is a blistering fast W60 with all the manners of an Open 60. Her unique history has rendered Challenger the lowest mileage Volvo 60 in the world with possibly the most up to date technical set up of any vessel in her class. She is in excellent condition inside and out and able to easily show her best even to inexperienced crew who can quickly and easily get the hang of roller furling headsails, split backstay system, and asymmetric bowsprit run spinnakers. If you want to sample the best this class of boats had to offer this is the boat that can allows anyone the chance to emulate the best speeds a Volvo crew could hope to see.

Additional details

Challenger Refit 2015/16 Challenger is being given an extensive refit to ensure she is at her best. She arrived into Nova Scotia in September 2015 after her delivery round from California and immediately went to the boat yard where she had her hull repaired and a new coat of antifoul applied. We then had a tent erected over the boat and began repainting the entire deck. This includes repainting the bow of the boat into her Spartan fleet colour of orange, Charger will be Blue and eventually Hellcat Red. We will be rebranding the the hull of Challenger with a vinyl wrap when we go South in February- it is difficult to get a wrap onto the boat reliably in the cold conditions present at this time of the year here in Nova Scotia so to ensure a successful job we will wait until we are under the warmth of the Caribbean sun. Spartan Challenger As well as the big items that are obvious to all we wanted to take the time to swap out or overhaul all those elements onboard that take a lot of punishment in voyaging and racing and start to show cosmetic and mechanical wear over time. To this end we have replaced the pushpits and pulpits, cockpit bags, bunk bottoms, interior storage pockets, and nav seat cushions. Before becoming operational we will also swap out our delivery liferaft seen in the picture above and replace it with our normal flat pack low profile operational liferafts. For 2016 we will also be bringing onboard a full new complement of Spinlock Life jackets for the 2016 season, all new liferafts and a lot of new rope and deck hardware. New sails for this year's Caribbean season are a new Code 0, A2, A3 and Mainsail that leaves only our J2 and J4 which are not brand new and they only have 6000Nm on them