The Humphreys office has worked on the project since early May this year and the build is expected to get underway in late August for a launch in the spring of 2008.

‘We have an extensive tank testing programme planned for the next six weeks,’ said Humphreys, ‘which will take place alongside CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) work that we are running in-house.’

Humphreys Yacht Design has designed a wide variety of round-the-world race boats over the past 20 years, ranging from a Whitbread maxi and a Whitbread 60, to the hull design and naval architecture for Ellen MacArthur's Kingfisher and the BT Global Challenge fleet.

The new Volvo Open 70 will be built at Green Marine in Lymington, which has created six previous Whitbread/Volvo contenders.