More than 20 experts at Farr Yacht Design pored through 7,000 variations before settling on the final blueprints, and it took more than 45,000 man hours at Perisco boat builders in Italy to assemble the final product.
The result? Azzam, a sleek and unique 70-foot yacht that will carry the Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing team through the nine-month Volvo Ocean Race.
The designers' attention to detail resulted in a lighter, more efficient boat that should be a serious contender to win the race, said the skipper, Ian Walker.
"It's worth looking at just how beautifully the boat is built and all the carbon work," Walker said. "It's all about being strong and light. The first thing you see is the detail. It'd be very easy to do a flat bulkhead, but you'd probably save 300 grams by the detailing and the design done here. If you do that everywhere you save 100 kilograms. There's huge attention to detail."
Azzam, which weighs 14,000kg, has no side decks in the cockpit, a feature that allows the boat to lose water quickly, making her lighter.
Below deck there are pipes housing the control lines; those are usually above on the deck.
"We're keeping them below deck so people don't stand on them, and sails don't get caught on them. The deck is very smooth to shed the water off quickly and less windage and running across the control lines," Walker said.
Patrick Shaughnessy, the president of Farr Yacht Design, oversaw the development of Azzam.
"It's quite a clean, aerodynamic package," he said. "The deck itself is cleaner, and the weight is lowered. The water is [better] managed when it's on the deck."
Azzam is the only yacht in the race without a coach roof. That lowers the centre of gravity and reduces wind resistance, making her quicker, but there is less head room below deck for the crew.
The boat's bow is fuller than normal which improves its high-speed performance.
"We have a sacrificial bow," Walker said.
"We could hit something and the whole corner of the bow could snap off but it wouldn't effect the integrity of the boat."
Azzam has airtight doors, much like a submarine. "If we hit something, we can pump the water out and carry on," Walker said.
The boat's clean design makes it easier to move sails and other equipment from one side to the other below deck, which can save time and distribute weight.
"All of the gear is moved around as the boats sail from light to heavy wind. If they have to move it forward we have a structure so the better the boat will perform," Walker said.
No detail was too small to matter. Certain baskets become sections for the food at the back of the boat but can fold away if it is not used.
"It's the tiny details that make life easier or make it quicker to move stuff," Walker said. "It's easier to throw the sails around below that don't catch on bolt heads. It's just a myriad of hundreds of thousands of little things that make it more efficient in the long run."
Azzam's daggerboard, which provides a better lift-to-drag ratio, was believed to be copied by the other teams after she made her debut at the Fastnet in August.
"Everyone is looking for pictures. There's a bit of espionage that happens, when they start sailing and racing. Always feels good when you're in front and you're being copied," Shaughnessy said.
Instead of testing scaled models during the design process, Shaughnessy used computers to generate the best options for Azzam's hull.
"We can simulate these runs very quickly and get them processed and understood and then working," he said.
In the conventional towing tank, everything has to be scaled down including the force of the waves, and its accuracy is not near as close. Yet outside the lab, it is never 100 per cent accurate either.
"We're always trying to determine that and predict the performance," Shaughnessy said.
The software cannot factor in the effects the weather conditions has on the crew, but Shaughnessy said they were also closing the gap on that, too.