News Around the World �
The Great Cup 32 class started so gently three years ago, with attractive and fast but relatively conventional 32-foot cats chasing each other around the European lakes. Curved foils were tried early on with modest success, but then, following AC34, the Great Cup team went barking mad and stuck on these J-foils – which overnight turned friendly kitty into fire-breathing tiger. Most excellent
By this time rescue teams were already busy salvaging Sidney Gavignet’s MOD 70 Musandam Oman, which had capsized 450nm east of St-Pierre et Miquelon.
The five crew were safe but the boat’s skipper, who was inside the back of the boat arranging sails at the time, was quite badly hurt and was taken off by helicopter. Later on Musandamwas successfully righted and towed back to St-Pierre.
TFV – better racing, fewer stars After winning 10 of the 17 stages, the Diam 24 trimaran Lorina Mojito-Morbihancomfortably won this year’s Tour de France à la Voile. Co-skippers Delapierre/Solomon dominated the 2016 race, leaving few crumbs for their rivals.
Quentin Delapierre said: ‘I think that the Tour missed the two “super teams” of last year: Groupama and Spindrift. This year the fleet was probably of a generally higher standard overall, but we missed being pushed by last year’s stand-out entries. The good thing is that as the level of the fleet increases, new partners and new skippers are being drawn in. The Diam fleet is growing and the spectator crowds are growing too. It is very positive for the TFV.’ Patrice Carpentier
NEW ZEALAND
Wheels within wheels – the way the small, tight-knit marine industry works in New Zealand has been amply illustrated recently, but not in anything related to the water. Olympic bicycle wheels have recently become hot news here because Southern Spars may just have come up with a better product. Our Olympic track cycling team included some strong medal hopes and in the end was disappointed to leave Rio with a single silver medal. However, the introduction of some new home-grown technology has added to the squad’s sense of optimism for the future: now our track cyclists can race with genuine ‘Kiwi’ wheels bearing the distinctive red and green Southern Spars logo. It all began when New Zealand Olympic chef de mission, gold medal rower Rob Waddell, approached Southern Spars about build- ing some oars for the rowing team. Apart from his Olympic gold, Waddell is well known in the yachting scene from his decade as a grinder with Emirates Team New Zealand from 2003 to 2013.
18 SEAHORSE
‘Rob brought some oars in to us to see if we could improve on them,’ explains Mark Hauser, one of the founding partners of Southern Spars. ‘Actually, we think we could have made some gains, but in the end we did not do anything for the 2016 Olympic cycle. ‘A week later Rob was back again with some carbon fibre track cycling wheels and asked us to take a look and see if we could improve on them now. We took them apart and had soon figured how we could do a better job.’ Waddell’s interest as chef de mission is obviously in improving all disciplines wherever possible but, apart from sailing and rowing, he does have close personal connections with cycling as well. He demonstrated considerable business and political talents in heading a drive to construct a world-class cycling velodrome in his home town of Cambridge, which is also where the elite rowers are based. In its work around high-performance composite masts and wings, Southern pour enormous effort into engineering structures that are light, strong, stiff and aerodynamic. When you consider the demands on those slender discs the Olympic track cyclists use, all those properties are in play. ‘An Olympic sprinter coming out of the blocks is putting 700kg of force into those wheels,’ says Hauser. ‘Before they tested the wheels the cycling coaches told us the riders would be able to detect any difference in performance straight away.’ Armed with what they had learnt from analysing existing state-of-the-art wheels, applying their own design and engineering resources to the problem and consulting technical experts at the Cambridge velodrome, Hauser’s team came up with a set of prototype wheels that very soon had the cyclists smiling. As a result, 30 Southern Spars wheels were dispatched to France, where the track cycle team assembled for training in the weeks leading up to Rio – and the smiles were even broader. Hot on the heels of this demonstration of diversification by the sparmaker came the news that Southern will also build the hulls for the Emirates Team New Zealand catamaran for the 2017 Amer- ica’s Cup. This followed shortly behind the delivery of the team’s first test boat, built by Cookson Boats, which have been the team’s builders since the successful Cup defence in 2000. Scheduling issues prevented Cooksons from proceeding with the building of the raceboats, although they will produce the crossbeams and have shared information about the test build with the Southern team.
w
NICO MARTINEZ
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89