News Around the World �
polymer, and having made that decision the next step was to re-mill the moulds for shrinkage! But once that’s factored in correctly the result is pretty amazing. SH: The other big parts... aluminium and a consistent degree of quality are not always easy bedfellows. AM: What is really funny is everyone who looks at the foils asks ‘Wow, how did you get the quality so high on the foils?’ Well, we invested a great deal on the anodising as well as the actual aluminium, so the quality of the foils is really high – I’m happy and maybe a little relieved with the outcome. SH: What sort of feedback were you getting throughout a lengthy design and engineering process? AM: We weren’t talking that much during the design process, we just focused on moving it forwards. And it’s funny when people at the yacht club see you with bits of plywood and things breaking and falling off – they really don’t see the end result. But I had really great feedback from one old guy at the club, who was just bubbling, ‘Mate, the Waszp looks fantastic, I’m seeing it in the magazines and you have won these awards!’ He thought I was some backyard guy play- ing around, and to some extent that is true, but getting it all together and having people enthuse over the final product is fantastic. SH: And the quality of the first boats off the production line? AM:I was surprised how good they were, as we’d changed so much leading up to that point. We did so many things differently, man- ufacturing methods we hadn’t used before, processes that aren’t common in boatbuilding and especially not in China. A guy recently ran aground and bent a foil which I thought I had over-engineered, but he later admitted he was doing around 25kt at the time... SH: What sort of client list did you have waiting for boats? AM: We had, I think, 230 build-slots, and we lost a proportion of those when people had to put forward the US$10,000, or we missed their sailing season, or their wife left them… So initially we probably dropped down to 140 customers, and we have shipped 203 boats by mid-November. SH: Was it wisdom – or optimism – at the beginning of this project when you stated that the Waszp would go out at roughly half the cost of a carbon Moth? AM: In fact, it is probably less than half. SH: So how do I buy one? AM: Go to our website and order it online and we will air-freight it to you. There are already agents in America, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, plus we are negotiating in Germany and Italy. We are not yet at the point of having a stock of boats, everything is going out so fast and we don’t expect to have actual stock for at least another year. We would like to stock boats in the major countries, but though we started out building 10 boats a week – which soon increased to 15 and is now more like 20 – we are still barely keeping up with demand. SH: Configurations… AM: There really are only two items of interest – a big rig and a small rig. Down the track we will be offering a slightly larger front hydrofoil, the current size is optimised at around 75kg, and we now know that a slightly longer front foil helps the 85-100kg guys. SH: You mentioned you have had a 12-year-old foiling? AM:For sure. From the start I planned to give a much broader range of sailors the opportunity to foil – but even so I didn’t expect a 70-year-old to fly! I saw Russell Coutts’ son out foiling, and he is 10, I think… though maybe there is also some decent sailing DNA there. There are so many reasons for creating this boat, but achieving what we were aiming for was all about making it robust enough and flexible through the range of weight and ability. I think we have done that. I’ve had 135kg foiling… me and a not so light young lady! SH: The Waszp seems to have made foiling accessible to people in the same way the Mirror brought basic sailing to the public in 1963. Not elitist, not exclusive and achievable. AM: Big statement! Sure, I think we have done that. I have always been a high-performance sailor who could do well racing, but it has always been about how fast can I go… About how can I get 1.5g out of a part? So this is about disciplining yourself to steer away
22 SEAHORSE
from all that stuff and not get dragged back by your own emotions into trying to eke out the maximum speed… or hearing the people in your ear asking why aren’t you trying to sail faster? Why didn’t we put a carbon boom on? Why aren’t the wings carbon? That isn’t the point, it takes away from what this boat is supposed to be. But you have that devil in your ear plus at least 50 other people banging on to you about maximum performance. You just have to be strong, and do it this way… because that’s the plan. SH: What about fleets and classes and Olympic aspirations? AM: Well, a strong class is not too hard, but I think the Olympics might be. That said, I am certainly not closed to the Olympics and there is a lot of noise there about the Waszp – even Santiago Lange talked recently about the idea. But we have to get things right first. We currently don’t have World Sailing accreditation as that had to be done by July, and we didn’t have enough manpower to do the work then. So that will be next year but we are already well past the requirements for national class associations. I’m flying to New Zealand next week as we will soon have 50 Waszps over there! We have even more boats in America but they are more spread out. SH: Interesting locations you have sold to… AM: Our fifth-largest number of boats supplied went to Uruguay. Go figure!
Blue Robinson USA
Road to Key West looks well-paved… and with a roof It’s tempting to use participation metrics – of entries, classes, countries and so on – as the measure for regatta success, but this is not the whole story. Quantum Key West Race Week 2017 is, at press time, at historic entry averages in its 30th edition, so numbers alone are not a strong concern. What is more important is the quality of the event in what it delivers and the ability of event managers to continue to innovate and improve on one of the best regattas in the hemisphere.
The standard format of five race days, Monday to Friday, was re-examined a few years ago but the conclusion was that to shorten this, as so many other US regattas have done, did not make sense. The Monday US public holiday saves on vacation time, and the end weekends provide a handy travel buffer.
Logistics are a big part of Key West, and the event now offers an attractive commissioning service on site at Truman Annex for the majority of the one-design entries. Formerly occupied by the US Navy, when Cuba was a threat, this vast space with its deep harbour and enormous launch ramp is now being sensibly remodelled for recreational use.
The most interesting changes to the event are the upgrades made by the Storm Trysail Club to enhance not only the racing on the water, but the fun on land as well. After all, Key West does retain a perennial allure of being a place that’s warm and a little wild while your peers are having no fun freezing up north. The principal new feature for 2017 is a shoreside venue at the Waterfront Brewery in the Historic Seaport Marina. The brewery has been renovated nicely to bring the shoreside activities back under cover, a welcome change from the charming but exposed street block venue at the end of Caroline Street with the inevitable evening rain showers. ‘Being in the brewery has also helped us create added valuable floor space for sponsors and vendors, and is a much better site to bring the 1,000 or so sailors and their friends and families into a single functional space,’ said Bill Canfield, site manager for Storm Trysail. ‘Socialising without having to be in an enormous loud tent or crammed under meagre cover in the rain will be nice!’ The other important feature about this new venue is its central location relative to all of the boats berthed around the Bight. Nearly all but the 52 Super Series boats will be in the marina, so the event is likely to have a more unified feel ashore. The rock stars and their entourages in the 52 group will just have to walk or ride their bikes a few hundred metres to join in the fun… Then again, that’s what they train for. Dobbs Davis
q
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