Clockwise from top left: Emirates Team New Zealand bring out their first AC test boat last June. In spite of coming agonisingly close to relieving Oracle of the Cup in 2013 Grant Dalton’s team now find themselves well behind their rivals in terms of development-boat launches. While this is to date the Kiwis’ one and only full test boat, other teams including Oracle and BAR are out there testing boat no4; Harken’s new AC50 pedestal features this integral custom-designed rotary pump (right); a sight familiar to every motor racing mechanic, different Harken winch gears packed, pampered and ready to go; the teams aim to be able to switch ratios in three minutes
Back in more familiar Harken territory, they have developed new kit for the single winch and two pedestals that feature in each of the AC50’s hulls. The former is the new two-speed Air Winch. This has a 200mm drum, with the now familiar white ceramic coating, and features a hollow centre to reduce weight. Uniquely it
is
supplied with a suite of interchangeable gears (seven options for first-speed and six for second-speed), enabling Cup crews to choose the ratios best suited to their grinders’ preferences and also to change gearing in anticipation of the forecast con- ditions with a simplicity that makes such a change possible even in between races. Meanwhile, Harken’s AC50 pedestals also now come not only with their own changeable ‘master’ gear ratios, but with a hydraulic rotary pump built in (with these pedestals it is also possible to alter the ratio of output from the ‘top end’ destined
36 SEAHORSE
for the winch or the rotary pump). For the pedestals’ operators the game has changed massively. Between the mono- hull 32nd and multihull 34th America’s Cups the physique of grinders evolved from the
traditional maxi boat ‘man mountains’ that were familiar figures in the middle of the Version 5 monohulls to more of a Popeye-like shape – more svelte, but with huge upper body strength. Fairly vital to designing pedestals is knowing the amount of torque the grinders can gener- ate and, according to Wiss, despite their change in shape, modern-day grinders are ‘just as strong, maybe even stronger, but they’re three-quarters of the size’ com- pared to their forebears a decade ago. Most interesting, though, is how the requirements of the grinders have changed so dramatically thanks to the plethora of hydraulics. Wiss says: ‘On the monohulls they required short bursts of energy when
you needed to grind in a 150 per cent genoa to tack. Here you’re trying to hit a constant RPM, a cadence of 80rpm or so, and that’s all you’re doing. But you need to do that for the entire race…’
As, according to Wiss, happens in the development stage of every America’s Cup he’s worked on since 2000, there is always one team that’s wanted to investigate the use of leg instead of arm power. ‘On these types of boat it actually makes more sense, but I don’t think the rules guys are going to allow it. You also have to remember that you have to get from one side of the boat to the other…’
The functions the two pedestals are driving at any one moment – for example, the forward one might power the dagger- board/rudder hydraulics and the aft the wing sheet and wing hydraulics, while both pedestals could be linked at certain times such as starts and mark roundings –
IVOR WILKINS
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