Above: a sea of carbon rigs and sails as the ‘modern’ J-Class competes in St Tropez. Remarkably, there will shortly be more J-Class yachts afloat than was ever the case in the fleet’s heyday in the 1930s. Left: the Cup has prompted some strange creatures over the years, few more strange than Peter de Savary’s hopeful foil-assisted trimaran of 1988. Her tilt at the Cup would be denied by the New York courts (plus the boat broke up in testing…)
Reliance of 1937, still weighed a mighty 166 tons. Bruce Farr’s ballasted K boat of 1988 was 33 tons. Ranger, Starling Burgess’s and Olin Stephens’ definitive J, foretold many of the key parameters of KZ-1. The waterline was predetermined to utilise the maximum permitted at 90ft, yet though 50 years separated the two yachts, the mastheads were near identical at 154ft and the sail areas only 100ft2
different. Reliance’s 166-
In Vigilant (1895) we saw the first steel mast. In Defender the first experiments in composite construction. But in place of today’s high-modulus chemicals, Defender’s aluminium topsides were bolted to steel frames. Below the waterline she was skinned in Tobin bronze. The weight saving was estimated at 17 tons. Electrolysis was not well understood and Defender, having been launched in 1895, and repaired extensively in 1899, was scrapped in 1901.
None of the Seawanhaka yachts held a candle to 1903’s Reliance, Herreshoff’s masterpiece. Arguably only 2010’s BOR90 and, to a lesser extent, Alinghi V matched the breadth of imagination and engineering of this yacht.
36 SEAHORSE
Perched above a 90ft waterline was a yacht that measured 201ft overall from bowsprit tip to boom end. Measured on deck, the hull was 140ft. Towering above it was a rig that stood at 220ft high and flew 16,000ft2
of sail. At 87ft, Reliance’s
spinnaker pole was comfortably longer than the next-generation AC72 catama- rans hustled around the track by Jimmy Spithill and Dean Barker in San Francisco two years ago.
These are numbers to chew on. Reliance displaced 187 tons. By way of contrast, BOR90 weighed less than 10 per cent of that figure, thanks to being an unballasted trimaran. Other giants built to the 90ft waterline limit of the Deed of Gift, such as the Universal Rule-governed J-class yacht
ton displacement was powered by 7,550ft2 of sail; KZ-1’s 39-ton displacement used 6,750ft2
to move her along.
Even today the Js encapsulate many a belief about what makes an America’s Cup yacht. To many an eye there was some- thing about their one-piece masts, low freeboards, near-flat yet sublime sheers and elegant overhangs that continues to please. There’s no argument that these fea- tures have helped drive the modern growth of the J fleet from the three survivors of the 10 originally built (Shamrock V, Velsheda and Endeavour) to today’s tally of seven boats with more on the way.
Not that all Js were so shapely. In 1937
Ranger herself challenged aesthetics with her snubbed bow. And her flattened stern sections were not as sensuous as her J
CHRISTIAN FEVRIER
DREW DOGGETT
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