stronger conditions because it was shorter and it rated the same.
‘So Johan designed one boat, Magic, which could not race for the Cup because it was too short; he designed Liberty, which was definitely not a special boat and he negatively impacted Freedom, which was our best boat after all of this. And of course we ended up having to race Liberty. ‘In the meantime the Australians built two boats, Challenge 12 and Australia II. They were identical except one had a regular keel and one had a winged keel. The winged keel design ended up being the better boat. It was the shortest boat you could design and still race, which if I remember right was 42.5ft on the waterline. ‘The problem with a small boat is that it isn’t very good in windier conditions. But they figured out how to make it better by turning the keel upside down. They attached the short part of the keel to the hull and had the longer part at the bottom of the keel. That made a short boat with a lot of sail area very stiff in the breeze. (The tank testing was done in Holland and I still think the upside-down idea came out of Holland so in theory illegal… but that’s another story.) ‘The problem with a long chord at the bottom was that it created more tip vortices or, in layman’s terms, too much drag. Then they figured that if you added winglets to the keel it would reduce those vortices… ‘Next they started thinking that if you are going to add winglets with that drag you may as well make them out of lead, which would give even more stability. And if you
Olin Stephens heads home after a day afloat watching his penultimate 12 Metre Enterprise testing against his latest and final 12 Metre Freedom in Newport in 1980
are heeled over then one of the wings would be more vertical and add lift. ‘So for Australia II it was gain-gain; aside from some extra drag downwind, but the boat was short and had plenty of sail so that was not too big a deal. Australia II was a very good 12 Metre, especially for Newport. ‘The 1983 match, which we eventually lost – well, the fact that we were up 3-1 after four races was a frigging miracle! But that was a combination of them having some bad luck and not sailing well early on and us having some good fortune. Once they fig- ured out they were fast they became formi- dable. They got stronger and stronger, and John Bertrand got less nervous. They had a good crew and a good boat.
‘Then we broke down in the fifth race when the jumpers blew off the mast, which was too bad because those were our best
conditions. They had good fortune in the sixth race and were faster. Then in the seventh race we were kicking their butts before the wind dropped away and they got stronger and stronger and passed us. ‘Would I have done anything different, even knowing what I know now… probably not. They were a good boat. ‘So for 1987 in Fremantle we have to do a whole lot better. And we don’t have to beat one team now, we have to beat 11. ‘We had to put together a team of rocket scientists to design a good boat. SAIC helped us and one of the big auto compa- nies. John Marshall was the head of design and he hired three designers, Britt Chance, Bruce Nelson and Dave Pedrick. The key was to work together and John Marshall did a great job with that. You can quote me on this, but individually they probably could not have produced the winning boat, but with John Marshall and help from the outside they did a fabulous job. ‘So Marshall being design team co- ordinator, he was smart enough to know when Brit Chance was going crazy or if Pedrick had a bad idea, or whatever. Marshall knew the questions to ask. ‘We first built two big boats, that prob- ably wouldn’t have got us through the lighter early rounds to the finals, so thank God we raised the money to build a third. ‘We took all three boats down to Fremantle. Stars & Stripes 85, Stars & Stripes 86, Stars & Stripes 87. And S&S 87 was the culmination of all the advances we made on the earlier boats – but which
AT
FOR T THE B
THE YACHT RA BEST BUSINESS
CING INDUSTRY OPPORTUNITES
SEAHORSE 51
CHRISTIAN FEVRIER
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