Above/top: the spectacular and surprisingly commodious 53ft Polynesian-inspired cat Fujin… 30kt+ in comfort and scourge of the Caribbean multihull circuit. The chiselled aesthetics are there to minimise windage more than just look cool (which they do). Paul’s little family proa (right) was home-built to wind down and have some fun following Oracle’s stressful losing Cup campaign of 2017
Team Oracle Those Int14 hydrofoils attracted Larry Ellison’s attention, and Paul was part of the Oracle Racing design team from the early naughties until they disbanded in 2017. That’s five America’s Cups, including the 2010 Deed of Gift match and 2013’s last- minute comeback. ‘We dragged our two boys around on each one of those,’ Paul says, in a rare mention of family. ‘The [Oracle] teams changed a little bit
each time, but the general feel was fairly familiar,’ he continues. ‘The boats changed pretty radically. Probably the biggest trans ition was the big trimaran… ‘There was a long history of racing ACC
monohulls and you were just taking things a bit further down the track each time; you weren’t faced with huge unknowns. When we did the campaign with the big trimaran we were in really unfamiliar territory tech - nically. The materials and engineering tools were the same, but the nature of the boat and the load cases were all dramatically dif- ferent. It was a lesson in taking a step back and approaching things from first principles. ‘That really changed the way the work itself felt; it was much more free once we got
64 SEAHORSE
out of the monohull programme, more of a brave new world kind of thing. And our engineering got a lot better. For the mono- hulls you’d design the boat, build it, throw it in the water, and go sailing without ever testing anything. With the modern boats you structurally test pretty much every major part of the boat before you go on the water. And you instrument them with pressure sensors and fibre optic strain gauges to monitor the loads much more closely than we ever did in the monohulls. We’re learning a lot quicker than we did in the past.’
The SailGP door opens After helping to transform a non-foiling AC72 catamaran into one that could (just barely) win the 2013 Cup, Paul became Oracle Racing’s chief design engineer. He was closely involved with writing the AC50 Rule for 2017: ‘I figured out the hull shapes and the layout; how big the rigs were, and where the rigs were placed.’ But when Oracle lost to Team New
Zealand in 2017 ‘those boats were put out to pasture, but then Russell Coutts decided to create the SailGP circuit. It’s a one- design hull and platform based on those
original designs, since when they’ve evolved the systems and foils and wings. ‘They’re quite a bit more sophisticated
than the boats we sailed in Bermuda, and we’re working on new foil designs to improve the boats further each season.’ Paul had just returned from the SailGP
event in New Zealand. ‘The racing is really something; 11-12 boats on a small course, going 40kt+! It’s a pretty serious rodeo. Then when they have crashes I help figure out the repairs…’ Asked what he will work on after our
chat reveals the wide array of projects his three-person office takes on. ‘Today I am still working on SailGP repair drawings, then we’ll be onto a new heavier rudder. Plus we have a proposal for a moderate- speed foiling electric passenger ferry; that’s been one of my goals, to bring some of the foiling technology into the regular world.’
The design top three I can’t resist what I present as an unan- swerable question: what’s his favourite boat? ‘Oh God, that is unanswerable!’ So I expand it to his top three, which he says is easier. ‘Riptide 35, the Fujin [a 53ft
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