(Coutts) programme to win the last Moth Worlds was probably in the order of half a million dollars. SH: Mind boggling… AM: It is mind boggling. They are selling the latest vertical foil for $11,000. For just one of four foils – and you really need two sets, and so one of eight foils that you need. To really have the latest stuff you are talking about $80,000 just for one foil set for the boat, and a year later it is worth nothing because things progress so fast. So back when we did the Mach 2 Moth we controlled the market a bit, as we were the best; and if I designed a new foil I didn’t have to release it straight away as the existing foils were good, which meant we just slowed everything down to keep the class sustainable. SH: And people’s reaction to that? AM: They asked me why I didn’t sell more, and my response was that if I kill the class, then my income goes as well. Really early in the story we had to go directly to steel moulds for foils, as we couldn’t prototype them accurately or strong enough from anything else – so we spent a huge amount of time doing the CFD and struc- tural stuff because we had to get it right due to the costs involved. So it got away from the realm of the tinkerers, building stuff out of plywood and carbon. Carbon is not the problem – but you have to compress and heat and mould it to a hugely developed level now. That is OK, but the Waszp is way different from that. SH: Origins? AH: I am not the type of organised guy who writes down his goals, but I found a notebook from 2009 and in it was scribbled ‘Design a boat that keeps kids in sailing.’ That was it! When we were design- ing the Waszp there were so many catastrophic changes… we realised we had something wrong, and everything had to change to accommodate fixing that! Something like 40 different parts! The concept was originally to keep kids in sailing, but that has morphed into keeping people in sailing, and I think we are achieving that. SH: The Moth class is having deep conversations about costs now… AM: It is. They are building foils out of stainless steel, just to get them thinner. And stainless is not the strongest stuff in the world, so the next thing will be boron fibre or tungsten, or whatever – as there are no rules. They just tried to vote in a minimum thickness to the foils – 8mm thick for the vertical, and 8mm is bloody thin. And I think 65mm chord; that is tiny!
Really early in the Mach 2 development we realised that the key was going to be getting the foils as thin as we possibly could at the main intersection – that is the main thing, where the two foils are coming together, doubling your pressures. That really is a limiting factor and so I already saw this arms-race emerging. Once I got involved with the Waszp I looked around at where the Moths were heading and really it didn’t look that much fun any more. When I was doing it, that was fun and people tell me they were glad they sailed a Mach 2 back then. But now every single bit of development on the Waszp – thinking about bolt sizes, increased laminate, a new rudder or new sail, it feels real. It feels like we are connected and the changes that we make have a life. SH: And so who can – and who does – sail the Waszp? AM: I think we range from 10 years old to 70 – I am 69 so that proves that! I can still be competitive, getting off the line and rolling the fleet sometimes, but that first tack usually does me in! You really need explosive strength to do it well – which I have to confess is disappearing… We have three flavours of Waszp, and four dif- ferent sail types now – one of them really just a training sail. So fundamentally we have the 5.8, 7.5 and 8.2. The 7.5 and 8.2 don’t seem that far apart, but there is a huge difference, with the 5.8 really just to get people started. There are two different wing frame configurations, which is just four pieces of aluminium, that do a number of things. Firstly, it keeps the boat more stable when you are trying to get up, secondly, if you capsize, the wing is designed so the water flows out at the back really easily, and so it comes up really easily – plus it spins the boat into the wind. All of this means you can relax on the boat and not worry so much, and you are not as high out of the water. It is very forgiving. You have the four bits of aluminium for the wing frame, a mast bottom and a sail, and you can completely transform the boat from a pretty high-end racer to something very kid friendly.
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