News Around the World
Thanks very much… A few weeks after the editor did his bit to pitch the Multi50 class to monohull sailors looking to race something a little more interesting – but still safe and accessible – Alex Pella goes and describes Arkema (above) on which he won the TJV with Lalou Roucayrol as ‘the most uncomfortable boat I have ever sailed’. These Jules Verne Trophy winners can be a pretty precious bunch
have been working on something for months behind closed doors.’ No doubt rewarding to hear the positive feedback, but what about
the doubters? Bernasconi responds with quiet confidence: ‘We are backing our work. We have done more work on the concept than anybody else so are confident we understand it best. Nothing has come up in the public discussion that we have not already identified.’ That is not to say the design group is now sitting back with their
feet up. In a sense arriving at the concept was the easy part. Now they have to nut out the details and draw up a rule robust enough to withstand multiple assaults from the best brains in the business. That involves a switch in roles, from gamekeeper to poacher. ‘As the Defender we obviously have to try to anticipate every angle and both Luna Rossa and ourselves will be trying to identify and close any loopholes. That will involve taking feedback from inside our own groups but also consulting with other teams. ‘Then, once the rule is written, we have to be really careful that
we do not just stick to what we intended and ignore the possibilities that exist in what it actually says…’ Time is of the essence in every Cup and concern has been
expressed that the schedule is so compressed. Finalising the rule by 31 March is a challenge in itself and then the teams have a year to conduct design work and have their first boat ready to launch by 1 April 2019 (insert joke to taste). But Bernasconi points out that that is a fairly typical timeframe, offering about six months of research and design work before construction begins. The design process itself always continues right through the build and beyond. Coming up with the DeLorean involved a group of eight to 10
people from ETNZ and Luna Rossa. ‘We started pretty much straight after July’s victory parades (which left us sick with flu for a week from the rain and cold of New Zealand after the warmth of Bermuda). The initial approach was quite old-school, sketching ideas, looking at weights, doing basic performance modelling and simulations. Our default was a relatively conventional, albeit high-performance monohull, something like a Maxi72, but lighter. ‘We had that displacement monohull concept at one end of the
scale and a foiling Moth at the other. We fairly quickly concluded that the Moth concept doesn’t work at large scale where the crew
20 SEAHORSE
weight is a tiny proportion of the overall boat weight. Also the logistics would be difficult. Just keeping it upright at the dock would be a challenge, as would the transition from displacement to flight mode. ‘Then there were options in the middle, more foil-assisted mono-
hulls like the Imocas. But they are generally really only suited to reaching courses. Any foil-assist system does not make you quicker upwind and mostly it makes you slower because you have a foil sticking out of the side of the hull, which is not a good hydrodynamic look when you are not going fast enough to get lift-off. You end up with a boat that is faster than a conventional monohull downwind and reaching, but slower upwind. From a match racing point of view that is not ideal because it just exaggerates the amount of time you spend upwind compared with downwind. ‘For a foiling boat to be good for match racing it needs to be
foiling upwind almost as early as downwind; that meant it came down to a decision between a displacement boat or a foiling boat, with the middle candidates all eliminated. ‘At that point it was a question of whether we could find a concept
that works for a large yacht and would be efficient enough to foil upwind and perform foiling tacks and gybes. Again, if you can’t achieve fast manoeuvres the racing will be boring, because the teams will just hit the boundaries. For good match racing you need to be able to tack and gybe without significant loss.’ The DeLorean concept emerged halfway through the process
and quickly gained momentum. ‘We came up with a number of alter- natives and really nothing came close. Then it was a case of devel- oping more detail in terms of weight, the hydrodynamics, the logistics of foil control and the aerodynamic package that made us confident it would deliver the kind of performance we were looking for.’ When something so far out of left field is presented it always
begs the question of how much more outlandish the candidates were that did not make the cut. Bernasconi shakes his head: ‘Actu- ally, this was about the most extreme option. It is the most elegant fully foiling solution we came up with. The only thing more extreme was the Moth concept, but that just wasn’t going to work.’ By now the major features have been well traversed – with a caveat that a lot of detail is still to be resolved.
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JM LIOT
JM LIOT
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