Engineered to win
Among the many talents and skills brought to bear in the design and development of Emirates Team New
Zealand’s winning boat for the 35th America’s Cup was an extremely valuable but highly secret contributor
called Gomboc. Wikipedia devotes considerable space
to guiding us through the arcane world of physics and mathematics to define a
notion first imagined in 1995 by Russian mathematician Vladimir Arnold. Dan Bernasconi, however, who presided over ETNZ’s design brain trust, obliges with a simplified definition: ‘Gomboc is the name of a mathematical shape that has exactly two positions of equilibrium, one of which is stable and the other is unstable.’ In the world of foiling the search is for
equilibrium against an array of forces con- stantly threatening instability. Appropriately then, Gomboc was the name given to a highly sophisticated in-house software program aimed at overcoming those hostile
38 SEAHORSE
forces and achieving the high-speed equilib- rium that enabled the team to soar to victory. In the post-Match euphoria of the
triumph in Bermuda skipper Glenn Ashby said, ‘We knew we had to be extremely inno- vative and aggressive with our design philos- ophy. From the start we knew we would have to risk big to win this America’s Cup.’ That aggression applied across the board
to create the features that distinguished the Kiwi campaign, including the cycling system, appendages and foil and wing control systems. Reinforcing that aggres- sive meme, team managing director Grant Dalton added: ‘We knew we couldn’t out- spend them, so we had to out-think them. We had a saying, that we wanted to throw the design ball out as far as we could and then see if we could get to it.’ Crucially, stretching the performance
frontier had the full endorsement of Ashby, Peter Burling, Blair Tuke, Ray Davies and the rest of the sailing team. It came to rule every decision across the boat. Once adopted,
these decisions were pursued with ruthless commitment. With hydraulic demand at a premium, for example, the cycling decision was adopted early – Ashby then refusing to employ grinders to prevent any threat of reverting to traditional thinking. As an aside, Bernasconi revealed that the
cycle system, which proved so beneficial not just in delivering more power but in freeing up hands to help control the boat, might have gone even more radical. The team looked hard at having the cyclist lie prone to further reduce windage, but just could not find the space to make that work. There was also concern that in Bermuda’s tropical conditions the cycle-grinders could overheat if they were completely out of the airflow. In identifying where the biggest design
opportunities lay it was clear that foiling would occupy the most attention. ‘The trade-off with foiling,’ says Bernasconi, ‘is between a boat that is easy to sail but slower, versus a boat that is hard to sail but can deliver more performance. We took a
HAMISH HOOPER
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