Opposite: to many eyes the New Zealand ‘Big Boat’ that arrived in San Diego for the Deed of Gift Match in 1988, while it was clearly enormous did not look right. A blunt instrument approach to monohull design, it did however achieve its first objective to panic the Americans, who by the time the boat was launched had run out of time to build a similar rival. But ‘never bet against Uncle Sam’, as the old saw goes. The best minds in US yacht design, aeronautics and composite materials got together and responded with 70ft of pure design and engineering elegance. The Stars & Stripes cat was so much faster than the Kiwi lorry it was all a bit embarrassing
staying bases were pushing the minimum, requiring maximum size stays. After 1988 the new America’s Cup class
continued the genoa-rigged, narrow shroud base sail plans. Outside the America’s Cup, though, many in the large racing yacht fleet began to emulate the Big Boat’s sailplan (and existing much smaller boats like J/24s) and the trend toward short overlap jibs and wide staying bases gained traction that has lasted to this day. With the help of his John Marshall-led
design team of Bruce Nelson, Britt Chance and catamaran experts Gino Morelli, Bernard Nivelt and C-Class catamaran Patient Lady designers, Dave Hubbard and Duncan MacLane, Conner had built two catamarans and, much as Oracle were to do 22 years later when they first won the Cup in Valencia, he also built two types of rig: a soft rig with wing-shaped mast plus sail and a hard rig, a two-element wing similar to the C-Class rigs of the day – and very similar in concept to the recent America’s Cup wing masts with flaps on the main wing. The difference between then and now
was that the recent America’s Cup wings have evolved to include sophisticated twist control systems where the Stars & Stripes wing had no twist capability. It has always surprised me that this basic wing system never evolved past the two-element flap- assisted wings in 30 years. I had always hoped that a single wing would have been tried whose shape could be strategically controlled, thinking it be more effective. Certainly, Oracle’s
Stars & Stripes’ hard rigs (two) were
famously built by composite aircraft guru Burt Rutan. The first was deemed too small (and thus performance-starved) and too flimsy. The design team drew up a much stronger second wing 5.8m taller than the original wing’s 27m height and 40 per cent larger in area. The second rig had perfor- mance to spare and Conner won both races by wide margins.
The International America’s Cup Class (IACC) The furore over the 1988 mismatch was too much for the racing community and all agreed it was time to return some stability to the America’s Cup and create a new America’s Cup class. Rules were written and the date for the next Cup was set for just three years hence in 1992. The new class was to be emblematic of the highest level of racing machine consistent with the America’s Cup’s status as the ultimate in sailboat racing. Except in size, the new class took many cues from Fay’s Big Boat KZ-1. The boat hulls were to be 75ft in length, again built entirely in carbon fibre. The masts were to be built in carbon as well; rules specified both minimum weight and minimum fore-and aft mast dimensions. Stainless rod rigging was specified.
resources were
enough to produce such a wing if superior. Discussing it with Oracle senior engineer Scott Ferguson recently, he explained that the potential upwind advantage of the vari- able shaped wing was not enough to over- come the superior reaching performance of the multi-element wing.
Initially this was mostly the then state-of- the art Navtec rigging – 22 years after its Cup debut in 1970; however, rival manu- facturers were by now offering their own refined versions of the Navtec system which quickly grew popular. Although the early boats had reasonable
beam, they eventually evolved into relatively narrow high prismatic coefficient hulls with deep, narrow chord, bulb-ended keels. Although the hull and keel naval architec- ture of these yachts is a fascinating subject in itself, it is outside the scope of this article.
Many design advances occurred in the
prelude to the first, 1992 Cup. The two biggest players were the billionaires Ameri- can Bill Koch and Italian chemicals magnate Raul Gardini. Because both were larger- than-life characters, the storied glamour of the America’s Cup was back in full force. Dennis Conner and others internationally were also building entries, but the Gardini and Koch efforts dwarfed the others and to no one’s surprise the two met in the 1992 America’s Cup Match. Gardini’s entry, to be skippered by
American Paul Cayard, was named after all his boats, Il Moro di Venezia. The team were based in Milan and their effort was massive, with Gardini creating a dedicated manufacturing company outside Venice, Tencara, specifically to build his multiple Il Moro hulls and spars (five IACC boats were built in total). The schooner America won the original
Cup. In 1987 John Kolius named his Defence candidate America II. For 1992 the technically oriented Koch decided to go exponential, naming his defence candidate America3
. ‘Exponential’ does not exagger-
ate the effort the Koch-led design and build teams expended. They were relentless and as a result the sailing state of the art was advanced in many areas. While Gardini and others were hard at
work the Koch team arguably outdid all the teams – probably by a wide margin. Koch hired virtually all the naval architects not already committed as well as many sailing industry engineers. Contributing heavily were the offices of Doug Peterson, Reichel/Pugh and Jim Taylor. Other key members of the team included MIT yacht theory genius Jerry Milgram, aerospace expert Heiner Meldner, Penn Edmonds, Fernando Frimm, Daniel La Mere and Buddy Duncan. Hall’s own chief engineer Dirk Kramers and composite shop
SEAHORSE 45
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GILLES MARTIN-RAGET
BOB GRIESER/OUTSIDE
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