Technology
You cannot be serious!
Challenge the engineers at Harken about just how light they plan to go with their next generation Air winch and you are in for a somewhat predictable response...
We’re used to technology trickling down but sometimes it goes the other way. That’s what happened with Harken Air winches, which have moved steadily upwards in terms of size and complexity through grand prix racing fleets over the last eight years, delivering performance gains and major weight savings with a brilliant piece of design – a super strong, featherweight, fully optimised structure with a big hole in the middle and a tiny gearbox on the inside rim, replacing a large, solid lump. ‘The Air winch started as a small single-speed winch that we developed specifically for the 35th America’s Cup in Bermuda,’ says Harken’s director of global of grand prix and custom yacht sales, Mark Wiss. ‘They’re still using it now in SailGP.’ In the 34th America’s Cup in San Francisco, Harken saw a change in how the AC teams were sailing. ‘Each team selected a different winch for
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their mainsheet and we realized that to foil the boat and keep it flying they were trimming the wing in a completely new way,’ Wiss explains. ‘It wasn’t just trim on the winch and adjust the traveller, it was a very dynamic, always moving situation and the fact that all the teams used a different winch meant that they all had different philosophies for what they wanted to achieve. So this was an opportunity for us to really focus on a winch for that function: aerodynamic with a short, wide drum. The gearbox inside it allowed teams to match gear ratios to the way they sailed. It was so small compared with the area inside the drum that we said well what about all the rest of this material here that’s normally filled with stuff? Let’s just remove it. And that became the Air winch.’ Feedback from the sailors was very positive and market demand was strong. ‘We needed to develop
Above: after experiencing the benefits of Harken Air winches on smaller grand prix racing boats such as AC50s and TP52s, sailors in the Ultim class started asking for the same thing scaled up to maxi multihull size; Armel Le Cléac’h’s Banque Populaire team was extensively involved in the R&D
a bigger version right away for the TP52s,’ Wiss says. ‘That was the Air 250. Then the last America’s Cup gave us the opportunity to develop the Air 550, which was used by all the teams.’ Non-titanium versions followed – the 300 and 600 – for “normal” high-end racing boats. Then three Ultim racing teams asked for the same thing, supersized, for the new foiling maxi trimarans they were planning to build. Thus Harken developed the Air 900.
The end result is remarkable. Harken’s previous model, the 1130, already the lightest on the market, weighs 41kg. The Air 900 weighs 31kg. The only winch that can be considered a competitor weighs in at 77 per cent more, at 55 kg. But it’s not just about reducing the weight of the winch.
The shape and proportions of the Air winch bring benefits too. Increasing the drum diameter
TEAM VOILE BANQUE POPULAIRE/BPCE
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