A happy Guillaume Verdier onboard his restored Farr-designed Half Tonner which first went afloat in 1975 with the wave of fast light displacement new IOR designs emerging from New Zealand and which briefly turned IOR on its head. The ethos of a great designer caretaking an iconic product of an earlier era is mirrored across technical sports, ranging from model yachting to full-scale gliding. Many of the greatest historic racecars are now in the care of – and often raced by – today’s most successful designers and engineers
definitely legal,’ he says. ‘The question is whether it was wrongly approved, but that is a debate that is no longer of any interest really. They played the game well.’ Following the 2017 Emirates Team New Zealand victory in
Bermuda the Cup returned to New Zealand and work began imme- diately on the new monohull rule for the regatta that is now upon us. By coincidence Ray Davies and Verdier had previously worked on a concept for Auckland yachtsman Howard Spencer, who was interested in a 40ft foiling monohull. Over a dinner conversation Verdier sketched a rough outline of a yacht with a quite extreme foil and a bulb keel. ‘Ray said there is one object too many in the water. Get rid of the keel,’ Verdier recalls. ‘Right away I thought of French naval architect Martin Defline who
put two canting keels on an Open 60. It was not legal under the rule, but it was very efficient. If the bulb was a foil it would work. You would have static stability and then when you take off the dynamic stability will be provided by the leeward foil with the windward one up in the air to provide righting moment. ‘I went away and did some analysis and after less than two days
I established it would be 50 per cent more efficient than a classic keel plus foil, which is huge.’ Although that project never proceeded Ray Davies presented it at an early meeting about the new Cup rule. The initial reaction was amused scepticism but ETNZ CEO Grant
Dalton said it should be investigated on the team’s simulator. ‘Every- body liked it,’ Verdier recalls. ‘The sailors found it fun to sail. We created a simulator package and sent it to the Italian team and they liked it as well.’ While Emirates Team New Zealand has great faith in its simulator
package there was still considerable relief when the British team launched their 12m surrogate boat and demonstrated the concept worked. Verdier believes early capsizes and stability issues with their surrogate boat led the British to a hull shape for their first AC75 that emphasised stability. With the second-generation boats now being unveiled, he is not surprised by the convergence in hull treatments. As for the foils, the eternal challenge is that they have to transfer
the boat from slow-speed take-off to high-speed flying. ‘That transition is very complex.’ The rule confines the designers to the wings that attach to the
foil arms, the rudder elevators and the control systems. ‘You can play a little bit with the trailing edge of the arm and on the wings you can choose the profile you want. You can have slotted wings or continuous wings and you can make different flaps, as long as they have a fixed rotation axis. ‘All this provides quite wide areas of design exploration, but we
will probably all go more or less in the same direction,’ he believes. There is also scope to vary the foil stiffness and encourage
deformation of the shape under load to assist performance. ‘We all play this game,’ he nods. Foil configurations can be T-shapes or dihedral, as long as the overall dimensions remain within a triangular box as defined in the rule. ‘I call that the coat hanger,’ Verdier says. ‘I am very frustrated,’
he says in mock exasperation. ‘There is so much you could do if that coat hanger was not there. ‘When I move away from the Cup and work on the Jules Verne
project I have full freedom except for the rules of nature as determined by the wind and wave states. Will you still foil in 4m waves? Their only rules are about good sense, safety, survival and the ability to go non-stop around the world without losing people.’ These are matters much on his mind for this Southern summer
as the Gitana group, for whom he designs, prepare their 32m foiling trimaran Edmond de Rothschild for an attempt to break the Jules Verne round-the-world record of 40d 23h 30m. There are also two new and 10 previous-generation yachts to his
design set to compete in the gruelling Vendée Globe solo non-stop race around the world in foiling Imoca 60 monohulls capable of speeds over 30kt. Like the America’s Cup, this class imposes rule restrictions and he is very critical of the refusal to allow rudder elevators, which aid foiling stability. ‘It is like making somebody build an aeroplane without a tail wing,’
he says. ‘Good luck. You cannot really fly. It makes for the most SEAHORSE 21
IVOR WILKINS
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