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Trickle up…


One thing distinguishes the foiling generation… the flow of technical development often goes in the opposite direction from usual. Harken embraces that


The Harken process of developing new products usually follows a similar path: identify a market need, design, refine and engineer a product that fills it in a way no other does, then manufacture, package and launch. If the need stays big enough and the product performs well enough, you’re onto a winner. Now Harken are experimenting with a ‘skunkworks’ approach that fast-tracks niche products to help the world’s best sailors perform even better.


Literally and figuratively, grand prix and Olympic sailing classes move fast. And that has revealed development opportunities. So Harken have adopted a ‘quasi- custom’ approach, to accelerate their product design and take those opportunities. The result is a growing suite of seriously niche products that execute on their design objectives well but are also specialised. Few sailors will need them but they will make a big difference to those who do. The three most recent are the Harken Grand Prix (GP) mainsheet


64 SEAHORSE


system for high-performance catamarans like the newly foiling Nacra 17 and F18s, the Harken Fly 29mm high-strength blocks, and an adaptation of the Ratchamatic block. ‘Design solutions often rise directly out of the feedback we receive from sailors who are competing at high levels and looking for that extra edge,’ says Harken design engineer and small boat product manager Matt Schmidt. ‘The conversation begins with a simple question: “What do you need to sail the boat faster?”’ One of the sailors looking for answers was two-time Moth World Champion, US Olympic Nacra 17 sailor and engineering graduate Bora Gulari. ‘I was trying to help my Nacra crew deal with mainsheet loads in the most efficient way possible,’ says Gulari. ‘As with a skiff they don’t get much of a break and the mainsheet load is typically higher on a catamaran, so my first response was “Let’s try to improve the mainsheet system.”’ ‘The other thing was cleat adjustability,’ he continues. ‘The


Above: if the sailors are to want to use it then a Nacra mainsheet system must be very clean, very smooth and extremely powerful… When cat legend, Little America’s Cup winner and Tornado gold medallist Reg White was asked how he made his Tornado go so fast, he replied…


‘I just pull the mainsheet bu**er harder than anyone else.’ A much missed star of the sport


increments in which you could adjust the cleat angle were too large, so it was really hard to get the perfect angle to use the mainsheet cleat well. It’s not super-important for the crew, because they always have their hand on the mainsheet, but at important moments in manoeuvres it helps the skipper’s boathandling to put the mainsheet in the cleat and get it uncleated too.


Back in Pewaukee, Schmidt and his team put their blocks on a test bench, measured the efficiency of the standard Carbo blocks and said, ‘OK, we can do better.’ ‘Pretty soon they came out with their first prototype,’ says Gulari, ‘which was using standard steel bearings. As you can imagine, it did not last long but as soon as we started trialling, we said ‘We’re onto something here, what’s the next step?’’ The next step for Schmidt was to find the right materials. ‘We examined a variety of bearings and chose ceramic for the inner and outer race, and the ball bearings. The sheave is made from the same material used in Harken’s Carbo line of blocks.’


Gulari kept testing and feeding back. ‘We went through a couple of design iterations,’ says Matt, ‘and once we were happy that the efficiency was going up we looked at the form to see if we could improve that in terms of the size, getting the blocks closer together, and aero too.’


The result, for Schmidt, is genuine incremental performance improvement. ‘Every feature we’ve


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