USA New threads old faces
The 2017 Copa del Rey was a moment of truth for the Bella Mente Maxi72 programme led by skipper Hap Fauth and tactician Terry Hutchinson. After five years of refinements it was finally proving too big an ask to keep pace with more modern designs. Since launching their Judel-Vrolijk design at New England Boat- works in 2012, the Bella team had been constantly upgrading to remain on top in this small but hyper-competitive class. ‘We carried out numerous optimisations with the Vrolijk office,’ said programme manager Rob Ouellette. ‘IRC also evolves a little every year – we were playing with weight, trim, sail area, draft, we even went to curved spreaders to keep squeezing out the performance for rating. ‘But it was Copa del Rey 2017 that finally opened our eyes. Win- ning only one race in 10 was not in our playbook, but we had done everything we could so we knew that a serious change was needed.’ A month later Botín Partners had been appointed designers of the new boat and had begun work on design concepts and CFD studies. By December the hull lines had been delivered to Symmetrix Composite Tooling in Bristol, RI. The carbon hull mould plus deck tooling were quickly completed and delivered to NEB just down the road in Portsmouth. Four months after pressing the go-button the new Bella Mentestarted to take shape.
The hull shape is not radical but a development of the shape Botín used successfully on Cannonballwhile also taking account of the Bella team’s big priority on upwind performance: get to the top mark first and defend the lead to the finish. NEB proprietor Tom Rich has built many carbon raceboats but this one was special. ‘The project was particularly interesting because the Bella team were so involved through every detail,’ he said. ‘We have always tried to be on the cutting edge with our carbon raceboats, but this one took everything to the next level in materials, design and build. ‘The materials used were primarily intermediate and high-modulus carbon with Kevlar Nomex core, with extensive post-cure machining of components to hit the tightest tolerances. The weight of even the smallest items were being rigorously checked – matching and in some cases improving upon the designer targets.’
For such a large project the build team at NEB were augmented by outside talent who not only helped move the project along quickly – eight months to build a Maxi72 is fast – but are now being inte- grated into the facility for NEB’s next big project, the first AC75 for the NYYC American Magic Cup programme, whose roots lie within the Bella Mente/Quantum TP52 programmes (Ouellette is also chief operations officer for American Magic).
‘This was a fast build and we obviously had some issues along the way,’ said Ouellette. ‘But from launch to sea trials took eight hours which must be some kind of a record… that’s how well every- one did at sorting out in advance a lot of complex systems onboard.’ Project manager Pete Henderson explained how they achieved maximum efficiency in power and crew work co-ordination: ‘In design- ing these systems with Jon Williams [of Stayinphase] we had the advantage of knowing our team playbook for the layout and timing of the manoeuvres, but also having the old boat as a full-sized mock-up helped us really nail down the systems. As usual Jon was masterful at planning and putting together the components so everything worked smoothly and reliably out of the box.’ This is no small matter on a Maxi72: the new Bellafeatures five pedestals directing the power from 10 strong men into winches and rotary hydraulic pumps to push oil where it is needed as fast as possible. ‘We learned a lot on the last boat how to sail well and sail aggressively,’ said Henderson, ‘so we needed the systems on the new boat to match this performance and not be a limiting factor in any manoeuvres.’
The racing programme for the new Bella starts with the next RORC Caribbean 600 – which gets giggles from a team who set up their new boat for winning day-race championships in the Med – followed by Les Voiles de St Barth, then on to the New York YC 175th anniversary regatta and finally to the Med and the 2019 Maxi Worlds.
After the first brief sail around Conanicut Island near Newport the team seemed generally happy. ‘But we’re looking forward to moving the test programme south to Florida,’ said Ouellette. ‘Maybe you’re interested in coming along…?’ Rude to refuse. Dobbs Davis
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SEAHORSE 27
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