Opposite: Gilles Martin-Raget’s stunning take on Team New Zealand’s AC72 racing in 2013 looks more like it came from Star Wars. Breathtaking at the time, the AC72s were one hell of a big, complex and viciously expensive way to go more slowly than an AC50… Two years earlier in 2010 Alinghi 5 (left) was an elegant solution to the Deed of Gift equation which relied heavily on a complex web of carbon rods beneath the platform for its rigidity. A full five tons lighter than Oracle’s giant spider USA 17 (below), had Alinghi built a solid wing they would probably have defended the Cup. But USA 17 was a magnificent achievement – possibly the most complex sailboat built to date, the boat suffered numerous technical failures during its development… including an engine fire
When the Defender Alinghi launched
their boat it was already equipped with a small engine to supply hydraulic power to the winches. Rather than fight the legality of them Oracle immediately followed suit, probably with great relief. When power was finally allowed, though, the next chal- lenge was keeping lines from burning up under the increased power of the winches. Loads-wise, this was truly new territory. High-performance
trimaran sailing The original soft rig design paths were
also different. Whereas Oracle’s French designers followed Orma 60 rigging prin- ciples with ‘fat’ laterally stiff sections sup- ported by few sidestays, the Alinghi design team opted for narrower, lower-drag sec- tions with diamond stays augmenting the main shrouds. Due to the lighter displace- ment and lower righting moment of the cat Alinghi’s masts were significantly lighter. To build the masts to comply with Deed
of Gift country of origin rules the Alinghi team set up an autoclave-equipped mast- making shop in Switzerland. The team built two masts, both eventually ending up 58.5m long. Construction was in high- modulus carbon (380Mpa) with aluminium honeycomb core. Oracle had contracted us at Hall Spars to
build the first masts and boom. The soft rig masts that they used were all basically air- foil-shaped spars mated with fully battened mainsails. The mast structure was auto- clave-cured, super-high (450MPa) and ultra high-modulus (540MPa) carbon-Nomex honeycomb. At Hall we thought we knew a thing or two about advanced composites, but the French guys working closely with us taught us a lot. I can imagine Oracle’s boat- builders had the same experience. Autoclave pressure was limited to three
atmospheres due to the cored structure’s inability to withstand full autoclave curing pressures of six atmospheres. The first Oracle mast was 51m. Due to the auto- clave’s length of 46m the masts were made in two pieces and sleeved together before shipping to the team’s base in San Diego.
After the 2008 Olympics high-perfor-
mance multihull sailor Glenn Ashby was brought in to Oracle as a technical and sailing advisor. His immediate impression of our relatively short-rigged, heavy tri was that it was not nearly high perfor- mance enough for the America’s Cup. For a start it needed much more sail
area. As a result the soft rigs first went up to 57m (Hall) and finally to a 60m mast (beautifully built by the Oracle team). The efforts to add sail area also resulted in adding 3m to the boom. By the time the third rig was stepped USA 17 was acting more like the high-performance America’s Cup boat Ashby had originally pushed for and now definitely had a spring in its step. Alinghi’s Carbo-Link solid carbon rig-
ging was the most advanced to be seen in 2010, now using streamlined elliptically shaped rods. But solid carbon rigging with its ultra-light weight has vibration issues due to shape and airflow velocity. Alinghi’s long shrouds did have flutter issues but these were addressed with the addition of dampening devices. During all this there was the unan-
swered question of whether power-assisted sailhandling machinery would be allowed. The loads on the giant soft rigs were
higher than experienced in any craft to date. Adjectives like ‘ridiculous’, ‘awe- some’, ‘crazy’, ‘nuts’ were being used when the loads on these boats were being described. For instance, on Oracle human- powered winches with the reduction ratios required could not trim the main on in less than four minutes.
requires flying the main hull, sailing only on the leeward ama, or float. The Oracle team realised early that this necessitated a much higher heel angle than, say, a catamaran fly- ing its weather hull. To maximise sail plan efficiency the team installed a system that canted the mast to weather to keep it per- pendicular to the waterplane. The system used hydraulic cylinders mounted at the base of the ama-mounted shrouds in line with the big tri’s Orma 60 ancestry. From early on the Oracle team had been
hard at work researching wing alternatives to the soft rig. They studied existing C-Class rigs and bought my brother Ben’s elegant A-Class wing mast, a first for that class. Although Ben had trouble winning races with it the team saw the potential. Considering it ahead of its time, they put a group on it full time, continually tweaking it, ultimately reaching a point where it was clearly as good or better than the A-class soft rigs of the time. This full-scale model gave them a valu-
able in-house test rig, adding experience and knowledge they would not have other- wise gained. Russell Coutts told me after the Cup that Ben’s wing had tipped the bal- ance to the solid wing in the team’s eyes. Soft Rig 3 was definitely the fastest yet,
but on a bad day for the team it broke. The break resulted from a sort of ‘perfect storm’ of circumstances: relatively puffy, windy conditions, boat racking and head- stay overloads that induced rig inversion. All the load alarms went off just before the rig gave up the unequal fight… Without that mast the team were faced
with a decision to go full tilt in repairing Mast 3 or putting all their effort into the wing programme. That event, plus the fact that he was not only encouraged by the A- Class developments but also worried about Alinghi’s plans, prompted Russell to make
SEAHORSE 39
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GILLES MARTIN-RAGET
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