Jim Swartz’s 2014 Judel-Vrolijk Maxi 72 Vesper at this year’s ORC Worlds. Interestingly, racing under the ORC system Vesper handily saw off the newer and very likely more optimised Bella Mente of Hap Fauth, winning six of the nine races in the small three-boat Maxi division. But when these two come together at an IRC event we would normally expect the order to be reversed
among the fleet of older-generation TPs on the Great Lakes – the so-called GL52s – who have been enjoying close summer racing in their home venues around Lake Michigan. A few also packed up to do some inshore course racing further south in the winter at events such as the Southernmost Regatta in Key West. (This group also recently committed to expand that southern winter tour to a new venue in Pensacola, site of the American Magic base.) The Fox team always enjoyed a slight edge in having the newest design and an organised and disciplined approach led by Andy Horton and Ignacio (Nacho) Postigo, with input from numerous other experts in boat and rig setup. But this year they ducked the GL52 racing and instead opted to stay in Newport where they not only raced but trained continuously at the Worlds venue. ‘We found that using the access to the ORC rating system really helped us in optimisation,’ said Postigo. ‘The ability to easily run tests that explored the rating effects of details such as sail sizing and speciality sail selection was valuable for us. Then knowing the format of the event, with its fixed mix of windward-leeward racing and the non-discardable offshore races, we could be confident where we were with our choices.’
Besides sails, the team also committed to an appendage study, changing to a new Matteo Polli-designed keel with a tapered blade and pronounced fore and aft fillets at the hull-keel joint, a signature feature of Polli’s thoughts on how drag behaves at this interface. Albeit missing a podium finish by only one point in this class, a similar analytic approach was taken by David Team’s TP52 Vesper in their preparation. This ex-Quantum Racing Super Series design, a few years ago dominated the inshore racing in California among the Pac 52 group, probably due to its optimisation for windward- leeward sailing versus the all-around offshore and inshore perfor- mance sought in the Pac 52 design space.
‘Knowing the ratings were going to be so close in this group in Newport it would come down to boat-for-boat racing, so we looked at how to be as big and fast as possible,’ said trimmer and sail designer Chris Williams. ‘We knew we could not get to where Fox is, so we used the testing tools to explore our options of rating versus performance.’ This included making various keel and bulb design changes for righting moments and stability, water ballast options and even power winch systems, in addition to sail selection options appropriate for each.
Williams said they were still not confident they could get to Fox’s rated upwind speed, so they tried something else: a trim tab on the keel. This was reckoned to be a small rating hit for a possible big payout upwind in the right conditions. The problem was that once installed there was not sufficient time to properly test this device – trimmer John Hayes reckoned the tab was twisting once deployed… ‘for sure, it needs some further work!!’ Two teams in this class who expressed interest in going to the Admiral’s Cup next season – Andrew Berdon’s Summer Storm and Jon Desmond’s Final Final – will no doubt shortly be starting similar optimisation studies for IRC and that event’s racing format. Another interesting observation came from the Maxis that raced at the top of the fleet in this event, from Ken Keefe, project manager and strategist aboard the class-winning Vesper 72 owned and skip- pered by Jim Swartz. This team traded wins with Hap Fauth’s Maxi 72 Bella Mente and have been perennial rivals in this class for years. Bella last year remoded to include water ballast as part of their stability package, whereas Vesper 72 has stayed with their fixed keel.
‘I calculated that the average corrected time deltas between us in the inshore races was only 24 seconds after about an hour and a half of racing and 37 seconds when you include the short offshore race,’ said Keefe. ‘So the ORC system now seems to work OK given the different configurations.’ A fair call given the high competency level of both these two top programmes. Dobbs Davis
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