Unveiling Day and the Kiwis go Hula
by Magnus Wheatley 7 Jan 2003 10:11 GMT
We came, we saw and to be honest we are none the wiser! Today the remaining yachts in the America’s Cup were unveiled to the world revealing remarkably different approaches in keel design, hull shapes, winglets and rudder lengths. To find a common theme is tricky except that all the boats were swinging around 20 tons of lead off woefully skinny keel struts and all bar none had sharply tapering bulbs reminiscent of OneAustralia in 1995.
Photo © Th Martinez/Alinghi Team
Alinghi with it's painted cow keel |
The first call of the day was at the Alinghi base where to the accompaniment of Swiss Horns and cowbells, SUI-64 dropped its full-length shrouds. First impressions, other than a painted cow with udders on the keel and strut, was the length of the fin rudder. Long and skinny it immediately struck a chord that Russell Coutts and his afterguard are looking for high manoeuvrability in the forthcoming rounds. Add to that an overly large trim tab on the trailing edge of the keel and we can assume that the team will be pretty nimble in the pre-starts and around corners.
All day the words on the designers lips was ‘trade-off’ and Rolf Vrolijk, Alinghi’s designer, was quick to comment that the large wings mounted just aft of mid-keel would improve upwind performance whilst trading off some downwind speed. Shaped in the form of aircraft wings and slightly elliptical at the tips, the wings will add stability and lift and this is clearly an afterguard sailing decision to get in front upwind and defend hard downwind. The volume and displacement of the boat toward the bow further adds to this ‘upwind’ theory and the double-knuckle bow is for certain the sheerest in the Cup, rising at almost 45 degrees.
Another interesting observation of Alinghi was just how far forward the mast is stepped in relation to the keel. It’s a good 3-4 feet forward of the strut thereby indicating that the centre of effort of the boat is significantly further aft and could possibly mean that the team will be flying greatly increased mainsail areas. Their sail co-ordinator was keen to point out that the square-topped ‘windsurfer’ main was an Alinghi creation and that we could expect to see significant developments in this forthcoming round. It was also interesting to note that Alinghi has the largest ‘bat-wing’ jumpers in the Cup which support the leech of the genoa when sheeted against it upwind. Big roached genoas are certainly on the menu!
Next stop of the day and the host was Oracle BMW whose master of ceremonies Ian Burns unveiled the keel to Fat Boy Slim’s tune ‘Right Here, Right Now’ and revealed some interesting thinking from the Bruce Farr design office. This is certainly a tricky boat to understand and some of the finer subtleties went unnoticed at first glance. Essentially the bulb is far more bulbous than its rivals with the lead concentration heavily weighted toward the middle of the bulb directly beneath the keel strut. A small indentation greets the keel strut as it connects to the lead bulb to shift the water away from the attachment point and trick it into being pushed toward the aft end of the bulb. The winglets are positioned right on the back of the keel prompting some of the front row children to comment that the bulb looked like a baby whale. Amazing how accurate children can sometimes be!
Oracle’s steering appendages are, like Alinghi’s, long and thin with the rudder being almost a carbon copy of the Swiss one. The trim tab sits aft of a tapering keel strut, that tapers from the top down on both the trailing and leading edges. The mast is stepped almost directly above the leading edge of the keel and would appear to be a lot further aft than both Alinghi and Team New Zealand’s and I would expect that that is where the profiling of the hull comes in to the equation. It would seem that the Farr office have opted to put the volume of the boat towards the stern where supposedly the water is at its fastest flow and traded that off against having an overly bulbous knuckle bow like Alinghi’s. Oracle also looks to the naked eye to have a much flatter sectioned hull with a heavily pronounced stern run off. This would explain why the boat seems to be faster in slightly heavier airs as increased heel would make full use of the flat sections and dip the stern further in the water thus increasing waterline length.
One interesting observation made at the Oracle base was the infatuation of the Alinghi crew and designers who turned up to view the keel but seemed obsessed with looking at the transom gantry of USA-76 with its vast array of technical gadgets. Photographers were clicking away like mad at ‘the goose’ which is reportedly an outlawed radar device whilst wondering what on earth else Larry Ellison has had stuck on. Even Alinghi’s syndicate head and billionaire backer Ernesto Bertarelli was seen looking skywards and aft, trying to figure out exactly what might be ranged against them in the finals starting on Saturday.
However the real drama of the day came at the last stop, Team New Zealand, who with the sausages on the barbecue and strains of the grating song ‘Loyal’ by a local Kiwi musician, hauled their boats out of the water to gasps from the public and media alike. The hub-bub around the dock was that both NZL 81 and 82 both had the much-talked about double skin appendages or ‘Kiwi clip-ons as they have been dubbed, and as the boats slowly inched out of the water the rumours were confirmed. Starting from just aft of the rudder and extending a good 20 feet forward and approximately 8 feet wide, the appendage could be the making or quite possibly the breaking of Team New Zealand. For certain it’s dramatic and headline grabbing but there are some very dark clouds on the horizon-More on those in a moment.
Looking away from the appendages the most striking difference with the TNZ boats is the length of their bulbs as they are quite simply enormous, torpedo like affairs. The bottom of both bulbs are flat with little winglets jutting out squarely from almost dead centre and remarkably un-sculptured or profiled. Their rudders were notably smaller in length than the challengers but the trim tab on the keel was about the same size as Alinghi’s. Also notable was that their masts were stepped well forward indicating some interesting sailmaking decisions from Tom Schnackenberg. The rigs themselves are five spreader unlike the challengers who have gone for four spreader ‘Millennium rigs’. The theory there for TNZ is that they have some very powerful mainsails and gennakers that will call for the top-mast section to be as stiff as possible and despite losing on windage they will gain on outright speed.
The design team were interesting in their philosophy behind the sleekness of the hulls as chief designer Clay Oliver commented that they wanted to achieve ‘elegant profiles and low transoms for increased waterline length’. They have certainly achieved that with long transom run offs whilst the addition of the appendages promote volume in the aft section of their long sleek hulls. The aforementioned ‘storm clouds’ are whether the appendage actually touches the hull when the boat is in motion. Schnackenberg contested this by saying that the measurers were perfectly satisfied that the second skin does not touch the hull but Grant Simmer, the design co-ordinator from Alinghi, was more than a little circumspect that the Kiwi’s have got it right. What it could all come down to is, can the Kiwi’s prove that it doesn’t touch the hull whilst sailing and if so, how? For certain both Alinghi and Oracle, who have both been down this route and discarded it, are all over the measurers and committees like a rash and it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see a red flag raised as soon as TNZ enters that first starting box on February 15th.
Another interesting theory doing the rounds is that Team New Zealand are actually playing a game and will not use the appendages after all. There was certainly a very jovial atmosphere at the base with designers, sailors and PR’s all more than willing to talk about the clip-on and in Cup circles joviality is often a code word for mischief. Exactly what the appendage is made from is another hotbed of debate with thermo-plastic or hardened rubber fanning the flames as to whether they kiss the surface of the hull. Oliver confirmed that water does actually flow between the appendage and the hull but the acknowledged theory is that for the appendage to work to its capacity, the flow should be pretty slow and some say almost static. With TNZ able to influence the conditions that the match will be raced under, it would seem unlikely that they would want to sail in very light conditions as the friction drag would outweigh the laminar flow advantage. Grant Simmer confirmed this by saying that if the hull speed drops below 9 knots then the appendage becomes almost unworkable. The Kiwi’s therefore will no doubt be praying for winds in the 15-18 knot bracket then!
Finally, with the design team decked out in Hawaiian shirts emblazoned with the sponsors logo a new word landed in the Cup world-‘Hula’. This was the nickname given to the appendages by Team New Zealand and has been the closest guarded secret in the Cup. Now the hottest word in sailing, ‘Hula’ could well spark a demand equal to Sir Peter Blake’s red socks of 2000 as everyone in Auckland now wants a ‘Hula Hawaiian shirt’ like their heroes at TNZ. However Hawaiian shirts aside, the Kiwi’s are in for one hell of a tough battle both on the water and off it. With the cat now out of the bag as to exactly what roads all the design teams have been going down, it will be fascinating to see who comes out on top. At this moment in time it’s just too tough to call as every team has its strengths and weaknesses… Predict at your peril!