THE NEW ZEALAND CONTROVERSY : Boat of Glass With a Crew of Steel : Newcomers on 12-Meter Block Have Caused Quite a Fuss

The mist is lifting from the harbor and this little working resort port is just coming to life when KZ7, with its sister ship KZ5, is towed from the dock promptly at 9:30 in the morning.

You can set your watch, America’s Cup time.

While other syndicates are discussing which sails to take out to the race courses for the ever-changing conditions, the New Zealanders are already testing a selection against their trial boat, as their meteorologist eyeballs the weather fronts from a helicopter.

They were out sailing the day after they finished 2 1/2 months of trial rounds in which they won 33 of 34 races. They sailed half a day on Christmas, tuning up for their start of the challenger semifinals against French Kiss on Sunday.

Some rivals think that the Kiwis take risks, performing tricky sailing maneuvers that nobody else tries, certainly not in a 12-meter made of fiberglass. But they leave little to chance.

When their mainsail twice blew out of the mast track in a windy duel with Dennis Conner, they rehoisted it within 30 seconds. When two spinnakers blew apart, they set new ones in even less time. They drill in dealing with disasters.

Some rivals say the Kiwis have been lucky. Nobody enters the America’s Cup for the first time and does what they have done.

Skipper Chris Dickson, 25, seems too young to be trading tacks and taunts with old pros like Conner and Tom Blackaller.

But Dickson says: “New Zealand hadn’t been in Newport (R.I.). We had no preconceived ideas of what a 12-meter should look like. We came into it with open minds.”

A British journalist described Dickson, with his sun-bleached hair and deep-set, cobalt eyes, as having “the look of a U-boat commander.”

He seems to think like one, too. Everything is calculated to kill off the opponent and his will to fight. So far, he’s claimed about a thousand tons of 12-meter shipping.

In a six-second win over Britain’s White Crusader, observers gasped when the Kiwis’ headsail dropped a boat length before they reached the finish line. Had they blown it? No, they did it on purpose.

Dickson explained later, in precise terms: “That’s our way of getting across the finish line a little quicker. A 12-meter sails 30 degrees off the wind at 8.2 knots and, because it’s a very heavy boat, will hold that 8.2 knots for a short distance if it heads up directly into the wind.”

The move is called “shooting the line,” a common practice in close sailboat races based on the geometric logic that a straight line (to the finish) is a shorter distance than a 30-degree angle.

But the Kiwis do it with a flair by dropping their headsail the instant Dickson turns the bow into the wind.

Dickson: “If you don’t drop the headsail it’ll just slow you down because it’s like a flag flapping, creating a lot of drag. So the quickest way for us to get across is to drop the genoa.”

When rounding a leeward mark to head upwind, New Zealand leaves its spinnaker up far longer than anyone--sometimes halfway around the mark--to gain a few extra feet of drive.

Tactician Brad Butterworth says the key is a line attached to the middle of the spinnaker to yank it down quickly.

“It’s just a string drop,” he says. “We carry the spinnaker right to the mark and wind our boat around it. It’s a maneuver that we practiced for six months steadily. Now we’ve perfected it.”

It’s not an original idea, but nobody else is doing it.

New Zealand hasn’t yet used its “Kiwi drop,” in which the spinnaker stays up all the way around the mark and is hauled down on the windward side of the headsail. That’s for a tight race in light conditions.

So far, few rivals have been willing to match maneuvers with the Kiwis. In a recent 59-second loss, USA’s Blackaller decided against engaging them in futile tacking duels upwind. Those who do only fall farther behind. In all of the races here, only Conner has passed them upwind, and that was with the help of a friendly wind shift.

Butterworth says: “We like to get into tacking duels. The crew is good at it, and they know going into it that they’re a little bit superior. I think the other boats maybe think that we are a little superior.

“Once we get in front, I feel a lot safer because our crew work is so good. I can put the boat into positions where it’s shaky, but I know the crew will perform it through.”

New Zealand’s final crew wasn’t assembled until last June, after seven sailed Lion New Zealand to second place in the 7 1/2-month Whitbread Round the World Race from Portsmouth, England, and back. The first of the three boats was launched in Auckland a year ago today--both remarkably late starts, considering the success.

And the first fiberglass 12-meters were conceived right under America’s nose, after two U.S. syndicates rejected the idea.

The design team includes Bruce Farr, Laurie Davidson, Ron Holland and Russell Bowler, the latter as coordinator. In 1981, Farr, seeking to expand his business, established Bruce Farr and Associates in Annapolis, Md., with Bowler as his partner.

“We’d been sailing against each other since we were teen-agers,” Bowler said.

Bowler used to build his own boats, out of fiberglass. Later, he earned a degree in civil engineering from the British Institute of Engineers, and it ultimately was his expertise in glass reinforced plastic (GRP) construction that made KZ7 possible when others said a fiberglass 12-meter couldn’t be done.

“It always seemed to be a pretty neat idea,” Bowler says. “There’s no special secret to it, just a matter of personal knowledge and perseverance, with the scheme supported by some excellent technicians and builders.”

Farr and the others drew the lines.

“I have American residency, so I could design for the Americans,” Farr said. “We were approached by people putting Stars & Stripes’ research program together back in ’84. They asked if we were interested in being involved. We said yes, and when they took that to the people in control, whom I presume was Dennis (Conner), they said no.

“That was before New Zealand was even thinking about challenging. And when New Zealand did challenge and asked us if we wanted to be involved, we thought. ‘It doesn’t look like a serious deal, so we’ll check our other options first.’

“One of our staff checked with the America II people to see if they had any use for us and they said no, so we said, fine, we’re going with New Zealand.”

The design team was formed in February of ‘85, with Farr and Bowler pitching for fiberglass.

Money was no problem. The effort’s principal sponsor is the Bank of New Zealand.

Bowler recalls: “We said, ‘Look, guys, let’s look at fiberglass before we build one out of aluminum.”

Farr: “It was initially kept pretty much secret right through till September. We’d done a feasibility study in May that suggested it was definitely possible. So the next step was to prove that it was possible--prove it to Lloyd’s (Register of Shipping) and prove it to ourselves.”

On Monday of this week, Lloyd’s issued yet another approval of the boat, after a campaign of rhetoric by Conner’s camp to have it checked for hull thickness and composition. Syndicate chief Michael Fay even asked Lloyd’s to drill seven 3/16-inch holes in the hull to prove once and for all it was legal.

“I’d rather they hadn’t had to do it,” Bowler said, “but it was politics involved.”

At least one other designer, Johan Valentijn, has said that KZ7 is simply a good 12-meter that happens to be made of fiberglass.

Bowler: “That’s one of the most sensible comments that’s come out of Fremantle in the last 12 months. You can’t underestimate any part of the organization.”

Farr: “Most of the 12-meter designers don’t have fiberglass engineering experience. It was quite natural for us to design a boat in fiberglass. Any of the other syndicates, it was something they would have to go out and learn.

“The advantages we could see in fiberglass were maintaining a much fairer hull shape. It wouldn’t get dented and it wouldn’t flex as much as it went through the water. It stays the shape that you make it (and) you wouldn’t get caught up with having to do work between series, like refairing the hull, which most of these people are doing this week instead of sailing.

“Also, we would be the first fiberglass boat, and that would be worth a lot in PR terms. It made fund raising a lot easier on the basis that we were doing something different.

“There are no significant disadvantages, unless you’re into one of these hack-and-bash programs. It’s not as easy as alloy if you decide you want to change the shape.”

Farr said the laminating process took 12 days, and Jamie Course of Lloyd’s was there every minute.

“His control was absolute,” Farr said.

All material was weighed beforehand, then the boat and waste material weighed again afterward to make sure no weight-saving corners were cut.

“(Course) took his job very seriously,” Farr said. “Lloyd’s recognized that this was the first fiberglass boat and it could be controversial, so they’d better be sure themselves that it was absolutely correct. They were quite emphatic about that, and we were, too. We didn’t want to show up with a boat that isn’t quite right. What’s the future of that? You’re knocked out of the contest.”

Anyone who still suspects that KZ7 is illegal, Farr says, might be suffering from “a reflection of their own practices.”

How did they do it? Will the Kiwis ever tell, as Alan Bond unveiled Australia II’s winged keel in ‘83?

“That’s a question that hasn’t been seriously addressed yet,” Farr said. “We do have offers to buy KZ3 and 5 from various people . . . the Japanese are one.

“Other people can develop it, no question. They might develop it better. So there comes a correct time to take lots of money off someone for being able to see the technology, just before it would become obsolete.”