Designer Sailing : America’s Cup Is Match of Hulls, Not Helmsmen

The gentlemen--excuse the expression--have chosen their weapons.

As the America’s Cup feud rages on, they finally seem agreed on where they will sail, San Diego, and about when, one says Sept. 3, the other Sept. 19, but there’s still a dispute about what they will sail, so they may sail right back into court, where New Zealand merchant banker Michael Fay won the right to sail.

This much seems certain: Fay will bring the biggest racing sailboat built in more than 50 years--90 feet at the waterline and 124 feet 8 inches overall, including a bowsprit. It has a crew of 40 and the deck configuration of an aircraft carrier.

Fay insists that Sail America, which is managing and defending the Cup for the San Diego Yacht Club, must sail something similar. He recently offered to postpone his challenge from September until the spring of ’89 to allow Sail America and other challengers time to build big boats, too, because Fay fears the catamaran Sail America is building will carry Dennis Conner and a crew of 10 at unprecedented speeds.

Although some San Diego factions were tempted, Sail America declined the offer.

Sail America’s ultra-light craft--55 feet at the waterline, 58 overall--is to be powered not by conventional sails but a fixed-shape airfoil created by the people that built Voyager, the airplane, to fly around the world without refueling. One of the airfoil builders has said, “I’m totally ignorant about boats.”

Has there ever been a stranger sailboat race?

The New Zealand, Fay’s boat, was designed by Bruce Farr and Russell Bowler, the Annapolis-based Kiwis who are the world’s premier designers of ocean racing sailboats. The sails were designed by Tom Schnackenberg. He is the brother-in-law of Rod Davis, an American who has lived in Auckland since sailing Newport Harbor Yacht Club’s ill-fated Eagle in the America’s Cup and will return to his hometown of San Diego as sailing master, or crew chief, for the challengers.

There have been bigger America’s Cup boats, including the J-boats of the 1930s and the biggest of all, Reliance, which as the 1903 defender measured 89 feet 8 inches at the waterline and 143-8 overall. Its 16,159.45 square feet of sail was stabilized by a massive wooden hull with a displacement--total weight--of 175 tons.

The Kiwi boat is built of a carbon fiber-nylon honeycomb sandwich, which is stronger and lighter than fiberglass. So, despite its size, it weighs only about 30 tons, or little more than the 65-foot 12-meter boat that is more familiar to the recent America’s Cup scene. But it will carry more sail than any Cup competitor ever has--up to 18,000 square feet, enough to cover a baseball diamond inside the baselines.

Its mast, Fay says, is “16 stories tall,” the tallest racing mast in the world.

Fay defines 16 New Zealand stories as “about 160 feet,” 10 feet higher than the Coliseum’s Olympic torch above ground level. If the $7-million boat’s a bust, it may be torched.

The Sail America catamaran is the creation of a committee, with design input from naval architects, multihull sailors and computer-powered Ph.D.s. Its twin hulls, also being constructed of carbon fiber, will be mated with what amounts to an airplane wing standing on end.

Although these may be the two most futuristic sailboats ever built, their technology has taken them in opposite directions. Because of the diversity of their design, chances are remote that the boats will be equal in performance. One will be faster than the other, but nobody knows which one. Most sailors would bet on the catamaran.

Boat designers around the world--even those at Sail America--can hardly contain their glee, anticipating that in future America’s Cups their imaginations no longer need be limited by the give-and-take constraints of the 12-meter formula used in the 10 defenses since 1958.

“This is basically the whole benefit of the (New Zealand) challenge,” said John Marshall, the design coordinator for Sail America. “It’s the first time it’s been an unrestricted design contest.”

Sail America elected to sail a catamaran because a multihull is inherently faster than a monohull--although the San Diegans aren’t sure their multihull will be faster than Fay’s monohull.

Marshall said: “Our projection of New Zealand’s boat is that there is no existing boat, monohull or multihull, that could beat that boat around the race course.”

Both boats could exceed 30 knots, nearly three times faster than a 12-meter’s top speed. That’s nothing special for a large catamaran, but it’s unheard of for a monohull.

Marshall said that New Zealand’s boat “will be literally leaping out of the water much of the time.”

That’s more than Fay says. Ask him how fast his boat will be and he says: “Bloody fast.”

But nobody really knows how it will sail. Some designers speculate that because it is so narrow--14 feet at the waterline--in proportion to its length, it will be unstable.

Britton Chance, one of Sail America’s designers, said: “We think the boat needs to weigh 200,000 pounds (100 tons) to sail properly.”

The Kiwis apparently are relying on the ballast of a 21-foot bulbed keel and the weight of 40 crewpeople hiked out on the 26-foot-wide “wings” to keep the boat balanced. And, after all, it was designed for San Diego’s zephyrs, not heavy winds.

Significantly, the mainsail was reefed upwind during one early shakedown sail in a moderate 15-knot breeze off Auckland. That indicated that the boat already was becoming overpowered as the knot meter hovered between 19 and 22.

“No one’s ever built a boat like this before,” Fay said. “We’ve pushed everything to the limit.”

Fay says that, contrary to a suspicion voiced by Sail America, his boat will not utilize trapezes or hiking racks to move crew weight farther outboard, which would violate Rule 62 of international yacht racing.

Fay maintains that the San Diego Yacht Club is in danger of forfeiting the Cup if it sends Conner to the starting line in a catamaran, a threat that could cause Sail America some sleepless nights in this uncertain age of litigation, but Sail America seems committed to that course.

Fay’s boat will dwarf the catamaran, which like the 12-meter that won the Cup a year ago will be christened Stars & Stripes.

The two hulls--one Stars, the other Stripes?-- will be set up to 30 feet apart, the beam (width) possibly being adjustable to suit sea conditions.

Actually, Sail America is building two 58-foot catamarans, both from strong, lightweight carbon fiber material but with slightly different hull designs. Each will weigh about 6,000 pounds fully rigged. One will be equipped with conventional sails, the other with the fixed-shape airfoil, for a true comparison in performance. The syndicate also is building two spare hulls, one of each type.

Chance, for one, wishes they were building them bigger than 58 feet long.

“If we had it to do over again, we’d do it bigger,” he said. “(The decision) was swayed by the catamaran community saying smaller was better.”

But Randy Smyth, the Olympic silver medalist and former Tornado catamaran world champion, says: “As you scale up a boat, some things get inefficient.”

As it was, as late as Feb. 15 the syndicate planned to build only a 45-foot catamaran.

Chance also is concerned about moving the venue back from windier Long Beach-San Pedro Bay to San Diego.

“We were ill-advised to give up Long Beach as a site because (New Zealand) will be at their best in the lighter air,” he said. “But I guess there was a lot of economic and political pressure to do that.

“We feel really comfortable if the wind is 8 knots or over. If it’s less than 6 knots, we can’t finish the race (within the time limit).”

The hulls are being constructed at RD Boatworks in Capistrano Beach, where the final assembly will be done. The airfoil is being built at Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites company in Mojave, where Voyager evolved.

C-class catamarans of 25 feet--which compete, coincidentally, for the Little America’s Cup--have used wing-type sails since the late ‘60s. Sail America has recruited C-class experts Duncan MacLane and Dave Hubbard for the design team and two expert catamaran sailors, Smyth and Cam Lewis, to help Conner sail it.

Conner, who won the cup for the San Diego Yacht Club by beating Australian defender Kookaburra III last February in the waters off Fremantle, Western Australia, has spent his whole life learning how to read “soft” sail shapes on monohulls. He admits he is apprehensive.

“This is new to me and, frankly, I’m a little nervous about it,” he said.

The height of the airfoil will be adjustable from about 85 feet to nearly 100 feet by adding or removing sections for changing wind conditions.

Until the new boats are ready, Conner and his crew will train on the C-class Patient Lady and two 40-foot Formula 40 catamarans.

John Roncz, the aerodynamics expert who designed Voyager’s wings at his Gemini Technical Inc. office in Granger, Ind., professes no knowledge of boats and says this program “is a more complicated problem than an airplane.

Until recently Fay said all of the preceding talk had been a smoke screen.

“I’m convinced (Sail America is) building a monohull,” he said. “You don’t put the Cup up at risk of forfeiture because you don’t have an eligible boat. I challenged them in a monohull. They must sail a monohull.”

There being no evidence to support Fay’s conviction that Sail America was secretly building a monohull, he then moved to ask the New York Supreme Court to order San Diego to forfeit the Cup if Sail America didn’t scrap its catamaran plans.

If the court rules for Sail America, Fay will have to face the fact he was outmaneuvered, as he had outmaneuvered his adversaries with his stunning challenge earlier.

Fay blames the whole mess on Sail America’s “greed” in trying to market the Cup to its own benefit.

Sail America looks upon the Kiwi concept as Michael Fay and his 40 thieves--a Down Under-handed plot to steal the Cup by whatever means possible, including a forfeit.

But Fay, speaking recently at the California Yacht Club in Marina del Rey, said: “If the Cup is lost by the San Diego Yacht Club because it has to forfeit, don’t put New Zealand’s name on it for winning it. I don’t want them to forfeit the Cup. I want to meet them on the water.”

Fay’s boat will be shipped to the United States in May and, according to plan, will be sailing the first week in June. Sail America’s schedule has its catamarans sailing by May 22 at the earliest.

When the boats meet in September, monohull against catamaran, Fay could lose, but can Sail America win?

Beating any monohull with a catamaran might be a hollow victory, hardly worth a dunking at the dock.

And after nine months of animosity, even Sail America’s Marshall is saying: “The design excitement is a very small reward for the amount of anguish involved.”