Cup Innovations Nothing New

New Zealand’s surprise use of a bowsprit in its latest America’s Cup challenge is merely the latest in a history of design innovation and intrigue that dates to the first Cup race nearly 150 years ago.

Fact is, since that first contest in 1851 around England’s Isle of Wight to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Great Exhibition (a forerunner of the World’s Fair), some of the world’s great boat designers have feverishly plotted new wrinkles--sometimes under tight secrecy--to win the “One Hundred Guinea Cup,” which was fashioned in London under the queen’s aegis but has never resided there.

From the schooners of the 1800s to the gigantic J-boats of the 1930s to the post-war 12-meter class and the current International America’s Cup Class yachts, challengers and defenders always have looked for an edge, a new idea, an improved material. Hard feelings came with the territory--it might be said Cup controversies often have been by design.

In the old days the designers were often more famous than the captains. Their names are legend in America’s Cup and navigational lore: George Steers, Nat Herreshoff, George Watson, Edward Burgess.

Now the skippers are the stars, and the designers represent high-tech firms that may do consulting work for NASA and help draw up supersonic jets as well as yachts. Their names may not be known outside yacht club or science circles, but the goal is the same and the stakes higher than ever.

“The America’s Cup has had kind of its own special place in the racing of large, fully crewed boats,” said Bruce Nelson, one of Dennis Conner’s design team and a founding member of the Partnership for America’s Cup Technology. “It’s been a test ground for hull design, keel design, deck hardware, sails, even sailing technique.

“Now we’re embarking on a new era, a higher level of development. It’s also a more expensive game as a result. It’ll be interesting to see which way it goes--people are saying these boats are too expensive. But they’ve built 28 of them. Like they say, it’s not for everybody.”

That was the rule even in pre-Civil War days.

When England’s Royal Yacht Squadron invited the New York Yacht Club to send a boat to its cup race, the New York group came up with the startling sum of $30,000 to commission a racing yacht of 140 tons or larger.

Steers, the premier designer of his day, drew up the America, and builder William H. Brown was so confident of its superiority that he said he would take no payment if the boat was defeated. As it was, he delivered the finished product a month later than promised and was paid $20,000.

The huge America--it displaced 170 tons, measured 93.5 feet and had 5,660 square feet of sail--made its way to England--becoming the first yacht to cross the Atlantic--and faced 15 British boats, the pride of a fleet that ruled an empire.

It was no contest.

As America approached the finish of the 53-mile course with no other boats in sight, Queen Victoria asked who was leading. When told, she asked, “Who is second?” and received the Lombardian reply, “Your Majesty, there is no second.”

Nor would there be for a while, with Steers keeping the United States in the lead technologically.

In 1871, England mounted the first official challenge and built the Livonia, the first schooner built specifically for the competition.

The New York Yacht Club entered two boats, alternating the Sappho and the Columbia and winning four of five races. The British protested the use of two boats and public reaction backed them, but the New York group refused to recognize the protest. It was the last time the Cup was defended with two boats.

The Sappho was a flat, wide keel schooner dubbed a “skimming dish” by the British when they first saw it, but it proved to be superior to theirs.

The first major design innovation came in the 1885 challenge, when the Edward Burgess-designed Puritan beat England’s Genesta, 2-0. Burgess’ design was considered a “compromise sloop” combining details from differing styles for a more flexible, maneuverable boat.

Burgess boats defeated British challengers each of the next two years.

The next three decades were dominated by Nathaneal Green Herreshoff, a taciturn New Englander known as “Captain Nat” and the “Wizard of Bristol” who was responsible for all Cup defense designs from 1893 to 1920.

Herreshoff’s boats heralded the introduction of light metals, including aluminum, into hull and mast construction.

Herreshoff also ushered in the super-secret approach, with tight security around his family’s shipyard and tight-lipped responses to questions concerning design and upcoming races.

The America’s Cup challenges were provided for most of the first three decades of the new century--with a long break for World War I--by Scottish sportsman Sir Thomas Lipton, the tea magnate. With five different designs, all named Shamrock, Lipton challenged the New York Yacht Club and lost all five times.

Herreshoff’s Constitution in 1901 proved his most controversial boat, with so many innovations, including a steel deck and mast and a rudder with an air compartment, that the crew never mastered it. His older boat, Columbia, returned to the water to repeat its 1899 victory over Shamrock.

In 1903, Herreshoff’s Reliance, with 16,600 square feet of sail, beat Shamrock III. Herreshoff’s last boat, Resolute, beat Shamrock IV in 1920, but Lipton, having switched to designer Charles Nicholson that year, came tantalizingly close, taking a 2-1 lead before losing the best-of-five series.

At age 81, Lipton tried one more time in 1930 as Cup sailing entered the era of the huge J-Class yachts, which featured 165-foot masts and a waterline of 87 feet, and eliminated triple headsails. Lipton’s Shamrock V lost to the Enterprise, designed by William Starling Burgess, son of Edward Burgess. Once again, the British hadn’t kept up with the latest technology: Enterprise’s duraluminum mast was 30% lighter than Shamrock’s.

Burgess-designed yachts defeated English challenges again in 1934 and ’37. The Ranger, codesigned with Olin Stephens for the 1937 challenge, featured what was called the “most revolutionary hull design change in 50 years.” Admirers tabbed it the Super J. In a sense, it was also the last dinosaur of Cup racing: Even with the Vanderbilt family financing the Cup defense, the Depression put an end to such extravagant expenditures.

The advent of another World War also produced a 21-year gap in races until the Cup returned in 1958 with the tightly restricted 12-meter class that was the mainstay of Cup racing through 1987. The 12-meters were limited to a 45-foot waterline, 86-foot mast and sail area of 4,500 square feet.

Stephens remained at the forefront of design as the U.S. entries remained unbeaten until 1983. That was when Australian designer Ben Lexcen ( nee Bob Miller) took advantage of an ambiguity in the 12-meter rules and produced his “magic keel” on Australia II. The Aussie boat, with winglets on the keel, defeated Dennis Conner and Liberty, 4-3, in the finals.

The brilliant Lexcen also brought computerized simulation to design preparation.

The new keel was the cornerstone for the latest era of highly litigated, high-tech controversies. In 1988, Conner produced a catamaran in answer to a challenge from Michael Fay and easily defeated the New Zealander’s 130-foot monohull.

After that challenge the International America’s Cup Class became the design model, 20% longer, yet 30% lighter than the 12-meters, and with 40% more sail area. The remarkably fast computer-designed boats produce a displacement of 18 1/2 tons, compared to 28 tons by the 12-meters.

They’re also extremely expensive and complicated. The design team for Conner’s Stars & Stripes includes two men with their own boat-building firms, Nelson and Devid Pedrick, and A. Alberto Calderon of Advanced Aeromechanisms Corp of La Jolla, which does consulting work for NASA.

The design team for America 3 is headed by Jerry Milgram, a professor and naval architect at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“This technology is exciting--we do things that never get done at the level of my own practice,” said Jim Taylor, a Massachusetts-based boat designer who works with Milgram.

Even after the races have commenced, the design work continues. “Stars & Stripes has certainly done everything we intended it to do,” Nelson said. “But it was built as a test boat. We never expected to be racing it beyond the trials.” The design team’s challenge is to keep the yacht competitive against America 3’s trio of entries.

Taylor said the America 3 team--whose Defiant was unbeaten in the first round while Jayhawk lost all three of its early races--is “not unhappy, but it’s very, very early. We’re not drawing any conclusions at this point. There is no consensus solution--everybody is starting from scratch and looking for the best answer.”

And Taylor isn’t disturbed by the New Zealand Challenge’s use of the bowsprit, the latest America’s Cup wrinkle to face a debate. The bowsprit has been ruled legal but its interaction with sails is being challenged. “I think the bowsprit’s a tempest in a teapot,” Taylor said.

In the world of America’s Cup design, something’s always brewing.

America’s Cup Boats Through the Years

1992 Type: Cup Class Crew size: 17 Length: 75 ft. Sail area: 3,000 sq.ft. Mast: 110 ft. 1983: Type: 12-Meter Name: Australia Crew size: 11 Length: 65 ft. Sail area: 2,000 sq. ft. Mast: 86 ft 1958: Type: 12-Meter Name: Columbia Crew size: 11 Length: 69 feet Sail area: 1850 sq. ft. Mast: 86 ft. 1937: Type: J-Boat Class Name: Ranger Crew size: 35 Length: 135 ft. Mast: 154 ft 1920: Type: Cutter Class Name: Shamrock IV Crew size: 65 Length: 110 ft. Sail area: 10,500 sq. ft. Mast: 105 ft. 1885: Type: Cutter Class Name: Puritan Crew size: 65 Length: 94 ft. Mast: 69 ft. 1851: Type: Schooner Class Name: America Length: 94 ft. Sail area: 5,660 sq. ft. Main mast: 81 ft.