01 FEB 00 //
To Hell and Back

30 JAN 00 //
Maxed Out

The fact is, the challenger has never raced the defender so there has been no direct comparison, ever.

The challenger, Prada, has come through an elimination series that was extremely hard-fought -- the closest we have seen since 1992. In the case of the defender, any racing has come purely from within its own syndicate. This is in contrast to previous defences where generally the defender trials have been as competitive as the challenger trials, if not more so.

Notwithstanding, the New Zealanders are going to be very competitive based on the personnel they have had on their project for the last four years. Tom Schnackenberg, chief technologist, is considered one of the best, if not the best brain in the world, in the area of sail development, rig development and indeed, hull development. Schnackenberg has formed a team that is really very impressive in technological support and innovation.

The Prada organisation is world class, as we have seen over the last few weeks against AmericaOne. They leave little to be desired in the form of technology, led by Doug Peterson, who has been involved in the winning team in the last two America's Cup campaigns: America³ in 1992, and Team New Zealand in 1995.

So what about speed differences? Will there be any? Both the black boats of Team New Zealand are a little fatter than Prada, maybe by 10 centimetres or so at the beam waterline. This in theory makes them a little faster than Prada in medium fresh winds, a little slower in light winds. The bow shapes of Team New Zealand are a little unconventional.

But all in all, if we see any real differences I believe it won't be coming from the hulls, it will be coming from the stuff above the deck, the sails and their interaction with the mast. This is where the horsepower is produced, where the rubber hits the road.

The Kiwis have been working on a new three-spreader rig, which they call the "millennium" rig. The mast appears to be deeper fore and aft (and hence stiffer) than those used by the challengers, including Prada. Dennis Conner commented the other day that the biggest speed jump he saw during the series was when Peter Gilmour and his Nippon team put in a stiffer mast midway through the challenger series. The result was a more controllable mainsail and, in particular, the ability to control more finitely the leach-twist profile.

These new 3DL ^[?] carbon-fibre mainsails are monsters to control. Their leech profiles are huge, almost coming straight out from the masthead before curving down away to the boom. All to increase the area up high and move closer to what we call an "elliptical" profile. This means less three-dimensional drag -- called induced drag. Induced drag is slow, really slow so any way to minimise this is a real bonus. Hence these massive roach profiles. The monster mainsail roaches, however, put a huge premium on the fore and aft stiffness of the masts … hence the battle to get stiffer and stiffer masts into these boats.

We know from one-design racing that the mainsail-mast-jib combination and how this reacts to wind speed variations is absolutely vital for boat speed. We can see minutes separating fast boats from slow boats around the track when one rig is better tuned than the other, and in these cases all on one-design hulls.

It is interesting to note that Southern Spars of New Zealand has built the masts for both of these successful syndicates. If the Kiwis' "millennium" rig indeed works, it will also offer slightly less aerodynamic drag than the more conventional four-spreader configuration -- another improvement. All these little advances can become significant when tallied up -- time will tell.

We still have not seen the sail inventory arsenal of Team New Zealand being used in full battle. I would not be surprised to see some sails come out of the bag that could be quite different from anything we've seen on the track so far. The Kiwis have been developing their sail and rig combination over the last four years for this set of races. The Team New Zealand sail/rig development programme has a larger budget than their hull, keel and winglet programme, all pointing to what they at least believe are the opportunities for improvement.

From the sailing enthusiast's point of view, it will be interesting to see these two highly developed machines come off the line in Race 1 and observe the weapons they are using. To give you an idea of costs for these little engines aloft, with oneAustralia in 1995, we paid approximately US$65,000 per mainsail and $25,000 per genoa. A chute was a cool $21,000. The new Cuben-fibre Prada chutes probably cost around $50,000 a pop. Not bad spare change.

In 1983 John Bertrand, skippering Australia II, became the first non-American to win the America's Cup, ending the New York Yacht Club's 132-year winning streak with a 4-3 victory against Dennis Conner. He is co-founder of Quokka Sports.

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