Brad Butterworth (NZL)
Brad Butterworth. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Brad Butterworth has achieved more than almost any other sailor in the modern era of the America’s Cup, having called the winning tactics on board the winning boat in the last four Cups. However, whenever he’s asked what it takes to win the America’s Cup, he always replies, “Having the faster boat.”
Maybe the tactician is being modest or maybe it’s the harsh reality of the America’s Cup that the faster boat does always win. The 33rd Cup, more than any other of recent times, must surely be decided by the fastest boat. But when asked the question this time, Butterworth says that the key to winning will be “probably not breaking”! Alinghi’s skipper is only being slightly tongue in cheek. “It’s a design contest that’s full of innovation, above and below the water, testing the limits of structures and materials. I think it’s going to be the fastest boat, but also the most reliable boat that will win this time.”
As a tactician and a strategist, Butterworth is as cunning as a fox; capable of outsmarting almost anyone else in a close chess match. But how much of that cunning is he going to be able to bring into play this time, where speed is expected to be the winning factor? “Well, I think it’s a yacht race like any other yacht race, so there’ll be strategies that we will have to implement and we have been thinking hard about what the races will be like. I think there will be some good tactical situations even though the boats will be sailing at much faster speeds.”
Some people have been concerned about the potential closing speeds of the two giant multihulls in a pre-start situation. Butterworth, however, has faith that both teams will be sensible about sailing aggressively without venturing into dangerous territory. “Neither of these boats has been in a match race before and so it will take quite a while to get the measure of each other. The Racing Rules of sailing do a good job of keeping boats apart, although of course we shouldn’t forget that this is still a match race. I just hope that we can have a good race while keeping everybody safe. That would be the perfect outcome.”
As for that magic moment that happens at the start of every America’s Cup match, when Defender and Challenger line up against each other for the first time, Butterworth knows that feeling better than anyone. As to how he things this time will compare with previous Cups, he replies: “Quite different, because we will not have raced this boat, so in times gone past we’ve had the odd view of the other boat and the racing. Even if it’s a fleet race or a one-off match race we’ve still had the opportunity to sail the other teams. But this time there has been none of that. When both teams line up on that first day, no one really knows how they’re going to compare.”
With that said, Butterworth has a lot of faith in the people of Alinghi. “I think we’ve got a great group. I think that’s the secret of it. There are a lot of guys that have been with the team since it was born and they’ve stuck with it and they’re integral parts of making the boat go fast. It’s a team sport. It’s been a team sport for a long time now, but you need everybody to do their bit and I think that’s what makes us quite strong, as we’ve got great people in every area of the game.”
Murray Jones (NZL)
Murray Jones. Image copyright Guido Trombetta/Alinghi.
Jones had a long and illustrious sailing career before his belated move into the America’s Cup arena. He represented New Zealand at three world youth sailing Championships in the mid-1970s, before getting into Olympic campaigning in the 1980s. Jones narrowly missed winning Olympic medals at the 1988 and 1992 games, where he finished fifth and fourth respectively in the Flying Dutchman class.
Since then Jones has become one of the most respected keelboat sailors in the world, and perhaps after the 33rd America’s Cup he will have established himself as one of the best multihull sailors. He has enjoyed the learning process immensely. “I’ve learnt more about the design and theory of yachts in the last three years than I have in probably the last 10. It’s been really interesting and the great thing about sailing these boats is that you get instant gratification. You get instant feedback as to whether there has been a gain in performance or not. You can just basically feel it and see it in the performance of the boat immediately, even with a one-boat sailing programme.
“It makes a nice change to all those years of endless two-boat testing with the Version 5 boats, where you sail for a week of testing, side by side doing a ten minute test time after time after time, trying to search for point zero something of a knot. Even then you are not too sure whether the result of the test was valid or not, but here, you can go out by yourself and after couple of days you just know that you’ve made an improvement and move on to the next thing. In that regard, it’s really more fun and interesting as far as the development of the boat is concerned.”
In the last America’s Cup one of Jones’s jobs was going up the mast to look for wind. Is there any chance of him doing the same in this Cup? “It’s possible, but it’s not that comfortable being up the rig on a boat like this. It wouldn’t be something I’d be looking forward to doing, let’s put it that way. The motion is very much different to a heavy keelboat like we sailed with the Version 5. The pitching on a keelboat is a more regular acceleration then deceleration, whereas the pitching on a boat like this when you have any waves is very abrupt. It pitches very quickly, it’s hard to hang on and it’s not that easy being up the rig because the mast is so wide you can’t actually hang on to anything. You have to hold on to the luff of the sail or something. So I’m hoping it’s a job I won’t have to do.”
The job of looking for the wind is dramatically different on Alinghi 5. “You’re basically sailing upwind the whole race. When your sitting on the boat, the apparent wind angle is really fine the whole race. That’s a big difference when you’re sailing downwind on one of these boats and you’re looking for puffs, you’re looking 45 degrees off the bow; you’re not looking over your shoulder and that takes a bit of getting used to.”
Andreas Winistoerfer (SUI)
Andreas Winistoerfer. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Andreas Winistoerfer is a part-time designer for Alinghi. His company, Carbo-link, supplies rigging components and other structural composites to the team. Part time he may be, but he is nevertheless fully committed to the Defender's success. "I am proud to be one of the Swiss team members in a Swiss team that has achieved great things in the past and will do so again in the future," he says.
With a Masters in aerospace materials engineering and a PhD in engineering, Winistoerfer founded his company in Switzerland from those academic beginnings. "After my PhD I designed repair and strengthening methods for existing large concrete and steel bridges. The technology developed there is now the basis for the current rigging parts supplied to Alinghi." As a keen sailor of small catamarans, Winistoerfer is enjoying combining his expertise with a sport about which he was already enthusiastic.
"The America's Cup is the right playground to bring technology in a specific field to the limit and the people involved are dedicated to a common goal to make it happen. Alinghi is clearly the leader in this environment."
One of Winistoerfer's strengths is having an overview of cutting edge developments in the fast-moving world of composites development. Because his company is involved in other projects in the medical and aerospace industries, for example, he is well placed to see if there are new developments that might be carried over to the sailing world.
Surprisingly, one of the biggest sources of inspiration for the components on Alinghi 5 has come from Winistoerfer’s experience of developing components for giant crawler cranes. These are huge cranes capable of lifting big loads of a few hundred tonnes, and they are supported by carbon-fibre cables supplied by Carbo-link. “These cranes operate in the same load range as Alinghi 5, whereas the Version 5 boats are toys by comparison.”
Winistoerfer supplied the rigging for the mast, and the cables and components which have gone into creating the spine of the boat. “Alinghi 5 is like a trimaran without a central hull. What we have provided is in place of the third hull that would usually be there, so I suppose you could say that this time around I could describe myself as a boatbuilder,” he quips.
As to whether this is his most challenging project yet, Winistoerfer is in no doubt. “Everything is longer, bigger, the loads are bigger and we’ve made huge steps in terms of development because we are working virtually without limitation. With Version 5 boats it was like living in a cage and not being allowed out. Here, what is technically possible is allowed. That is a huge playground for an engineer, but you can also hurt yourself on a big playground.”
Asked if he feels anxious about whether or not the vital components he has provided will be up to the job, Winistoerfer replies: “Yes, it does make me anxious. It has to. If I’m not anxious, it’s because I’ve built something too heavy. You have to go to the limit, because if you don’t you have no chance of winning. It has been an exciting time, and sometimes we have taken some big risks, but hopefully we’ll enjoy some big rewards at the end.”
Rolf Vrolijk (NED)
Rolf Vrolijk. Image copyright Javier Salinas/Alinghi.
Growing up Rolf Vrolijk raced small boats like Finns and Yoles, and it was this love of sailing that led him to pursue a career in naval architecture. “I started out doing the odd job here and there for local sail lofts, designing their sails and helping them to develop their models,” says Alinghi’s chief designer of his early days in the working world. He then studied mechanical engineering before going on to study naval architecture in Delft, providing him with the academic background that has taken him to becoming one of the most celebrated keelboat designers in the world.
Designing a multihull is not entirely new territory for Vrolijk, who through his company Judel Vrolijk and Co., has been involved in designing semi-custom cruising catamarans. Nevertheless Alinghi 5 represents a big departure not only for Vrolijk but everyone else on the design team. The very nature of drawing something from scratch, rather than the evolutionary process of previous Cup campaigns, was a problem in itself, as he explains: “The big challenge for us was that we actually stayed a team; together. And as a team we took on this task of developing a model of something which we hadn’t done as a group before.
“Our task was to come up with options of the different concepts and evaluate which direction would be the best one. I think within the group we had a lot of people with experience but also we asked for some people to look over our shoulder, experienced multihull designers like Nigel Irens and Benoit Cabaret. This helped quite a lot in the early stages but at a certain point we just had to develop our own tools to be able to predict speeds and then predict the end product.”
As principal designer on the design team of the winning boat in the last two Cups, Vrolijk was already enjoying his time working with Alinghi. But for him this is the best yet. “What we’re doing at the moment is the most challenging project we’ve had, and we are still learning everyday. The moment we put Alinghi 5 in the water, when you see it sailing for the first day and flying a hull, I think that was the most exciting time for me. But as soon as you see it sailing, you get very quickly used to the dimensions and the speed potentials. It’s surprising how quickly you come to view it as just another machine where your job is to work really, really hard on continually improving it.”
Alinghi 5 has been widely praised for her good looks, her sleek lines and beautiful streamlining. Are aesthetics important to a technician like Vrolijk? “Well, it’s one part of it. I would say to look at Alinghi 5 it looks right as a logical concept and when you look at the whole boat as a unit. It looks like a very powerful machine, which it actually is, of course. Now the task is up to us - and the sailors - to get the full potential out of it.”
Needless to say Vrolijk takes a lot of pride in Alinghi 5. “Yes, I am proud to have been involved, as is everyone here on the design team. We feel like we have made a big contribution to yacht design, not only in terms of our own careers, but in terms of the design world generally.”
Grant Simmer (AUS)
Grant Simmer. Image copyright George Johns/Alinghi.
Grant Simmer has participated in seven America's Cups and has been involved in every edition since 1983, when he won it as navigator on board the winged wonder, Australia II. He was awarded with the Medal of Order of Australia the year after that historic victory which took the Cup away from the USA. He has won three America's Cups: one as a navigator and two as design team co-ordinator with Alinghi.
Having already made such a contribution to the history of the America’s Cup, how does Simmer see the 33rd Cup being remembered? “Well so far it’s generated more press than any other Cup just because of the length of time it’s been in court,” he says. “I’m not at all happy with a lot of things that have happened along the way but I’m thinking in 10 to 15 years, people will look back on this Cup and will still be talking about it. Certainly the highlight of this Cup is the boats. If this hadn’t happened, we would never have seen two boats like this – the attraction of the Cup is the technical and the design aspects of the boat and the ability of the sailors to learn how to sail it.”
Simmer joined Alinghi in 2000 and has been coordinating the design team since then. Design team co-ordinator is always a crucial role but never more so than in this Cup. “With the last two Cups with the Version 5 boats, we were working in a very narrow design space. Now in this event, we have an incredibly open design space. Really the length of the boat is the only restriction on us. So it gave us a huge amount of scope and that’s been exciting and in fact, to a large extent, we’ve had to restrict ourselves to design something that structurally, and in an engineering sense, could work or that was achievable with the resources that we have. Secondly, it had to be something that we would be able to sail with men on it that could deal with the size of the equipment on the boat.”
Simmer had a very good idea of how Alinghi 5 was going to perform, based on all the predictions and computer modelling, but he still can’t help but be impressed with the boat on the occasions that he has sailed it. “There was a period when I hadn’t sailed the boat for a while, but to come back and get on board is just, well – it can shock you how powerful and how loaded up and how fast the thing is. So, yes, it takes a bit of getting used to, that’s for sure.”
When it’s clear that Simmer gets such a buzz from sailing on Alinghi 5, there must be a part of him that wishes he was going into battle. But he says not: “Long ago, I’ve accepted the fact that I have other responsibilities. I have a lot of faith in the sailing team that we have so I’m quite happy to let them take that on. I enjoy being on the boat, but I’m nowhere near prepared like the rest of the guys to be ready to race that boat. So I have to be a realist. I don’t think it’s possible to have the role that I do and still do a good job on the water and be really focused on sailing.”
As to how he thinks the match will turn out: “I think the contest is going to be quite close. I think each boat will have certain wind angles and wind speeds where they are superior, but it would be very hard to predict the result with what we know at the moment.”
Jim Bungener (SUI)
Jim Bungener. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
For this campaign Jim Bungener has worked remotely for Alinghi from the wilds of beautiful Oregon in the north-western corner of the United States. Although this has enabled him to spend more quality time with his family, he admits to being frustrated at not having been as fully immersed in this project as in previous America's Cups. “The big challenge is to stay in touch with everything that’s happening with the boat,” says Bungener, who joined Alinghi in early 2001, little more than a month after earning his Masters in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). “I can’t say I’m entirely happy with the situation from a professional point of view. There’s important stuff, exciting stuff, that’s being learned, and I’ve not been there. I know what shape the mast is, but I’m not in touch with the sailors or shore crew on a daily basis, and that makes me less efficient.”
But it’s not all bad for Bungener, who originates from Switzerland. “I get to spend my time with the family, and I’m still involved in a variety of projects. I work mostly on fluids, computer simulations, understanding all the wind angles, the wind speeds, the constraints of foil designs and rudder designs - but I don’t have that constant feedback from the sailors that is so important to successful design.”
In another respect Bungener feels lucky not to have been fully engaged in this campaign. “With all these legal shenanigans, I’ve only had it half as bad as the other guys. First the team went to work on the AC90, then the multihull, then the AC33, then the multihull again. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster for everyone, but it’s only been half as hard for me as for the other guys. Of all the three campaigns I’ve done, psychologically this has been the most challenging. It’s been so hard for the guys. So many hours have been wasted with the lawsuits not working out as we expected them to.”
“But having said that, these boats are so cool. It’s such a huge learning curve and we’ve all discovered so many new things in our fields of expertise.”
Away from his computer, Bungener likes to get wet by doing “anything outdoorsy”, such as windsurfing and kitesurfing, which perhaps have fed back into his understanding of fluid dynamics in relation to fast multihulls such as Alinghi 5. The fact that the boat is capable of travelling twice or even three times faster than the wind has opened up many new areas of exploration, but it has also closed off another. “We have no more spinnakers, which in some ways makes my life easier, because they’re very hard to model in CFD. When you look at sails upwind and downwind on a monohull like a Version 5 boat, there are drastic differences. Here on Alinghi 5, they’re more or less the same shape.”
As someone who has worked on this project from afar, Bungener has to remind himself of the scale of the project he’s been working on. “Looking at the sails and other parts of the boat on the computer, they’re just numbers on a screen. It’s not until you see a human being put next to those shapes that you realise what you’re dealing with. You have to remind yourself that we’re putting very small, puny humans on a monster of a boat.”
Michael Schreiber (USA)
Michael Schreiber. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Having studied naval architecture at the University of Michigan, Michael Schreiber moved to San Diego and worked in the North Sails loft. It was in San Diego in 1983 that he worked on his first America's Cup campaign. Moving on to work with the legendary Dennis Conner for the 1987 America's Cup in Fremantle, he stayed with Conner for the next three campaigns. In 1995 he moved to One Australia and in 2000 to America True, before joining Alinghi in 2003.
“What I like about the America's Cup is that it is different from other sailmaking or design jobs. You're creating something from the ground up, as a team,” he says. “My job is to use my own knowledge and the sailors’ feedback and put it into numbers, and then come up with something that keeps us moving forward.”
When Schreiber first started exploring what would be required for Alinghi 5, he was impressed by how much higher the loads were. “These are the highest loads for sails that I have been involved in. There may be some big mega-yachts with a higher righting moment, but from my experience this is way beyond anything I’ve ever done. When we first started investigating the sails, and did some modeling of the loads, we found that the loads on the corners of the sails in some cases could be as much as the weight of the lead keel bulb on a Version 5 boat. Honestly, we expected to have more problems than we did. We saw BMW Oracle sailing with helmets on the first few weeks, so we wondered what we had got ourselves into. But as it turned out, we were able to hit the ground running, and we were pushing the boat harder than I thought we would when we first started sailing.”
Compared with previous design cycles in past America’s Cups, this has been a rush job. “Last time we had a few years to get it right, this time we’ve had a few months. And also when the boat was first launched, it was with the shorter mast; so when the newer, taller mast was stepped in the boat, the sail design process more or less started from scratch.”
The sail designer is keen to see how his sails will compare with the solid wing rig of BMW Oracle. “The chances are there’ll be very big differences, and there could be big differences depending on what leg of the course you’re on. You’re always wondering if what you’ve done is good enough and probably have a good idea in the first race, although weather could be a big factor, especially at the time of year we’re having this contest in Valencia.”
Tom Schnackenberg (NZL)
Tom Schnackenberg. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Although he'd never presume to say it himself, it wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to describe Tom Schnackenberg as the father of modern sail design. If that sounds a little pompous, there are few who would argue that he has been the most influential sail designer of the modern era. However his role at Alinghi is to have a broader overview of the design process. The Kiwi modestly describes himself as “floater”. “I’m doing a bit of helping with data analysis, giving the guys my input on the sails, doing whatever people ask me to do,” he says.
When it comes to the America’s Cup, Schnackenberg has seen it all. This will be his 11th Cup campaign, the first one dating back to 1977 when he was involved in designing some sails for the American defender Enterprise.
Schnackenberg helped change the course of America’s Cup history in 1983 when he designed the sails for Australia II, the wing-keeled wonder that snatched away the Auld Mug from the New York Yacht Club. Although the radical wing keel was credited for being the magic bullet that made Australia II such a special boat, skipper John Bertrand preferred to give greater credit to the advanced composite sail designs developed by Schnackenberg.
Having said that Schnackenberg has seen it all, no one has seen anything quite like the contest that the 33rd America’s Cup will bring. The closest experience he has is the so-called America’s Cup “mis-Match” of 1988, when Schnackenberg was responsible for designing the sails for the giant keelboat that the Kiwis put up against Dennis Conner’s much smaller catamaran. “The ‘Big Boat’ was impressive every time it went sailing. There was the same sense of newness and scale that we are getting this time with these boats. When I was watching Alinghi 5 the other day, I was commenting to Alain Gautier just how nice the mainsail and jib looked, how tidy they looked. I was watching the sails go up and down, and then you notice these tiny people and suddenly you are reminded of the scale of this boat.
“Everything about it is big and powerful, when loading the furled gennaker on to the trampoline of the boat, it’s like wrestling with an anaconda. Once a sail like that gets moving, it’s got a fair bit of weight and momentum, and it really is like wrestling with a big snake, trying to manage the sail. I remember the same thing in 1988, with 10 people carrying the mainsail, when the sail was so big that it would take on a mind of its own.”
For such an inquisitive mind, the multihull project has been intriguing for Schnackenberg. “Everyone is enjoying the multihull experience. The Version 5 boats were getting a bit familiar. From a technical point of view, what has really interested me is the fact that the boats are going so much faster than the wind. You have to get out of your old habits of looking behind you for puffs of wind when you’re travelling downwind, because with this boat, whichever part of the race track you’re on, the wind is always in front of you.”
Michael Richelsen (DEN)
Michael Richelsen. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Studying mechanical engineering at the Technical University in Denmark, Michael Richelsen’s sailing interest shaped the topic for his M.Sc. thesis. He combined solid and aerodynamic interaction into a study of a sail-shaped membrane under aerodynamic pressure. After writing a letter to Lowell North at North Sails, he joined North Sails San Diego in 1979.
This marked the beginning of a long career with North Sails, and over the following years he became responsible for the sail design and analysis modelling programme. Today he still works with North Sails as director of design systems.
Richelsen’s first America's Cup was in 1983, and a decade later he joined Il Moro di Venezia for another challenge in 1992. More or less since then, the America’s Cup has dominated the Dane’s professional life.
At Alinghi, Richelsen manages the performance prediction group. “I had never really worked on multihulls before,” he says. “When we started out, we had no real benchmarks for predicting the performance of the boat. Alinghi 5 is so extreme; it is almost irrelevant trying to relate it to existing catamarans.
“We did have the 41 footer, Alinghi 41, and we used that to sail on, to model and to help inform our predictions. Some of the structures are similar in concept; both Alinghi 41 and Alinghi 5 have this central spine and under rigging instead of a centre hull.”
The moment when Richelsen got to see Alinghi 5 sailing for the first time was very special. “It was very rewarding to see the boat sailing and confirm that largely our predictions about her performance had been accurate. Although we try to be as precise as possible, there is still so much guesswork involved in trying to predict these things.
“What makes this boat so different to, say, a keelboat is that windage is much, much bigger. Windage goes up by speed squared, so when you think that this boat is capable of travelling three or four times faster than a Version 5 boat, you can see the importance of windage. With the keelboats, wave drag was the biggest element of drag, where at a certain speed the boat ran into this wall of resistance. There is no such wall with this kind of boat; that aspect is not there. Aerodynamic drag is a much greater factor, and you could say that what’s going on above the water is much more important than what’s going on below the water this time.”
Richelsen has his concerns about these kinds of boats sailing in Valencia. “There is the whole issue of sea state. If the sea state, i.e. the waves, become more than we normally sail in, the racing becomes a matter of who dares push the hardest. It comes down to the sailors’ guts and experience. That’s the part of Valencia I’m not particularly looking forward to. But if we are good enough, that moment of winning will be such a sweet thing - although winning is not a given, so it is with some anxiety that I am looking forward to the 33rd America’s Cup.”
Aaron Perry (USA)
Aaron Perry. Image copyright Bruno Cocozza/Alinghi.
Aaron Perry worked for America’s Cup syndicate America True in San Francisco, then with One World Challenge until 2003 before joining Alinghi for the 2007 America’s Cup.
Perry’s background is in mechanical engineering and his focus at Alinghi is CAD design and drafting, primarily using SolidWorks software. He says: “I create many of the drawings and 3D models of the yacht, and it gives me exposure to a range of components and systems on board, as well as allowing me to work with boat builders, sailmakers, weather, sailing and design team members.”
The move from Version 5.0 keelboats to Alinghi 5 has been a big but very interesting step for Perry. “I think everyone in the design group would agree that this project has been very exciting. Two years ago we were looking at the obstacles, and I couldn’t quite believe we were going to take on something of this scope. It has been wonderful to see it all come to fruition, and more than anything I’m amazed by the talents of my colleagues. It is an honour to be working with so many bright, dedicated people. It’s inspiring.”
In addition to his contributions as an engineer he is quite proud that the graphics that sweep across the hulls of Alinghi 5 are entirely his design.
François Nivelleau (FRA)
François Nivelleau. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Francois and his wife Virginie came to Alinghi having worked at Team New Zealand for its successful defence of the Cup in 2000.
Nivelleau has sailed since early childhood, cruising and racing, first in Marseille and later further afield. Then he converted his hobby into a career. “I started specialising in design in the late eighties, working in towing tanks and wind tunnels and then developed a sail vision system for the French America's Cup attempt in 1995.” He has worked on every America’s Cup since 1992.
Nivelleau is lucky to be able to work closely with his wife in the America’s Cup, something he has done for many years. “Normally we are responsible for the experimental field, the onboard measurements, new sensors, wind tunnel testing and Sail Vision,” he says. “The job has changed this time however. The development of the boat is finished, so we have no experimentation to do in wind tunnels. Instead our main occupation has been working on measurements at sea, looking at environmental elements such as the current and how that will relate to the sailing of the boat.” He and Virginie first met at university, aged 18, where they discovered a mutual love of mathematics and hydrodynamics. But working together and living together - doesn’t it put a strain on the relationship sometimes? “If anything, it makes the relationship better,” says Nivelleau. “When so many couples in the America’s Cup have to spend so much time apart we are lucky that we can work together the way that we do.”
Jean Claude Monnin (SUI)
Jean Claude Monnin. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Jean Claude Monnin, along with his brother Eric’s match racing team, has won a good number of big match racing events in his own right. But his role for Alinghi is software engineer. Joining the team in 2001 was the perfect opportunity to combine two passions. “I have always liked sailing and I also always did programming and computers so joining both worlds and doing something interesting is great. The America's Cup is the area in sailing where you can really do something. The most advanced technology is applied and working in that sort of environment is really exciting.”
With the 33rd America’s Cup, the emphasis of his job has shifted slightly. “This time I’ve been a bit more involved with boat design and less with the onboard data aspect. The last Cup I was mainly focused on the navigation systems but this time I had the chance to work with the design team, to look at the velocity prediction program (VPP), working closely with Michael Richelsen and Daniel Bernasconi.
“The VPP tools have been used for keelboats, so we had to do some adjustments to make it work for the multihull. Alinghi 5 is a hard boat to model because the boat is much more dynamic. When you are analysing an ACC Version 5 keelboat you know in great detail what angles they sail, you know everything about them. It is a much more static boat, whereas these multihulls are more dynamic and challenging.”
The additional challenge is that Monnin and the team have always had access to two-boat testing for on the water verification of their predictions. With a one-of-a-kind boat like Alinghi 5, there is no such possibility. But then again the gains are so much greater too. “The big difference is we used to do micro-optimisation on the old boats, looking for tiny gains,” says Monnin. “This time we only have the one boat, but the possibilities for improvements are so much greater.
“Now we have a good understanding of how our boats work, of its potential performance. But we have been preparing on our own. Now for the match, at last we have a chance to compare it against another boat. We have observed BMW Oracle in training, but we still don’t know for sure what their performance is. It will be interesting to find out.”
Patrick Mazuay (FRA)
Patrick Mazuay. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
A keen sailor from an early age, Patrick Mazuay studied mechanics at university in France. He then worked in a naval architect’s office on yacht design and boatbuilding before moving into sailmaking and sail design. “When I was racing dinghies I already designed boats and sailed so it was the natural move for me to go into sail design.”
In 1989 he joined North Sails in France, working on his first America's Cup campaign in 1995 with a French team, again in 2000 with the Swiss Team Fast2000, and then signed up with Alinghi for 2003 where he is in charge of sail design.
Designing the sails alongside Mike Schreiber, Mazuay describes the process thus: “We do computer design and make simulations, sometimes in the wind tunnel but most of the time with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), and we also go on the water with the sailors to analyse our designs.
“With Alinghi 5, the job has changed quite a lot,” he says. “Speaking selfishly, this project has been fantastic and very interesting. The previous America’s Cup was all about small improvements. It was taking very small steps and we tried to keep the process creative, but we knew pretty much what the result was going to be of each development. This is a completely new breed of boat so we have had to reinvent everything, and it’s a never-ending journey of discovery. Even with all the high-powered computers and CFD tools that we are using, there is still a lot we don’t know about the sails and the boat's performance until they’ve been tested and sailed on the water.”
One of the challenges early on was trying to design sails for a boat of an unknown scale. “We need to know the stiffness of the boat, and how much it is going to deform under load before we can design the sails correctly,” explains Mazuay. “As a sail designer you would always like the boat to be stiffer, but obviously that is impossible. We rely on good communication with the yacht designers and engineers to get good predictions on the platform deformation given the headstay tension and runner loads that we eventually decide is acceptable. Fortunately they did a good job and I think we did a good job on predicting the correct loads on the sails and rig.”
Alinghi 5 is so fast, and the apparent wind so strong that the sailors will have the wind in their face all the way round the course, not just upwind but downwind too. It’s an unusual scenario for a boat to go two to three times faster than the wind, and it has enormous implications on the types of sails that Mazuay designs. “The apparent wind angles downwind are the same or tighter than a monohull upwind,” he says. “So the less the sail deforms, the better. Our sails have improved a lot with each development, but we will be trying new things all the way up to the first race of the match. Our work requires a never-ending dialogue with the sailors and a never-ending quest to get better, and that's what I love.”
Virginie Nivelleau (FRA)
Virginie Nivelleau. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Having sailed since early childhood, Virginie Nivelleau and her husband Francois started specialising in yacht design in the late eighties. “We worked in towing tanks and wind tunnels and then developed a Sail Vision system for the French America's Cup challenge in 1995.”
She met her husband while studying mathematics and hydrodynamics at university, and they have been living and working together ever since - a rare situation in the itinerant world of the America’s Cup.
Having worked together on every America’s Cup since 1992, their speciality has been tank testing and sail shape analysis, as well using sensors to analyse performance data from the boat. However that job has changed somewhat with the multihull campaign. With a very short campaign lead time, there was no opportunity for tank testing so together the Nivelleaus have been working more as observers on the water, measuring environmental elements such as the current, and also watching BMW Oracle’s multihull training in San Diego.
“This has been a very interesting campaign, a very hard campaign too - not just for us but for all the guys on the team. These last two years the focus, the technical challenges, everything has been changing nearly every day, it seems. First it was a big monohull, then a multihull and then a monohull again, but a smaller one, before we turned our full attention back to the multihull. We have had to adapt to new situations very quickly.
“However the final product, Alinghi 5 is beautiful and wonderful. It’s a very fast boat. It is much more interesting than the old keelboats.” As for what she finds most rewarding in her job, Nivelleau comments: “I enjoy all of it. We are asked to get involved in many different projects, so there is great variety to keep us interested.”
If Nivelleau talks about “we” and “us”, it’s because she and her husband Francois tend to come as a package. “We are lucky because we like the same things, and our skills are very complimentary. The America’s Cup - it’s our living, and it’s totally our life. Even when we go home from work Francois and I continue to talk about work. We are thinking of Alinghi all the time. So you could say that the team gets very good value out of us because we are both working 24 hours a day!”
Dirk Kramers (NED)
Dirk Kramers. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Dirk Kramers first learned to sail cruising and dinghy racing with his parents in the Netherlands. After studying mechanical engineering and working for Dutch boatbuilder Huisman, he moved to the United States in the 1970s and started working for Minneford Yacht Yard in New York. “They built famous America's Cup winners such as Intrepid,” says Kramers. “The 12-Meter Courageous had just been finished when I arrived and this sparked my first interest in the America's Cup game.”
It is a game that has consumed him ever since. He has worked on many successful campaigns, including the design of the rig and beam for the infamous Stars & Stripes catamaran, which won the America’s Cup in 1988. Little did he realise that 20 years later the America’s Cup would give him another opportunity to work on another America's Cup multihull design, but he has loved the opportunity to work on a project as extreme as Alinghi 5. “These past two years, I’ve been like a kid in a candy store. We finally get to play with aspects of boat design that we’ve never been able to play with because we were restrained by all these rules. On the other hand, like a kid in a candy store, you can end up eating too much. Or to put it another way - given too much rope you can hang yourself.”
“Those risks certainly apply here, but on the other hand I would say I’ve learned more about boat design in this campaign than I’ve done in the last five. We get to play with the pure elements of what makes a boat go fast. Whereas with the Version 5 campaigns, with the steady evolution of the boats over the last 15 years, our role has been one of eking out tiny gains in performance from the rule. Without rules we get to the pure elements of what makes a boat go fast, not how you can best fool the rule.
“You could almost say that this is more of a pure America’s Cup than the previous one because it is just one challenger, one defender and a very basic rule.”
Some describe the 33rd America’s Cup as a designer’s contest, but Kramers only agrees up to a point. “The America’s Cup game as a whole still requires you to play all aspects of the game. That includes design and building and sailing and then tuning and testing. Unfortunately it also involves the discipline of legal action. It never is just a pure designer or pure sailor event.”
Kramers says the opportunity to work on such an open rule has given him a much deeper understanding of yacht design. “Rather than trying to fit a design to a strict rule, this open rule has given us a much bigger palette to paint on. It’s scarier because it gives you much greater scope to go wrong, but it’s also more rewarding when you get it right. I’m much prouder of this boat than of any of the last 10 boats I’ve designed in the America’s Cup. There is more of me in this boat.”
Kurt Jordan (USA)
Kurt Jordan. Image copyright George Johns/Alinghi.
Kurt Jordan has had a great time sailing on board Alinghi 5, monitoring the loads via more than 70 load sensors each time the boat goes sailing. Jordan’s role is the same as last time, using computer simulations to model the structural loads on every part of the boat, but it’s a much more important role than in the previous Cup. “I’ve been working on Version 5 monohulls for 18 years and we didn’t have much stuff break during that time. We had minimum weights to build to and strict rule requirements; here we have nothing. You build as light as you dare, so yes, I would say my role has become a lot more important than in previous Cups.”
Having studied mechanical engineering and naval architecture, his first job was in the transport industry. “My speciality had to do with composite materials,” says Jordan. “So when the rule changed in the 1992 America's Cup to allow the use of composite materials it was a good opportunity for me to get in at that stage because I had good knowledge of that field.”
His passion for sailing was already there from a childhood growing up racing with his family on small boats. Having joined the America's Cup in 1992 as an engineer designing masts and spars, by 1995 he was working with the Young America team, in 2000 with America True and in 2003 with OneWorld.
While he is one of the most experienced people in the Cup, Jordan admits: “The more you know, the more you realise you don't actually know.” Never would this be truer than of the 33rd America’s Cup. “This is only my second multihull project in 25 years in the business, and from an engineering point of view it’s exciting as hell.”
His first foray into multihull design was with PlayStation, the big round-the-world catamaran owned by Steve Fossett, the American entrepreneur and adventurer. “Working on PlayStation was really exciting, and I’m so happy to be back,” says Jordan. “When we won that court appeal in August 2008 to get back to a keelboat America’s Cup, there were quite a few of us who felt a huge wave of despair, because we were turning our attention back to a monohull. Now I think the sailors have picked up that same kind of excitement from sailing on this boat, and looking forward to many years of campaigning a monohull might seem dull after this project. Then again, when you open up the rules to allow amazing boats like this, the budget has to follow. There is no getting away from the fact that these machines are much more complicated, much more expensive than what we were doing last time.”
Asked whether Alinghi 5 represents the pinnacle of his career in engineering, Jordan is not sure. “I think a friend told me when I started working on my first America’s Cup boat in the early 90s that this was going to be the experience of a lifetime, then I thought the same with PlayStation, and it’s happened a few times since then. It seems like every three or four years, I experience something which feels like the pinnacle of my career, so I’m not sure if this is it. But it is certainly a very high point.”
Kirst Feddersen (USVI)
Kirst Feddersen. Image copyright Bruno Cocozza/Alinghi.
Kirst Feddersen studied aerospace engineering at university. “I was always interested in building things and always had projects building boats, cars, models or something,” he says. “When I graduated I didn't want to go and work for a big aerospace company so I took time off and did some sailing.”
In 1995 the US Virgin Islander joined Hall Spars, working there for five years and in 1999-2000 he worked for Young America on their masts. He later worked on the maxi Boomerang and a number of Admiral's Cup boats.
After Young America he went back to the Virgin Islands and later joined Dirk Kramers at Alinghi. In charge of the mast design, detailing and engineering he says; “My job is to come up with ideas and listen to input from the sailors and sailmakers and other designers. A lot of it is a group design process, I try and take the collective ideas and input and goals of the team and develop that into a new product.”
Designing a mast for Alinghi 5 has been one of the most, if not the most, challenging projects of his career. “In the last Cup we designed new masts, but the difference is we had a solid baseline from the 2003 campaign to work from,” says Feddersen. “I had never designed a multihull mast before, so that was definitely a big learning curve. There were a lot of things to learn about and get comfortable with, not least that this is a huge mast, we’re talking about 60-odd metres of it.”
Add the scale to the complexity of the project, and you can see that this is one of the most ambitious rigs ever attempted. “The mast is fully articulating; it sits on a tiny but incredibly strong metal ball that is mounted on the front beam, so that the mast can cant for and aft and side to side. For example, when you move the mast to windward, it gives you more sail plan projected to the wind and brings the centre of gravity higher to windward.”
When he looks back on what had to be done in the short time available, Feddersen still can’t quite believe how the whole project has come together so well. “We had a month of design time, before we started issuing specifications for the tooling. Normally we would probably want at least three months for that part of the process, and even then you would go back up through the design spiral and double-check all your first calculations. We didn’t have the luxury of being able to do that. But then we have built two masts. The second mast was quite a bit longer than the first, but now we’ve extended the original mast, so that we have two more or less identical rigs ready to go.”
Brett Ellis (AUS)
Brett Ellis. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Brett Ellis specialises in engineering design and draughting. “It is very satisfying to see an idea move from a sketch on a piece of paper to a construction drawing and then the finished piece on the boat integrated with all other components,” he says.
His inspiration to get involved in the America’s Cup came from watching the matches in the early hours of the morning with his dad in 1983. “Australia took the Cup from the Americans for the first time in 132 years!”
Ellis was born into sailing. His grandfather had a small trailer-sailer that the family sailed on Pittwater in Sydney. Later he graduated to Olympic Lasers, Sydney 38s and Farr 40s, going on to compete in the Admiral’s Cup in the late 90s.
Armed with a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) and “a fascination for boats and what makes them go fast”, Ellis works closely with the other designers and the sailors, creating custom components and construction drawings for the builders to work to.
The past two years have almost been like going back to university. “There are so many things I’ve learnt about engineering design during this campaign, but most of all I've learnt not to close the door on any concepts or components because there may be an opportunity to pick them up later and run with it.”
The workload has been ferocious, but he has loved it nevertheless. “We have a small engineering team, and we have been busier than ever; the list of components for Alinghi 5 is huge. We started with a clean sheet of paper for every one, so it’s all custom-designed and built by Alinghi. It is great to be involved in the process of constant refinement. The Alinghi 5 we launched in July is not the Alinghi 5 you see now. We've changed the mast, sails, systems and various other components. There is always a plan to try new stuff, so as designers we are never idle.”
As for advice to someone looking to follow in his footsteps, Ellis says: “Get the education you need to become a designer. Then work in the industry and establish your contacts. These are the people that will lead you to the America's Cup.”
Luc du Bois (SUI)
Luc du Bois. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Luc du Bois originally trained as a geophysicist, but his passion for sailing drew him in another direction. Having sailed since he was eight years old, he competed in the 470 class in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. In the late 80's together with Jean-Pierre Baudet, they invented the revolutionary 3DL production system which is used by North Sails.
3DL Technology has gone on to dominate sailmaking in the America’s Cup ever since. “When we were developing 3DL in my parents’ garage, we had no real understanding where it would lead to. Meanwhile North Sails was looking for something new and different. We happened to meet at the right time.”
His first America's Cup campaign was with Fast 2000, and since 2001 he has been with Alinghi. As a performance analyst, his role is to analyse all the data collected on the boat. He says: “If we think the boat is fast, we want to know by how much. If we change something, we want to know how much it contributes.”
Luc admits he has had a lot more fun working on a “no limits” concept like Alinghi 5. “It was getting less exciting with the ACC Version 5 boats; they were always the same speed, so it’s really nice to work on a faster boat. And when I do my own sailing it is in multihulls, so I’m happy that the America’s Cup has taken a turn in that direction. The designers have always been interested in how the boat performs, but this time it’s even more challenging for them. It’s a new boat; everything is very open, which creates plenty of opportunity to try new ideas.”
However, what may look like a great idea on the drawing board doesn’t always work out in practice on the water. “Sometimes it’s tricky when you go back and it doesn’t work, so part of my job is managing expectations, trying to make sure that the reality on the water is being acknowledged. Is it working, is it not working? In a way things are more obvious, easier, with this campaign. Unlike the Version 5 rule, we are not a hundred boats down the line where you’re looking for small improvements here and there. We’re looking at much bigger performance gains this time.”
Similarly, du Bois must also manage the expectations of the sailors. “If the sailors say it was a really great day and the boat was faster, I tell them by how much. The dangerous thing where it can go wrong is if you analyse things by feeling only. You can have a good day and think everything is great and yet it doesn't necessarily reflect the real speed of the boat.”
Inevitably there are disagreements between the designers and the sailors, and it is part of du Bois’ role to tread a diplomatic path between the two camps. “I do my best to try and stay neutral. One day you can bring good news and another day you can bring bad news. You learn to be cautious about interpreting too much from any particular day. There are days when the results are extremely good because the wind was very solid, and then the next day maybe the boat doesn’t perform as well in the same conditions, maybe because people weren’t on top of their jobs as much. So you always have to be aware of the technical and human factors that can affect performance.”
Mark de Gids (NED)
Mark de Gids. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Mark de Gids works in software development and performance analysis, providing the design and sailing team with tools to support the design of the boat and to make sense of all the data and information recorded from each sailing session on Alinghi 5. “With all the new technology we can measure almost everything,” he says. “Now we can almost answer any question that sailors ask us. We provide answers to questions that otherwise would remain unanswered, like ‘Why was the boat faster today than yesterday?’”
Originally from the Netherlands, de Gids has been a life-long sailing enthusiast, and he managed to combine his twin passions of software design and sailing by securing some work at a company called Robo-Sail in Holland. “I did my project about sail shape recognition, and then I worked for the Dutch Tornado Olympic sailing team."
He was working towards a PhD, but the pull of sailing proved too strong. “I quit my PhD to buy a boat in the Mediterranean and go cruising. Then I arrived in Valencia, and I started working at the university there. Soon afterwards the America’s Cup arrived in Valencia, and somehow I managed to get my CV to Grant Simmer, and that was the beginning of my time working with Alinghi.”
De Gids has now been with Alinghi for more than four years. “Every day I go to work I learn something new about high-performance sailing, about data acquisition, about a changeable environment like the sea.”
In some ways his job is a continuation of what he was doing with the Version 5 boats, but he has also had to develop new software tools to be able to measure different aspects of the multihull campaign. “The exciting part of this is the amount of data we are gathering. If you compare that with one of the Version 5 boats, the amount is just enormous; you cannot imagine how many sensors there are in the boat. It's a huge challenge, and it's a very nice project.
“The difficult part of this project is that we only have one boat from which to analyse data. With the previous campaigns there was always a lot of two-boat testing, which made it easier to compare, analyse and verify data. So that has been particularly challenging this time around, as well as the lack of time. We have had to prioritise our work very carefully.”
De Gids is constantly inspired by the people around him. “Everybody in Alinghi is the best in his field, which encourages you to get the very best out of yourself as well. It’s a very inspiring environment. I like the application of science, to put the theory into practice. Science and its applications come together at Alinghi, a bit like in Formula One.”
Daniele Costantini (ITA)
Daniele Costantini. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
With a PhD in electrical engineering, Daniele Costantini works at the cutting edge of fibre-optic technology to measure the loads and strains on the boat as it sails around the racetrack. Last time with the Version 5 boats, this load-measuring technology was nice to have, but it was on boats that were already well understood. This time the fibre-optic technology that Costantini manages is vital to the speed development and structural survival of Alinghi 5. “It’s exciting to see my work as a tool that the sailors use every day and which is going to be used for the Cup as well. It’s exciting to see that what you do is contributing to the success of the team.”
Costantini first started working for the team through the partnership which was formed between Alinghi and the École Polytéchnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland's Federal Institute of Technology. “It's a great pleasure and honour to work with this group of talented and experienced designers full time as I knew them quite well already from previous years. This is a unique opportunity to combine work and passion."
The Italian’s expertise is more vital than ever to the team. With the light-weight design and build of Alinghi 5 treading a fine line between boat speed and reliability, the sailors rely on the feedback from the fibre-optics to get a clear picture of how close to the working limits of the boat they are operating. “Some of the sailors tell me they would have broken the boat a long time ago without this level of monitoring technology,” says Costantini.
Most boats will take whatever punishment a sailor is capable of throwing at them, so weaning competitive athletes off a lifetime of pushing boats to their limits can be difficult. For this reason, the monitoring system has alarms, which start blaring if any part of the boat exceeds its safe working load. “In Formula One, the driver cannot always push the car as hard as he likes,” says Costantini by way of comparison. “The same is true of this boat. The trimmers know that they can only pull the sails into a certain point before they put the structure of the boat at risk.”
While this all may sound terribly serious, Costantini still loves sailing as much as he ever did when he was a child. And to be competing in the America’s Cup again with Alinghi is the ongoing realisation of a childhood ambition. “The America’s Cup is something I always dreamed about, and I still can’t quite believe that my dream turned into reality.”
Daniel Bernasconi (GBR)
Daniel Bernasconi. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
As a highly sought-after expert in mechanical modelling, Daniel Bernasconi worked at the top of Formula One as part of the McLaren team before joining Alinghi in mid-2007.
British-born Bernasconi led the vehicle modelling group at the McLaren Formula One HQ in England and enjoyed six happy years there. However he enjoys life at Alinghi even more. “Although I loved the job, I wasn’t really that into motor racing,” he says. “And because I was just one person in a huge organisation, it was hard to say what sort of contribution you had made to the team’s success.”
Sailing, on the other hand, is a passion. The opportunity to get in at the top of the sport with Alinghi was too good to miss. Following discussions with Grant Simmer, he left McLaren to study for a PhD in fluid dynamics, to add to the engineering degree that he’d already got from Cambridge University.
On completing his PhD, supervised by Alinghi’s Michael Richelsen, Bernasconi was suitably equipped to join the team full-time. When he started in mid-2007, he thought he’d be working on the design for the AC90 monohull that was due to replace the Version 5 boats of the previous 20 years, however when the focus shifted to creating a ‘no-limits’ catamaran, Bernasconi wasn’t one to complain. It has been a dream project for a design engineer. “For me, this is the top of my career so far, the most exciting project by a long way,” he says. “And whatever happens in the future, I’m sure this will always stand out as a cool project.”
It’s a project Bernasconi wishes could continue beyond the 33rd Cup. “In a way this will be unfinished business; there’s still so much we don’t know about designing big multihulls. As designers, we’d love a second and third chance to refine from the point we’ve reached with Alinghi 5. It would be amazing to know where it’s going to end up. Who knows what the optimum boat would look like? But whatever the Cup becomes next, and whichever kind of boat is involved, I’d still like to stay with the team to work on the next challenge beyond this Cup.”
Whereas in the recent past Cup teams have done hours and days of two-boat testing side by side to see which boat is slightly faster, Alinghi hasn’t had the luxury of doing that this time. This has made the whole VPP (velocity prediction programme) process much more important.
“It’s much harder to evaluate different configurations of the boat because you have no direct comparison, so you’re relying on differences from tack to tack or from day to day. So it’s been a real challenge to extract meaningful performance data.”
Asked if he will feel a sense of responsibility for Alinghi 5’s performance in the 33rd America’s Cup, Bernasconi quips: “If we win I’ll feel a lot of responsibility! But seriously, I’m proud to have been a part of the team that created Alinghi 5. And I certainly feel very attached to her. She is a beautiful boat.”
Silvio Arrivabene (ITA)
Silvio Arrivabene. Image copyright George Johns/Alinghi.
Like many of Alinghi’s technical team, Silvio Arrivabene is a great sailor in his own right. He was navigator for Mascalzone Latino for four years until he joined Alinghi as construction and planning manager.
“I coordinate the efforts of the design team and the boatbuilders, just as I did in the previous campaign,” he says. “But this has been a strange and unique campaign, with the type of boats changing and the venue changing too.”
The Italian’s ability to speak three other languages fluently - French, English and Spanish - has been more useful than ever, although maybe Russian would have been useful too, when negotiating to use the enormous helicopter which airlifted Alinghi 5 from Lake Geneva on the spectacular journey across the Alps to Genoa.
The unique challenges of this campaign have taught Arrivabene many things, not least patience. “It has been a great two years from a professional standpoint, but it has not been easy times with planning around all the changes, because of the legal situation. Of course we all feel happy to be part of this project, but I can’t pretend there haven’t been times when I’ve felt the stress with all the uncertainty of the situation. One day you plan to helicopter your boat, and then next day the plan changes.”
Arrivabene has a Masters in naval architecture and marine engineering from the University of Trieste, and that background has stood him in good stead for the technical challenges presented by Alinghi 5, and for being able to talk from a position of knowledge when dealing with suppliers and manufacturers. “I really enjoy working with Tim Gurr, the shore manager, and working out solutions to the problems presented to us. The time constraints have been very challenging. For example we rented the biggest shed in Villeneuve to build the mast, but at the time we didn’t know the mast was going to measure as much as it did, so that was another challenge.”
After all the logistical headaches of the past two years, Arrivabene is now looking forward to the action and getting back on the water. “I am privileged to be with Alinghi, and sometimes it’s easy to forget that what we do is amazing. It’s good to be reminded of the privilege of working in such a special world. After all the build-up, at last we have a chance to get on the water with some adrenalin running through your veins, and to find out if all that effort we put into making Alinghi 5 a fast boat has been good enough to win the Cup again.”
Ed Baird (USA)
Ed Baird. Image copyright Guido Trombetta/Alinghi.
Ed Baird proved that he was one of the best keelboat helmsmen in the world when he steered Alinghi to victory in the 32nd America’s Cup in 2007. That Baird could steer SUI100 quickly came as no surprise to anyone. He has won multiple world championships in dinghies from the Laser class through to keelboats like the J/24s and 50-footers. And of course he’s a three-time match racing world champion.
The 33rd America's Cup cycle has required the experienced American to explore racing large multihulls at the top level. Baird has certainly proven a fast learner, winning the highly competitive Extreme 40 iShares Cup circuit in 2008 at his first attempt. It has been a good grounding in multihull sailing which has prepared him well for the transition from heavy keelboats to the lightweight flyers that will contest the 33rd Cup. “The Extreme 40s were really valuable for me. That racing taught me a lot about how these boats operate and what goes where, what you can do and what you can’t,” says Baird. “But they’re definitely a much smaller version of what we have now. There are some moves that are the same but there are a number of things that are different. On board, you feel much, much smaller on Alinghi 5. The boat has got a lot more control over what you are doing and it requires some pretty significant team work.”
Baird acknowledges the difference between the challenge of the 32nd and 33rd Cups. “Sailing on a massive catamaran has brought us as far away from SUI 100 as you can get, but the one thing that is consistent from one boat to another is that sails are what drive the boat. The same principles move all boats through the water. We just have to learn how to apply those concepts to Alinghi 5 in the most effective way possible.”
Steering the big cat demands fast reaction times from the helmsman. “It requires a different level of awareness, a quicker response to what the boat is trying to do,” Baird explains. “There’s no forgiveness for making a steering error. With the Version 5 boats in the 32nd Cup, you could get away with being a little inefficient with the sailing for a few seconds and not get punished too badly. But with the multihull you have to be incredibly alert with your driving all the time in order to keep the boat performing at its highest level. The speeds and angles change so dramatically in such a short time any distraction could represent a loss of boat lengths. So, in that sense, it is quite different and you really have to pay attention.”
Will McCarthy (AUS)
Will McCarthy. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Will McCarthy joined Alinghi in 2001 as a mainsail grinder, although with the use of powered winches in the 33rd America’s Cup, he has taken up a shore role this time. “Before I became a professional sailor, I used to be a builder, and so now my role this time is as site manager, responsible for all the building work that is going on at the base. Obviously I would rather be sailing on the boat, but unfortunately my past has caught up with me and my background as a builder meant that I was landed with this job,” laughs the Australian.
While McCarthy makes no secret of the fact that he’d rather be sailing, he still loves being involved in the competitive environment of the America’s Cup. “I love being part of Alinghi, I’ve been part of the team for nine years and I like working together towards a common goal. It’s a great team, and even if I’m not sailing it’s easy to stay motivated.”
McCarthy still works on his fitness, and while he was in Ras Al Khaimah he competed in some surf-ski competitions. Having grown up around Sydney Harbour, he has always loved watersports. He started out racing Lasers and skiffs before moving on to one-design keelboats, in particular the Etchells class where he competed in state, national and world championships both as crew and helmsman. In 2000 he competed for several months in Europe on the Maxi circuit before returning to Australia to win line honours in the 2000 Sydney to Hobart Race.
As someone who is keen to get back on the water, McCarthy hopes to resume duties as a grinder in a multi-challenger event, in similar fashion to the 32nd America’s Cup in 2007.
Francesco Rapetti (ITA)
Francesco Rapetti. Image copyright Guido Trombetta/Alinghi.
Francesco Rapetti makes no secret of his disappointment at not being part of the sailing team for Alinghi 5. The mastman has had to make way for others to do the role that he was accustomed to doing on the Version 5 keelboats. “I am not doing the mast because with the engine, not so many people are required. And because the course is so short - I mean it’s long but there is only one manoeuvre - there are not so many sails. So we decided to go for a bowman and a pitman to cover the role of the mastman.”
Rapetti has been seconded to the shore crew. “I help the guys to get the boat ready for the next day and then I drive the tender and follow the race boat around the water.”
On the occasions that he has sailed on board the boat, he has been very impressed: “The boat is very, very light and its sails very fast and with such little effort!”
Asked what he expects for the 33rd America’s Cup, Rapetti says: “This America’s Cup is almost gone now, February will pass very quickly.” He is already looking forward to the next America’s Cup. “I hope we get back to sailing a new type of monohull that can go faster downwind, exactly what we dreamt about three years ago and what all the challengers had agreed, except for BMW Oracle. Lots of people, manual power, lots of sail changes - I want a place back on the boat again, to be part of the sailing team again.”
His advice for Alinghi fans wanting to get into sailing? “If you want to try you should jump. You should do everything to get where you want to be. Of course you have to be ready at the right moment, like I was in 1989 with Paul Cayard, but if you are lucky or not, you have to jump, for sure.”
Jan Dekker (RSA)
Jan Dekker. Image copyright George Johns/Alinghi.
Having sailed around the world on the giant catamaran Club Med, Jan Dekker had a head start on his teammates, in terms of understanding how big fast multihulls work. “I think it definitely helps to hone your skills on big multihulls like Club Med, but there are certain things that you have to do and certain habits that you need to get into with Alinghi 5 that are different to anything else. And all the guys on the team are very good sailors and smart people, so it didn’t take them long...”
The biggest difference that Dekker notices between sailing the old Version 5 monohulls and a fast multihull is the price you pay for making a mistake. “You’ve got to get the basics right because little mistakes in this type of boat are very costly, just because of the speed differential between sailing properly and getting it slightly wrong. You can be looking at a 10-knot difference in speed whereas on a monohull the difference is only 1 knot. With a tender boat like this you really have to be extremely thorough and make sure that you do everything right and that nothing breaks.”
Dekker is not averse to risk, and if asked to go up the mast he will do so without hesitation. But it’s not an idea he relishes. “So far we’ve been pretty lucky, and we’ve only sailed in very flat water. To go up the mast is not difficult but if we do it in Valencia on a day with some big waves, for sure then it will be a different story. It can become quite dangerous when you go up the mast in those conditions.
Considering his many offshore adventures, it’s not surprising that Dekker considers his greatest achievement to be “surviving!”, or that the most important lesson he has learnt in all his years of competitive racing is “never take anything for granted”. He has consistently appeared on the winning team in a number of different competitions, including The Race with Club Med, and the Volvo Ocean Race with Team ABN Amro.
For anyone looking to follow in Dekker’s footsteps and forge a career as a professional sailor, he has this advice: “Just sail as much as you can, do a good job wherever you can and eventually people will notice that you’re doing a good job and will offer you a position somewhere. That’s how you go – one step at a time. You can’t expect to just get in at the top, you’ve got to work your way up, and the only way to work your way up is to do your job properly.”
Curtis Blewett (CAN)
Curtis Blewett. Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Curtis Blewett never complained about being the sewer man on the Version 5 monohulls of the last few Cups. Crawling around in the under-belly of the boat, through the dark and the damp, repacking sails, it was hardly the most glamorous of jobs in the America’s Cup. But the Canadian prided himself on doing a job that no one else wanted to do.
Fortunately there is no sewer on Alinghi 5, so Blewett gets to see daylight again. “Sunscreen every day!” he smiles. “It’s a huge change, and a good one. I’ve been bowman around the world a few times, and now in the America’s Cup it’s nice to be racing up on deck for a change.”
Blewett is definitely the outdoorsy type, even when he’s not sailing. He spends his spare time mountain biking and free riding. He enjoys the adrenalin of putting himself under pressure, a useful attribute for coping with America’s Cup competition. "These sports allow me to be more agile. That's one of the cool things about Alinghi, what we need on race day can't be gained just from sailing and the gym. To put yourself under the pressure of other sports hones your instincts to be more reactive under pressure."
No surprise then, that Blewett enjoys running around a fast cat like Alinghi 5. “The boat is fairly physical - although there are fewer ropes and fewer sails to haul around, which is a good thing. But it's still a very physical boat even with the powered winches. The whole thing is a great step up from the Version 5 days. I think that going back to one of the old keelboats would be like going back to public transport if your Ferrari broke down.”
Sailing Alinghi 5 is a unique experience, although for Blewett it reminds him a little bit of his time sailing around the world on board the catamaran Club Med. “There are certainly similarities, they’re both great big cats, but Alinghi 5 is very unique in other ways. The equipment is quite fragile, and you have a lot of opportunities to break things. You have to be really careful with everything you touch. It's as easy to damage something as doing what you’re trying to do. You have to be really sharp and precise with your movements.”
Having done two round-the-world Volvo Ocean Races, including winning one of them with Paul Cayard, Blewett knows all about danger, and he is not particularly overawed by the potential risks of sailing on Alinghi 5. But he retains a healthy respect for the loads involved. “With the power of the hydraulics, there is so much power at your disposal, and yet the boat is still delicate. When you’re running around the nets on the boat, it's important to stay out of the highly loaded areas where it's not necessary to hang around any longer than you need to. But it’s a really smart boat. I love sailing on it. It’s the racing I’m most looking forward to; I’m just tired of all these legal games being played. I want to get on the water and race. Just get it happening.”
Rodney Ardern (NZL)
Rodney Ardern . Image copyright Carlo Borlenghi/Alinghi.
Over the next few weeks we will be introducing our 23 sailing team members ahead of the 33rd America's Cup Match which starts on 8 February...
We begin with Rodney Ardern who was a dyed-in-the-wool keelboat sailor. He spent most of his childhood racing and cruising around the North Island of New Zealand, before joining Team New Zealand aged just 21. With a match racing world title and three Volvo Ocean Races on his CV, there isn’t much you can tell Ardern about how to sail keelboats.
But multihulls were another matter. The last couple of years have been a big learning curve, and one that he has loved. “I’d only done a small amount of catamaran sailing before,” says Ardern, who describes his role as floater/pitman. “I had a Formula 18 catamaran and did a few regattas including the Archipelago Raid in Sweden. But getting to sail on the Extreme 40 circuit and on board Ernesto Bertarelli’s 41-footer on Lake Geneva has been a real eye-opener. Experiences like that have been really good for the team and help everyone understand what makes multihulls go faster and how to handle them.”
In terms of performance, nothing that Ardern has sailed before comes close to the speed of Alinghi 5, although he says you have to remind yourself of how fast you are travelling sometimes. “I guess you don’t really have that sensation of speed, you know? You’re always a couple of metres off the water. And even the first time on Lake Geneva when we flew a hull we didn’t realise until a cheer went up from the chase boats following us. But when you start running around on the boat, if you’re up near the front beam or in the back draft of the headsail, that’s where you get flushed out and you suddenly realise the apparent wind generated by the boat speed. Walking round the back of the headsail is like walking into a full gale. So sometimes, you get a real sensation of the speed, and other times not, but you always know that it’s very powerful and something you need to have a lot of respect for.”
Ardern recalls the first time he saw the boat in its finished state. “The first time we saw it on Lake Geneva, Alinghi 5 looked huge. But over time you get used to it, as you spend time on the boat, everything sort of shrinks. That said, every day you go sailing is exciting, it’s a thrill that never leaves you. I think it’s going to be pretty hard to go back to sailing anything else after ripping around on this thing for a year.”
Alinghi
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