Cup yachts heavy, slow

Press, 12 February 1986, Page 44

Cup yachts heavy, slow

Despite the millions of dollars, the winged keels, and the radical materials, the 12-metre yachts battling for the world championships off Fremantle are museum pieces. They are heavy, they are slow, their basic design is around 70 years old — a modern boat maybe half their size could leave one for dead for speed.

But these anachronistic giants, are the glamour boats of world yachting, the nautical equivalent of the Formula One racing cars.

The reason is the America’s Cup — without it they would have joined the J boats as fond memories and forgotten designs.

According to yachting experts, 12-metre yachts have been around since before World War 1.

They were one of what is known as the metre class — boats rating to the formula six, eight and 12 metres under the international rule which had its development in Northern Europe. Between the world wars the boats competing for the America’s Cup were the giant J boats — monolithic racers nearly 130 ft long with masts rising 155 ft above the deck and taking a crew of more than 30 to work them. But with World War 11, the cup challenges stopped and in most countries they were broken up for materials to help with the war effort — items like the 90 tons of lead from their keels.

In 1958, when the challenges for the cup

resumed, the J boats had gone except for one or two on either side of the Atlantic, and the New York Yacht Club looked around for a boat to replace them, preferably from the metre class.

Around Newport and Rhode Island Sound there were several 12-metre yachts, and they were common enough in Europe as well.

The NYYC also wanted to keep the America’s Cup challenges exclusive — out of the reach of the average yachties — to keep the glamour, the prestige, and the elitism that had always been attached to contests for the Auld Mug.

The 12 metres filled the bill admirably and they became the glamour boat of world yachts. But they are really out of step with modern racers. Despite the huge advances in yacht design, the 12metres have developed very little — boats built in 1938 can still match the ponderously slow speeds of those built last year.

The difference is in the refinements, but even with winged keels and modern materials, the latest boats can still only manage a pedestrian 8-10 knots at best. Until the advent of the winged keel, their design had stagnated, and it took Ben Lexcen and his winged wonder to put some sting back into 12metre thinking. America’s Leonard Greene, an aeronautical engineer turned yacht designer, has taken that further with the bulbousnosed winged keel on the

United States yacht Courageous, while the New Zealanders, Bruce Farr, Laurie Davidson and Ron Holland, got the materials break-through, forsaking the traditional aluminium for fibreglass in a space-age formula that the sceptics said would be too heavy. Because of the restraints of the 12-metre rule, which has hardly changed since its inception, the modem boats look almost like something out of the ark. Although the rating is 12 metres, they are generally in fact more than 20 metres long — or in the language of the era, around 62-67 ft from their sloping sterns to their unfashionable pencil-thin bows.

Their masts normally rise about 90ft, they carry a huge sail area, their keels weigh in at an average 20 tonnes, and to get as long a waterline as possible a trademark of their profile is the almost square, rather than raked,

finish to the bow. :■ . With the main advances in modern 12-metre de-, sign concentrating on the keels, the boats are surprisingly manoeuvrable. The closest the New Zealanders got in the past to a 12-metre yacht was the famous Auckland boat Ranger, a 62ft giant designed and. built in 1937 by Lou Tercel; The 12-metre is an out and out day-racer — inside she is an empty shell holding only spare sails; with no bunks, no facilities of any kind. ’and no motor — and ■ Zealand yacht racing which developed around cruising boats, has never had anything to do with them. Now, with yachting’s holy grail within reach 1 virtually just across the ? Tasman, the New Zealanders have got into the 12- i metre boots and all, and are kicking sand in the.-i faces of some of the most experienced syndicates in the world. f' CHRIS PETERS ;• NZPA staff correspondent