Pressure Drop

Designers by their nature as well as the nature of the trade, are often not traditionalists because of the need to create their own distinctive mark in the yachting world. After all, have you ever met Doug Peterson? The term Nutty Professor comes to mind. And who can forget Britt Chance's bizarre "Mariner" and her square bustle? That of course brings to mind what Ted Turner said to Chance when he saw this unflattering rear-end: "Jesus, Britt, even a turd is tapered."

Creativity is not a requisite however, of those copycats who will simply knock-off the winning boat's shape from the last event via reverse engineering, illicit use of design materials, or otherwise. But recognizing that to rise to the top of the heap, distinction and uniqueness is required (even if it doesn't make the yachts sail faster), young designers with limited experience and skills are being given more consideration as a consequence of their aggressive pitching of untried concepts and shapes. The goal, of course, is to achieve a better position in the pecking order to try (you guessed it!), even more opportunity and power to explore unorthodox designs.

Is this good? It depends who you root for - the designers and their technology suppliers (computer freaks) think its the cat's meow to be given the keys to the kingdom, discretion and money-wise. The sailors think its great too, at least at first, because the youthful and enthusiastic designer thinking "outside the box," is probably a contemporary in terms of age and his enthusiastic prognostications as to speed, handling and revolutionary design breakthrough are infectious. With a pumped-up sailing crew behind him, its tough for syndicate management to ignore this young Turk!

We know that is it rare for breakthroughs to occur in anything that attracts money and interest and sailing is no different especially after 4 events under the IACC Rule and perhaps 5 design successive generations (depending on whether you consider Reichel/Pugh's Kanza an advancement or regression.) We also know that the finite distinctions created by designers and pitched as speed improvements are in fact usually theoretical and dependent on a perfect replication of the modeled conditions. More importantly, with yachts of generally equal characteristics, the crew with more training, skill and familiarity will prevail (with all other factors such as wind shifts being equal), and in order to achieve that crew combination, it is essential to get the best boats in the water as soon as possible.

We will, in our next episode, explore what impact all this internal dissension, team infighting and "empire building" that we've been hearing about is having on some of the competitors and the impact of this discord on the construction progress and delivery of new IACC yachts to New Zealand. In the meantime keep an eye on whether the new boats of teams who claimed they would be sailing in NZ by October, are still in the shed or, worse, still on the drawing board.