SL
The yard that I run, Noakes Boat and Shipyards, primarily at North Sydney, really evolved from my rigging business which I actually bought into, John Noakes Rigging, when I was 20 years of age. I bought my partner out some two years later as he had cancer and fundamentally Noakes Rigging became solely my business from roundabout 1984 onwards. >From there we developed a whole lot of new techniques in the rigging world which really focused round what was then called industrial rigging, and the word architectural rigging was actually born at Noakes in the late 80s. We did quite a few construction jobs etc, and we grew the business to a point where we were the largest yacht rigging and commercial riggers fundamentally focusing on architectural work.

In Australia we had a pretty bad recession in the 1990s which affected the marine industry heavily, and at that time the building industry as well, so we cast around for another type of business to get involved with. The yard at North Sydney was up for tender, it was a brand new facility at that stage, in the mid 90s we tendered for the yard and we won and pretty much we haven’t looked back. We’ve grown Noakes Boat and Shipyards now to a number of sites, the largest being in North Sydney. We also have another site at a place called The Spit in Sydney, one Newcastle up the coast from Sydney a couple of hours, and another couple of hours north at Nelson Bay. We are acquiring a marina and small boatyard site in Tasmania, and latest if not least, got involved with Iain Murray and the Oatley family in acquiring what is known as Woolwich Dock Maritime Village.

Where Noakes places themselves above the competition, primarily all the yards are set up with a proper environmental system in that nothing runs back into the harbours or rivers - that is a big tick. Other than that we cover all bases of boat repair and we also allow anyone to come in and rent space and do their own thing, that way it keeps our business always with options.

How did you and Grundig become married, so to speak, tell us that story of persistence or luck or fortune? What are Grundig's objectives in this sponsorship, have they changed over time?

SL
The Grundig sponsorship of my Open 66 actually ended two years ago with the international parent running into financial difficulties. Grundig Australia still exists and we still speak to them but they haven’t been involved with sponsoring us for the past two years. We’ve been sponsored by a subsidiary of Telecom New Zealand, a company called AAPT, which stands for Australian Associated Press Telecommunications. We’ve been involved with AAPT for the past two years really on the back of our success with the Grundig branding.

We’ve continued on to massage or improve not only our relationship with our sponsors but also what we delivered to our sponsors. It’s very important not just to go sailing as a billboard but to actually work for your sponsors for their objectives. What we do is a number of team-building days with the company, as well as specific events where it is important that their name gets across. It’s also important to take the boat to the public as far as doing television and radio interviews and also having the boat open for people to look at, at the end of regattas or races up and down the coast of Australia.

Very much what we have tried to do with our program is break down the elitism of ocean racing at the high end of the sport. As a maxi chaser what we do at the end of each major race is that anyone that is walking down the dock, we speak to them and we invite them to have a look at the boat. That way it breaks down the class structure somewhat, and then people get more involved, and I think that’s very important to make your sponsorship work properly.

One thing interesting in yachting is that, unlike Formula 1 car racing where they may refer to Michael Schumacher, in yachting they actually refer to the name of the boat over the name of the skipper. As in the America’s Cup you talk about Alinghi, when you get situations like us racing it’s Alfa Romeo or AAPT or Nicorette or whatever, so it’s a good medium for sponsors as far as that goes, because their name’s always out there.

You were repeatedly quoted as saying that in working up the Open 60 to the 66 foot Grundig jumping and foiling machine you incorporated a lot of your experience in skiffs, as well as the Stars, in developing the rig configuration in the boat. What features, ideas, concepts, did you take from these two classes and apply to Grundig? Did the concepts from the two boats mix up in the new realization?

SL
What I’ve learnt from the Star class and the 18 foot skiff is really that fast boats balance well. That’s been the most important thing in working up the 60 foot Open class to its 66 foot length now. The boat is perfectly balanced on all points of sail - sailing upwind, you can let go of the helm and the boat sails just perfectly in a straight line for miles and miles before you touch the helm, and that’s something that’s very akin to the Star class, where they have no helm at all.

As far as the 18 foot skiff goes, it’s important about getting the boat as light as possible and keeping the mast pointing to the sky, so in order to do that it’s really a function of getting enough righting moment in the boat with enough sail area without the boat being too heavy, and what we’ve found with 18 foot skiffs is that it is always better to have wider wings with a tall and light crew. That’s restricted now where we sail with a wing width of 16 feet, so much like our stability rules with the offshore racing now, we’ve got a restricted amount of water ballast that we can carry so it’s really a matter of making sure the bulb weight and the water ballast weight is just at the optimum for maximum downwind sailing.

The concepts that we’ve now put into our new boat really is the next step that I see in offshore monohull development, where the actual crew weight comes into play on the side of the boat. On the narrow boats it actually creates more downforce. What I’ve looked at now is what happens with multihull classes and windsurfers where they use a system where they have no downforce and they actually virtually lose displacement by using foils or canting their rig to windward. So in our case, with our new boat, it’s very much about minimizing downforce, decreasing displacement and actually using the crew weight as a means of leverage. In order to hold the mast up, a canting wingmast, we needed to have a wide shroud base, so hence we put wings on the boat. I’d love to have water ballast in the wings but as the rules have changed, that’s not possible now, so our 18 crew members will now sit on the end of the wings which will help with the leverage, and to hold the boat upright we’re now incorporating a canting keel as the pictures suggest.

Tell us about your fully unbiased experience with the Outleader kites? How did you go through the testing, analysis and selection process for the Hobart race? How seriously did you consider using them in the race? What do you think are good applications for these kites today? What is your reaction to some race rules specifying that downwind sails must be flown proximately close to the mast - is this an attempt to outlaw the kites?

SL
The Outleader kite situation really came about because we looked at our position with the maxi boats in last year’s Sydney Hobart race, we had a very long downwind race previous to the Sydney Hobart race against Skandia, a 98 foot super maxi, and after 350 nautical miles she beat us by eleven minutes in a downwind race condition. When we were racing at 90 degrees apparent we were slightly faster than her but as soon as we went square she mowed us down and eventually beat us. The opportunities for the last Hobart race really stemmed around the upper limit in the handicap rule which meant that everybody had to race with an IRC rating of 1.65. That gave us an opportunity to speed our boat up, whereas the supermaxis couldn’t. We looked around at trying to find an area where we may be able to beat the supermaxis, and the only area that we saw that we may beat them was in the downwind condition with a new weapon, so we looked at the Outleader kite.

I believe development of asymmetric spinnakers and planing hulls have really left the Outleader kite behind somewhat for displacement sailboats. I think possibly something like foilers or multihulls, it may work better, but I’m a little bit sceptical in our situation. It certainly made the boat lighter but unfortunately it didn’t, in our trials, make the boat go faster, and I think that stemmed from how the boat has to be made in order to measure as a spinnaker.

The testing of the Outleader kite I must say was an interesting experience. At first we tried to hoist the kite with the mainsail up and couldn’t fill the kite up, so then we tested it without the mainsail and got the kite to fly. It was an extremely interesting experience in that it was quite exciting, you didn’t know what was going to happen, pretty much the kite takes the boat rather than me being able to steer it. Once I learnt the way of getting power into the kite by steering the boat into the wind as it started to dive down towards the ocean, I was able to get the kite to fly quite successfully, but the bottom line was the speed of the boat hadn’t increased. We still need to do quite a bit more testing.

What's the story with the bow foils on the Grundig? On, off, keepers or chuck them?

SL
The bow foils we fitted to what was then Grundig were really a mechanism to try and stop the boat from nosediving. The boat is quite wide-sterned and quite straight, once she accelerates to planing speed she tends to nosedive into the wave in front. This is really a function that waves basically go at 20 knots and the boat is trying to do faster than 20 knots, so we were looking at means to try and keep the bow out of the water. It’s more of a speed limiter than making the boat go faster. They worked just fine for downwind conditions, unfortunately they were not retractable so upwind they tended to slow the boat down. Then finally we had a situation with the Royal Ocean Racing Club, the administers of the IRC rule, who really wanted to know what their function was and were going to impose a rating penalty so it was just easier in the end to cut them off.

Certainly my new boat I intend to get the boat foiling, and our plan is now to build a 50 knot-breaking foiler which is a really interesting craft which Rohan Veal and I are working on, along with Andy Dovell. From that experience I believe that even our 98 footer some day will be able to sail on foils. Really need to keep you posted on that one as I learn more about foils.

What is the status of your deck canter project? Tell us briefly about the boat's concept.

SL
The status of the canting deck project has really turned into a narrow 98 foot super moth, super skiff if you like, with a canting keel rather than a canting deck. We’ve kept the rig canting. The reason why we’ve changed the concept is because in Australia we have a 10 degree static heel angle rule and sailed to an IMS rule and a number of things for offshore stability. Now those rules have changed to the international ISO code and the 10 degree rule is gone, so really it’s meant that you need to look at different concepts and what we’ve come up with is a narrow, long, canting keel, canting rotating wingmast boat with a wide wingspan for the crew to sit out on, as well as to support the mast.

How much do you reckon the new boat will cost?

SL
I’d like to think that I can get this new boat on the water for just a shade over two million dollars. Looking at the numbers and what support my boatyard can give and the bits and pieces as I do that I bought around the place like spare bulbs and keels and things, I reckon we can probably get it over the line for that sort of money.

It’s one of those things that once you start you actually don’t add up too much, for example the lifting rudder project on my current Open 66 I’ve spent over $200,000 on developing, so sometimes things go a little bit astray but in that case of lifting rudders the boat sails upwind at approximately 0.8 of a knot faster than what it used to. Downwind is where I thought I would make the big benefit but because the foils are so narrow they tend to boil at about 28/29 knots, so it becomes a bit exciting to steer the boat then.

So that’s a little off the subject, the new boat will hopefully cost us a shade over $2 million, but it’s one of those things if I can get someone to commit a sponsorship of $500,000 down with $500,000 at completion, a million dollars a year to run the thing I can get the thing happening.

You obviously are taking a very radical approach to your "maxi." When you see others like Maximus or the new Alfa Romeo, where do you think the maxi scene is headed?

SL
Looking at the current maxis, I suppose Maximus is the boat that interests me as far as its rig plan goes, the new Alfa Romeo just looks big, long and silver to me. It seems that now that they are looking very hard at variable displacement, water tanks as well as canting keels, to actually get the boats to sink more as they heel. Watching Alfa Romeo sail recently she certainly does heel a lot, our idea with our boat is to always have the mast pointing straight up to the sky so there’s not that downforce. I’d obviously like to see our concept get out there because it’s my belief that it’s the next way forward above what you currently see.

It’s a hard decision I suppose for guys like Neville Crichton with Alfa Romeo where the main regattas that he wants to win are really regattas in Europe in different sailing conditions, where in Australia we really set our boat up for one line - going to Hobart we are on starboard tack for a day and a half or on port gybe for one day hopefully and then you’re there. But it’s a different type of racing.

My new boat would be more akin to transatlantic-type racing rather than around the cans in Europe, but we hope to be able to compete there as well. Where it’s all heading umm, it’s really been an arms race the last few years, I quite like it. It’s sort of gone back to the old days of yachting where it was kings and sultans and Kaisers and things that competed. I like it because I still see that there’s an opportunity for radical thinking, and someone like me that left school and became a shoe salesman and now owns a boat and shipyard can still have a go, so hopefully we will get the thing on the line and have a go against these blokes that are incrementally raising the bar with their big heavy monsters.

Thanks Sean!

SL
Thank you.