Sail Wars
Yankee ingenuity has designs on the America's Cup. NOVA goes behind-the-scenes to look at the engineering effort to design a technically advanced sailboat.
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00:00:00Tonight on NOVA, the battle for the America's Cup.
00:00:11The high seas are a flashpoint of research as an American team of designers struggles
00:00:15to solve the technological riddle of the 12-meter yacht and recapture one of sport's oldest
00:00:20trophies.
00:00:21We cannot afford a screw-up.
00:00:24We can afford five more days, we can't afford a screw-up.
00:00:27Burt Lancaster narrates an exclusive profile of one American team locked into the sail
00:00:33wars.
00:00:37Major funding for NOVA is provided by this and other public television stations which
00:00:41depend largely on viewer contributions for their support.
00:00:47Additional funding was provided by the Johnson & Johnson family of companies, supplying health
00:00:53care products worldwide.
00:00:57And by Allied Signal, a technology leader in aerospace, electronics, automotive products
00:01:03and engineered materials.
00:01:24Yeah, go for it!
00:01:29Wind it up, please!
00:01:45And as I speak to you, two 12-meter yachts are rapidly approaching that line, and the
00:01:52one that is in front, the one that is closest to the finish line, is the sail number KA6.
00:01:59They are upon the sails and the numbers of Australia 2, and they appear to have a comfortable
00:02:06lead at this late stage.
00:02:08In the most widely followed series of sailboat races of all time, a sleek white yacht from
00:02:13Western Australia rode the fickle winds off Newport, Rhode Island to a place in history.
00:02:19It's going to be Australia 2!
00:02:21They are going to win!
00:02:22Stand up, Australia!
00:02:24Stand up, Australia!
00:02:25And give these boys a cheer!
00:02:27We are looking for the smoke at any moment!
00:02:29They're about to do it!
00:02:31They're about to cross the line!
00:02:33They make a final move!
00:02:34There it goes!
00:02:39They've done it!
00:02:40Australia 2 has done it!
00:02:42They have won the American Cup!
00:02:44They have done it!
00:02:46They have done it!
00:02:47We have history here today!
00:02:49The Australians have won the American Cup in this corner, and the Boat Liberty has lost
00:02:56the American Cup.
00:03:00Thus ended the longest winning streak in sports history.
00:03:04After 24 successful defenses spanning 132 years, an American yacht had lost.
00:03:13No one on the losing boat will ever forget that September afternoon.
00:03:17John Musham.
00:03:20Going on to the last spinnaker run, when we had opened up a 40 or 50 second lead on the
00:03:26previous upwind leg, and we turned the mark and set the spinnaker, we knew that the Australians
00:03:31were going to be faster on the next leg.
00:03:36The feeling of not being able to do very much to prevent them passing was really a sickening
00:03:42kind of feeling in a sailboat race.
00:03:44The boat was deathly silent.
00:03:46There wasn't really anything to say.
00:03:48They had a better boat.
00:03:53They had a better boat because they decided they would rest the entire program on the
00:03:59major step forward in technology.
00:04:01And the pervasive sense in America was that technology was a barren field, that there
00:04:10wasn't any important gain to be made.
00:04:12That 12 meters had already been optimized, and that the differences from one to the next
00:04:17would be very, very small.
00:04:20Australia 2's winged keel revolutionized 12-meter sailboat design.
00:04:25It was a breakthrough that would have been impossible without the application of cutting
00:04:29edge science.
00:04:32Australia's high-tech victory elevated the contest to much more than just a sailboat race.
00:04:38The Australian team had created something, an intellectual product, that was a brilliant
00:04:46step forward from what we had conceived could be done.
00:04:50And that's a very, very strong statement about where American technology had gotten to, and
00:04:55it was not a very good place.
00:04:58So we picked that up and said, OK, we've been challenged at a different level.
00:05:03We're going to have to look to our imaginations, conceive of some new ideas, really go to the
00:05:08excitement of a mental quest here.
00:05:21Six American syndicates took up the challenge, all of them determined to reassert America's
00:05:26technological strength.
00:05:29Each has spent between $5 and $15 million designing and building their own high-tech
00:05:34boats.
00:05:37In October 1986, they gathered in Fremantle, Western Australia, along with the best from
00:05:42the rest of the world.
00:05:47For the next four months, they'll slug it out to determine which boat will challenge
00:05:51the Australians in the Cup Finals in February 1987.
00:05:59Only by surviving this grueling elimination series, and then defeating the Australians,
00:06:04can an American team make good on its promise to bring the Cup back home.
00:06:12Dennis Conner, the losing American skipper in 1989, is one of the top-rated American
00:06:17challenges, with his new team called Sail America.
00:06:21This is the story of Sail America's three-year effort to design a yacht capable of recapturing
00:06:26sailing's greatest trophy.
00:06:28It's a behind-the-scenes look at a major 12-meter campaign, one that takes us to the
00:06:33highest levels of international sport, and to the frontiers of science.
00:06:40In early 1984, John Marshall was named coordinator of the Sail America design team.
00:06:45His job was to organize and manage an American design effort that would be technologically
00:06:50second to none.
00:06:52It just very rough intuitively, we decided that what we would have to do is put together
00:06:57a multidisciplinary team.
00:06:59People from specifically the sailing environment professionals in that area are three yacht
00:07:06designers, but also people whose expertise was much broader.
00:07:11Theoreticians from a university background, practicing aeronautical engineers, people
00:07:16involved in military development, people from the ship hydrodynamics background, so
00:07:21that what we would have would be the best in the country in a wide range of skills that
00:07:27all could be brought to bear on this particular problem.
00:07:32People think about it like, hey, we've had sailing ships for centuries.
00:07:37How come it isn't all worked out?
00:07:39And it isn't all worked out because it is such a difficult problem.
00:07:44We have to solve the aerospace problem of the forces on the sails.
00:07:48We have to solve the wave problem of this boat that's operating in the interface.
00:07:54And we still have to solve the frictional problem of the water against the hull.
00:07:59All of those problems are present at the same time.
00:08:02And it's by far the most difficult problem that I've seen in terms of ship hydrodynamics.
00:08:10The odds used in the America's Cup are 12 meters, a number that refers not to length,
00:08:16but to an arcane formula called the international 12 meter rule.
00:08:20Key measurements, length, girth difference, freeboard, and sail area are all variables
00:08:27in an equation, the solution of which must equal 12 meters.
00:08:32This produces a boat about 65 feet long and weighing up to 60,000 pounds.
00:08:39It's pretty hard to get away from the influence of the rule
00:08:43and within the influence of the rule come up with something
00:08:46that's really significantly better than any other design.
00:08:52When you're trying to refine something to the upper limit,
00:08:56the difference between a very good boat and an extremely good boat is a pretty small margin.
00:09:03If someone just guesses in the wrong direction, it's pretty easy to have something that's bad.
00:09:10The degrees of relative badness are much broader than the degrees of relative goodness.
00:09:19The definition of an interesting game very often is that the rules are sufficiently restrictive
00:09:24to keep the players together and face to face,
00:09:27and they're sufficiently free to allow some real creativity in the moves that you make.
00:09:32And the 12 meter rule looks deceptively simple,
00:09:35and the game appears deceptively small and constrained.
00:09:39And then you get bursts of extreme creativity
00:09:42when some whole new approach comes into it that no one has thought of.
00:09:45And the elegance of the game reveals itself, and the challenge reveals itself,
00:09:50and then you understand why very bright and very creative people get so heavily involved
00:09:56Really, there's nothing there.
00:09:58Ultimately, it's no more important than winning a game of chess,
00:10:02but the game is nicely balanced.
00:10:06Sail America's strategy was to have two new boats in the water before the end of 1985.
00:10:12Then, if there was enough money and the need, a third boat could be built in 1986.
00:10:19This schedule gave the team 18 months to come up with a winning design.
00:10:24When they started in 1984, this felt like more than enough time.
00:10:29You start the design process by trying to figure out what it is the boat has to do.
00:10:36In the case of a 12 meter, it's got to sail magically from the right foot to the left foot.
00:10:43If it's right foot to the left foot, it's got to go to the right foot.
00:10:47If it's left foot to the right foot, it's got to go to the right foot.
00:10:50The idea of the 12 meter rule is that the boat has to make a difference.
00:10:55In the case of a 12-meter, it's got to sail match races, so it's a one-on-one weapon strictly.
00:11:08You've got to be able to pounce on any weakness or any error by the enemy.
00:11:11You've got to be able to control the enemy.
00:11:14It's a very, very one-on-one kind of competition.
00:11:19It's confrontational.
00:11:20It's aggressive.
00:11:21The boat has to be that way.
00:11:36The ideal 12 would be fast upwind and down.
00:11:39It would be very maneuverable, yet stable.
00:11:43And perhaps most importantly, it would be all of these in a wide range of wind and sea
00:11:48conditions.
00:11:49Unfortunately, due to the 12-meter rule and basic sailboat physics, it's extremely difficult
00:11:55to improve in one area without losing ground in another.
00:12:01For example, following the 12-meter rule, if you want more boat length, you must give
00:12:06up sail area.
00:12:08Long boats are potentially faster, and in heavy winds, you can afford to give up a certain
00:12:12amount of sail area or power.
00:12:14But in light winds, you're in big trouble without those extra square feet of sails.
00:12:21Simply put, a racing 12 can't be a boat for all seasons or locales.
00:12:26Australia 2 was the best boat for Newport in 1983.
00:12:30She would not be the best boat for Fremantle in 1987.
00:12:40If the boat doesn't fit the weather conditions, if you end up with a boat that's a real good
00:12:45light-weather boat and it blows 20 knots every day, or a real heavy-weather bomber that's
00:12:49powerful and big and stiff and just great in a breeze, and then you get two consecutive
00:12:54weeks of light or medium weather, you're just plain going to lose.
00:12:58No hope.
00:12:59It's all over.
00:13:01So the number one priority was to identify the wind conditions and sea conditions that
00:13:08we expect to race in, and then work on the parameters of the boat for those conditions.
00:13:18Meteorologist Lee Davis tackled the critical job of assessing sailing conditions in the
00:13:23Indian Ocean off Fremantle.
00:13:29In January 1984, he made the first of a series of trips to Australia to gather weather information.
00:13:36With his new data and 10 years of historical records from the Fremantle Port Authority,
00:13:41Davis produced an hour-by-hour, day-by-day picture of conditions on the race course.
00:13:49Here we have a plot of the wind speeds and wind directions for a particular day.
00:13:54And we can see at 10 o'clock in the morning the winds are quite light from the shore,
00:13:59and they increase to 20 knots during the day, and by evening they decrease to zero.
00:14:04And you can see another day, same type of conditions, winds this time will increase
00:14:09up to 30 knots, quite a heavy day.
00:14:12And that pattern continues on going until we have another day which is completely different.
00:14:19The sea breeze comes in at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, but this time it only increases
00:14:23to 10 to 12 knots.
00:14:25That makes a real difficult decision.
00:14:27Do you build a boat that's going to sail fast and 30 knots of breeze, or do you build a
00:14:32boat that's going to sail well and 10 knots, or do you build a boat somewhere in between?
00:14:37Sailors think of wind and sea conditions in five broad categories, ranging from light
00:14:41to heavy.
00:14:43Davis was able to give Sail America the percentage of time they would encounter each type of
00:14:48condition.
00:14:50From this it was possible to determine what length boat would be best for any given month.
00:14:55Unfortunately, what would be best for the November preliminaries would not be best for
00:15:00the cup finals in February.
00:15:01There are 14 different smart groups here, I think, trying to figure this out, and they're
00:15:06going to come to different answers.
00:15:08One of them is going to have the best answer.
00:15:10The people that are close and have versatile boats will probably be okay, and then there'll
00:15:15be some others that are out on the fringes that just plain will lose before they start.
00:15:21Sail America decided to design a long boat, one that would be optimal for the heavier
00:15:25conditions expected in the critical December and January trials.
00:15:31Plugging that length into the 12-meter rule gave them the boat's sail area and weight.
00:15:36With these basic parameters set, the designers started searching for a hull and keel combination
00:15:42that would be both maneuverable and fast.
00:15:45A fast hull shape is one that produces the least hydrodynamic resistance.
00:15:50The opportunity and the problem in 12-meter design is to find an optimum distribution
00:15:56of volume, or in other words, to shape the underwater body and volume of the boat in
00:16:03an optimal way such that its resistance is minimum.
00:16:08You are basically given a balloon whose volume must be kept constant, and you can squeeze
00:16:14that balloon as you wish within a certain length to find a shape and form which will
00:16:22minimize the resistance of the boat.
00:16:28Every time the designers squeezed their 12-meter balloon into a new shape, mathematical assessments
00:16:33of the likely resistance of that shape were calculated using computer modeling techniques
00:16:39borrowed from the aerospace industry.
00:16:43Much of this work was done by Charles Bope, Bruce Rosen, and Joe Leosa from the Grumman Corporation.
00:16:49Basically, they used a computer program developed for NASA to break down hull and keel shapes
00:16:55into thousands of discrete flat panels.
00:16:59The computer then solved hydrodynamic flow equations for each.
00:17:03The millions of calculations required were done at Cray Research in Minneapolis on one
00:17:08of their supercomputers.
00:17:10In this way, Sail America was able to test both subtle hull and keel modifications and
00:17:16radical new concepts.
00:17:27By late summer 1985, Sail America's first new boat was almost ready to hit the water.
00:17:36Reflecting Davis's heavy weather prediction, Stars and Stripes 85 was long, nearly three
00:17:41feet longer than a traditional 12.
00:17:44In terms of design, she was less a breakthrough than an evolutionary step forward from Australia
00:17:492.
00:17:51Like Australia 2, Stars and Stripes 85 had a winged keel.
00:17:55The advantages of this design had been confirmed early in the team's research.
00:18:02Sailboat keels have two basic functions.
00:18:05They provide stability by getting more weight down low, and perhaps even more importantly,
00:18:10they produce lift.
00:18:12Lift is the force that counteracts a boat's tendency to be blown sideways by the wind.
00:18:19Winged keels do both especially well.
00:18:22Because they are upside down compared to traditional keels, they have more weight down low.
00:18:27This means increased stability.
00:18:30Their hydrodynamic shape, short and thin at the top, long and fat at the bottom, provides
00:18:35greater lift.
00:18:36But there's a price.
00:18:38The long bottom edge creates drag.
00:18:41Adding wings redirects the flow of water around the keel, reducing this drag.
00:18:49Anxious to find out just how good Stars and Stripes 85 was, Sail America began full-scale
00:18:55boat testing in Honolulu, Hawaii, using two vintage 83 yachts as trial horses.
00:19:01It was now October.
00:19:03Tests in Australia were going to begin in less than a year.
00:19:09Boat test manager, Robert Hopkins.
00:19:11We have 22 guys on the water sailing the boats side by side, just a couple boat lengths apart
00:19:17all day.
00:19:18And directly behind them, this boat here, the Betsy, our tender, follows.
00:19:23And it's collecting a stream of data off of each boat, which comes by telemetry radio.
00:19:29All of that is fed into this Microvax 2 digital computer here, which is a very small but very
00:19:36powerful computer, which handles all this stuff, munches the data, and gives us a summary
00:19:41report right after the test is completed, which tells us who won and by how much and
00:19:46how fast they were going, the stuff we need to know.
00:19:49Also, we can analyze each of these summary reports to see how we're doing in the broad
00:19:55picture, like how fast was one of our boats against another?
00:19:59How fast was it during the month of January with a particular keel on it compared to the
00:20:03month of February with another?
00:20:09To everyone's relief, Stars and Stripes 85 was fast.
00:20:13And skipper Dennis Conner quickly developed a fondness for this long boat, which his crew
00:20:18called the cruise liner.
00:20:22Yet the designers remained unsatisfied.
00:20:29There was nothing revolutionary about Stars and Stripes 85, and no reason to believe the
00:20:33competition couldn't do as well.
00:20:36The desire to do better, in all likelihood the need to do better, kept the team searching.
00:20:43We saw some wild ideas.
00:20:45We saw twin keels side by side like that.
00:20:47We saw twin keels reversed, you know, at the ends, bow and stern of the boat.
00:20:53We saw a very varied array of bulbs with fins, hydroelastic control of fins on the back.
00:21:00We saw different hull volume distributions, some of which were extremely radical.
00:21:05We weren't even sure how you could shape a hull like that and make it work.
00:21:09We saw annular keels, which were ring keels.
00:21:13We saw a lot of different ideas.
00:21:18That the Australian victory in 1983 was based on a technological breakthrough was something
00:21:23the Sail America design team couldn't forget.
00:21:31More than once, the designers argued about how radical a boat to build.
00:21:36Some were convinced that without a major breakthrough, the team would lose.
00:21:45There are a number of us on the team who are very much interested in finding that quantum
00:21:49leap in performance.
00:21:52Finding an idea in terms of a hull keel concept that far exceeds the type of technology that
00:21:57sailed in 1983.
00:21:58And of course, this is higher risk technology, but we think we're on to something now that
00:22:04might give us that.
00:22:05I christen thee Stars and Stripes.
00:22:12The something they were on to was a radical bow design, which was incorporated into the
00:22:16team's second new boat, Stars and Stripes 86.
00:22:21The new bow shape, details of which remain a Sail America secret, was supposed to minimize
00:22:27the creation of waves.
00:22:28If it worked, this would decrease resistance and make the boat much faster.
00:22:36To confuse spies from other teams, she was painted to look exactly like Stars and Stripes
00:22:4185.
00:22:45In many ways, Stars and Stripes 86 was a full scale experiment.
00:22:50The initial results of which came in just as the full design team was meeting in January
00:22:55of 1986.
00:22:58Needless to say, the first order of business was a report on her performance.
00:23:02So we have four days of difficult to use results in one day, which was yesterday, of finally
00:23:10we got some trade wins.
00:23:12The result is that 86 is getting beaten by 85 by about, I would say, 20 seconds a mile
00:23:22in five knots, 10 to 15 seconds a mile in 10 knots.
00:23:29Clearly, Stars and Stripes 86 was not all the designers had hoped for.
00:23:34Still, John Marshall argued that she was a valuable learning experience, although an
00:23:38expensive one.
00:23:40I think what we're seeing right now is that the boat is maybe very slightly disappointing.
00:23:45So 86 is a boat that may never sail a sailboat race for keeps, but she's not catastrophically
00:23:51bad.
00:23:52What is interesting is that the very radical treatment of the forward part of the boat
00:23:57as an isolated element is not a serious deficit in performance.
00:24:04For the design team, the news about Stars and Stripes 86 was sobering.
00:24:10After 18 months of research and the construction of two brand new 12 meters, the pressure to
00:24:15come up with a winner was still there.
00:24:1885 was fast, but very conventional.
00:24:21She broke no new ground, and other syndicates could be expected to do as well.
00:24:2686 was a noble experiment that would never race.
00:24:30I think we're sure we're not going to win the America's Cup with one of the boats that's
00:24:33in the water right now.
00:24:34I think we're pretty darn sure of that.
00:24:36The first America's Cup trials were now just eight months away.
00:24:41In that time, Sail America would have to design, build, test, and deliver to Australia a third
00:24:49and better boat.
00:24:55This is the tank at Offshore Technology Corporation in Escondido, California, where Sail America
00:25:00tests scale models of promising hull and keel designs.
00:25:05This is their 31st model, in all likelihood the last hull shape to be tested.
00:25:15Time is short.
00:25:17Designs for a final boat must be delivered to the builder soon.
00:25:22Ever since Australia 2, when with a new and secret keel, security has been a major issue
00:25:27for 12 meter syndicates.
00:25:29OTC personnel and Nova's film crew are sworn to secrecy about test results.
00:25:36Concerned that these images might aid the competition, Sail America insisted that certain
00:25:41critical design features be blacked out.
00:25:45Model 31, like the others built for the team, is one-third scale and weighs 2,000 pounds.
00:25:51This is widely considered the smallest model that can produce a reliable picture of the
00:25:55hydrodynamic resistance of the full-scale boat, and measuring resistance is what the
00:26:00towing tank is all about.
00:26:03Mounted on the model is a dynamometer, which electronically measures the effort it takes
00:26:08to push the boat through the water.
00:26:11The dynamometer is connected to a computer, which uses this data to calculate the total
00:26:17drag produced by the boat.
00:26:19The lower the drag, the faster the boat.
00:26:30With time to build only one more boat, Sail America focused its efforts on reducing wave-making
00:26:35resistance, 50% of the total resistance on any boat.
00:26:43Boats as they go through the water, because they're heavy, they displace the water and
00:26:48they push it out of the way and they make waves.
00:26:51And as the boat tries to go faster and faster, the wave gets bigger and more and more energy
00:26:58is burned up in pushing this wave out of the way.
00:27:02The 12-meter being a relatively heavy yacht has to push a lot of water out of the way
00:27:07as it goes through the water.
00:27:10And the way that the volume of the hull is distributed from bow to stern influences the
00:27:16way in which the water is parted at the bow and the way it comes together again at the
00:27:21stern.
00:27:22If the boat can, in one way or another, produce an easier waveform or a more spread out waveform,
00:27:31the boat will go, instead of 9.5 knots, it'll go 9.6 or 9.7.
00:27:38The easy way, of course, is to make the boat much, much lighter, like a catamaran, because
00:27:42a lighter boat makes much smaller waves.
00:27:44But unfortunately, Catch 22, the 12-meter rule, gives you a minimum weight for each
00:27:50length.
00:27:51You can't make it lighter or you have to pay a huge penalty, and the penalty is far more
00:27:55than you can possibly make up for in extra speed.
00:27:58So the easy way out is precluded, and all of the subtleties go into making this rather
00:28:03heavy mass go through the water.
00:28:05It's not an elegant sort of a problem in a way, because why would you want to have a
00:28:10heavy mass go through the water?
00:28:12But that's the problem that's set in front of you, and you keep pushing that rock up
00:28:15the hill.
00:28:18So how will Model 31 get the rock up the hill?
00:28:22Design a Britain Chance.
00:28:24At a simplistic level, one thing that we're interested in doing is making the waves produced
00:28:30by the hull, by the bow and stern of the hull, as far apart as possible.
00:28:34And one method of doing that is to put more volume forward near the bow end of the boat
00:28:41and more volume aft.
00:28:42And what that does is it causes that volume, which has moved forward, to spread the waves
00:28:47further apart, and that allows the boat to have a higher top speed.
00:28:53Determining how much volume to move forward and aft is all done on computers.
00:28:57We try to mathematically describe little bits of volume, and you just keep redistributing
00:29:05these little bits of volume until you find the point at which the resistance is actually
00:29:11minimized.
00:29:13And this is all done by a mathematical concept through an optimization procedure that can
00:29:18only be done on a computer.
00:29:20Now this, because it's a mathematical concept, may or may not be producible as a yacht.
00:29:28So I have to take my result, pass it on to the yacht designer, and he has to tell me
00:29:34whether he can do this or not.
00:29:36This approach had led the team to the radical bow design for Stars and Stripes 86.
00:29:41It had also guided the development of Model 31.
00:29:45There's a great deal at stake on this model.
00:29:47This probably will be our last model test, and the one on which we'll base our final
00:29:53boat.
00:29:54We have about a month before we must actually commit to the construction of the boat, and
00:29:59people are understandably reluctant to proceed with the building of the boat unless it has
00:30:04been tested.
00:30:05A full test series includes 80 or more trips down the tank, each time the model is run
00:30:11at a different speed or angle.
00:30:16After 10 or so runs, there is enough data to establish a meaningful trend.
00:30:21This is a tense time.
00:30:33Unfortunately, for Model 31, the numbers weren't good.
00:30:38Though the redesigned bow showed potential for reduced wave-making resistance, the stern,
00:30:45which was unchanged from previous models, was now separating, increasing total drag.
00:30:50Further evidence of how delicate a balance a good design really is.
00:30:56Separation is what happens when the flow of water around a hull can stay in relatively
00:31:00smooth lines.
00:31:03The flow literally separates from the hull surface at the stern, exploding into turbulent
00:31:07eddies, all of which represent lost energy.
00:31:12This is what happened with Model 31.
00:31:16I'm disappointed in that I didn't expect this problem to crop up because, as I mentioned,
00:31:21we attempted to keep this area as a control, truly a control.
00:31:26But, as I mentioned, there's a very, well, difficult to model and, in fact, unmodelable
00:31:32interaction between wave drag and form drag at this point, as far as analysis goes.
00:31:39And it blew up.
00:31:40It's a risky run when you try to change too many things at once.
00:31:44And we changed a lot of things in this model.
00:31:48It's a terrible feeling.
00:31:50It's a really terrible feeling when all of your expectations are so high and they just
00:31:55come crashing down upon you.
00:31:58And you look at the results and you know it's not an experimental error.
00:32:03It's a real problem with the hull form.
00:32:08In that case, it was obviously separating.
00:32:11We knew it was separating.
00:32:15We knew that that was unacceptable.
00:32:17And you sort of have the feeling that you shouldn't have let it happen, that it was
00:32:26basically a screw-up that shouldn't have occurred.
00:32:30And that was one of the reasons why I was so adamant about going on and fixing it, because
00:32:36I was certain we could fix it.
00:32:38Now, we've lost a week in our schedule because the last model didn't test as well.
00:32:43I can go one more week, but I want to see something that these guys feel, so we have
00:32:49a consensus or a majority, at least, from a naval architectural point of view gives
00:32:53us the least chance for a screw-up.
00:32:56We cannot afford a screw-up.
00:32:57We can afford five more days.
00:32:59We can't afford a screw-up.
00:33:01The area that I thought was causing the problem separation-wise was primarily through here.
00:33:07You could physically see it when the boat was keeled.
00:33:10Depending on what we have for inside ballast, we can ooch the keel a little bit further.
00:33:19We've got something that looks very promising for a final boat.
00:33:23The concept work looks sound.
00:33:26The analytic predictions look very good.
00:33:30Out of the tank test data, which needs a lot more work, a lot more refining and sorting
00:33:35through to find what we're looking for in it, there's a thread of something that looks
00:33:39very, very good.
00:33:40Overlaying that, without any doubt, there's a defect, a killer defect.
00:33:47The boat, as it stands right now, couldn't win.
00:33:50But someplace in there is the essence of a boat that could be a great winner.
00:33:57I think the task now, what the guys have to do, is see whether they can save the essential
00:34:02brilliance in the design, not throw it out, and at the same time eliminate this flow separation
00:34:08that's obviously taking place and is adding drag that's just plain unacceptable.
00:34:14We don't have very much more time to do that in.
00:34:16We've got probably a couple of weeks' maximum of analysis to solve the problem.
00:34:22We've got to test it because we wouldn't conceivably build a boat, which implies committing
00:34:27an additional $600,000 probably, unless we know that we've made some progress from here
00:34:34at cleaning this design up.
00:34:36It's a tough problem, and we're down to the last, really the last available few weeks
00:34:41in order to meet a timeline and have the boat adequately prepared and tuned and race-ready
00:34:46when we have to race.
00:34:48It's a nice problem.
00:34:52It's a nice problem.
00:35:23After an hour of testing, a pattern emerged.
00:35:29It was not what anyone had hoped to see.
00:35:32If the data is accurate, it means that the changes made from Model 31 and 32 were somehow
00:35:41in the wrong direction.
00:35:43I guess there are times when you wonder how much is science and how much is art, and I
00:35:56guess I can live with the idea that there's still an awful lot of art involved.
00:36:00What's scary is the fact that it might just be plain dumb luck.
00:36:06Nights like this one are tough on designers and technicians.
00:36:11At this point, they can only hope it's a flaw in the test and not in their design.
00:36:18In one form or another, designers of tank-tested yachts were over 50 years.
00:36:24Acceptance of this technology, however, has never been universal, and it was almost completely
00:36:29discredited in the 1970s following a disaster called Mariner.
00:36:37In 1974, Britton Chance relied on tank testing to design a 12-meter for Ted Turner.
00:36:43Come in, we're going to be right about on.
00:36:46Come in!
00:36:47Damn it!
00:36:48Come in!
00:36:49Damn it!
00:36:50Come!
00:36:51Come with me!
00:36:52Mariner was a radical departure from tradition.
00:36:55Her tank tests predicted greatness.
00:36:58If you're right about that stern, haven't designers been wrong for the last hundred years?
00:37:05Well, we'll find out, won't we?
00:37:11What the world found out was that Mariner was a dog.
00:37:16Her failure soured the American design community on high technology for almost 10 years.
00:37:22The failure was certainly mine.
00:37:25I was responsible for it.
00:37:28But it was based on predictions of very small-scale models.
00:37:33The models commonly used at this time were 1 to 13 scale.
00:37:37We now use 1 to 3 scale.
00:37:40And the scale effects, particularly the effects of friction and probably their interaction
00:37:45with wave making, gave a misleading result.
00:37:49The boat did not perform full size as she performed in the tank.
00:37:53This was a very unfortunate result for a number of reasons, one of which was that it stopped
00:38:00the general use of tank testing for quite some time and also caused a disinterest in
00:38:06the general application of technology.
00:38:09One of the outcomes from the narrow perspective of the America's Cup, I think, was very probably
00:38:15the loss of the America's Cup in 1983.
00:38:21Australia II's breakthrough winged keel was the result of exhaustive tank testing.
00:38:26In her wake, doubts about the value of the tank have largely evaporated.
00:38:33On this February night, however, Sail America's designers stubbornly refused to accept the test results.
00:38:40Despite the numbers, they continued to believe in their design.
00:38:44It took most of the night, but in the end, their faith was vindicated.
00:38:49It is filtered, so that accounts for it.
00:38:53What accounts for it?
00:38:54The fact that there was a filter in the data channel.
00:38:57An electronic filter used in an earlier test of an oil platform had been inadvertently left to the computer.
00:39:04This had skewed all of the night's results.
00:39:12The corrected numbers were even better than original projections.
00:39:16They had solved the separation problem.
00:39:18They believed the killer defect was no more.
00:39:24From day one, a key element in Sail America's strategy was to do as much actual sailing as possible.
00:39:31Hawaii's consistent winds, which are as strong as those that blow off Western Australia,
00:39:37made it an ideal place to test boats and train crew.
00:39:44Even though this has evolved to be very much a design contest as opposed to a sailing contest,
00:39:50I think that the people product will still be a major factor in the outcome, or at least a factor in the outcome.
00:39:57So it's important that the crew be able to perform up at their best.
00:40:01And to do so, obviously, they have to have a full commitment.
00:40:05And in the case of our guys, they've been working from 5 in the morning till 9 at night, 6 days a week,
00:40:13for 17 months to prepare for this.
00:40:16This isn't a sport.
00:40:18The only people that say it's a sport are people like you, the correspondents and the news people.
00:40:22It's a sport in the sense that it's a competition.
00:40:24But to us and the people that are going to have to do this thing, it's not a sport.
00:40:27It's your life.
00:40:28You have to be able to endure pain.
00:40:30You have to train in pain.
00:40:32And on the last beat, when you have to wear that guy down,
00:40:35you have to be able to do it.
00:40:37You have to be able to do it.
00:40:39You have to be able to endure pain.
00:40:40You have to train in pain.
00:40:42And on the last beat, when you have to wear that guy down,
00:40:45it doesn't make any difference if you're in front of him or in back of him.
00:40:47If you're going to grind him down until he can't sail anymore,
00:40:50you better be ready to endure the pain
00:40:52because chances are the guys on the other boat are going to be able to endure the pain.
00:40:56And at the end of that race, there's only going to be one guy across the line,
00:41:00and it's a guy that can deal with that kind of pain
00:41:02and continue to make the contribution that's going to be on the boat that's across the line first.
00:41:07That's going to be us.
00:41:16It's not only in the weight room or out sailing that the crew is expected to work hard.
00:41:23They're responsible for keeping the boats and gear tuned and race ready.
00:41:27And even with over 40 sailors and support personnel in Honolulu,
00:41:31the work day often extends well into the night.
00:41:35Such an intensive schedule can dull the competitive fire,
00:41:39but with the help of Hollywood, the crew manages to stay motivated.
00:41:47All this stuff you heard about America not wanting to fight,
00:41:51wanting to stay out of the war,
00:41:53it's a lot of horse dung.
00:41:55Americans traditionally love to fight.
00:42:00All real Americans love the sting of battle.
00:42:07When you were kids,
00:42:11you all admired the champion marbleshooter, fast runner,
00:42:15picnic ball player, toughest boxer.
00:42:19Americans love a winner
00:42:22and will not tolerate a loser.
00:42:25Americans played away all the time.
00:42:28We got it, we got it.
00:42:31Actual pity of those poor bastards we're going up against.
00:42:34By God, I do.
00:42:35We're not just going to shoot, you bastard.
00:42:39We're going to carve their living guts
00:42:42and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.
00:42:46We're going to murder those lousy motherfuckers by the bush.
00:42:59By late winter, the crew was psyched
00:43:01and ready to take on the world with Stars and Stripes 85.
00:43:05The design team was also in high gear,
00:43:07preparing for the final push
00:43:09that would make Stars and Stripes 87 a reality.
00:43:12I sort of know one thing you'll see right away.
00:43:15In early March, a conference call was scheduled
00:43:17so John Marshall could give the trustees of the syndicate
00:43:20the design team's final recommendations for the new boat.
00:43:24One crucial question still to resolve
00:43:27was how long a boat to build.
00:43:29The question of length had resurfaced
00:43:31after the arrival of intelligence reports about the enemy.
00:43:35You can see the pictures.
00:43:36I just don't want the names of the people supplied to us.
00:43:40Did you find by underwater holography?
00:43:43No, no, no, no, no.
00:43:45They're just plain old photography.
00:43:47The names of the photographers are on the back.
00:43:50I can't believe you would have to see that much.
00:43:54Oh, Shimon, credit.
00:43:57The competition was building shorter boats.
00:44:00This was confirmed when 15 America's Cup contenders
00:44:04showed up for the 12-meter world championships,
00:44:07a regatta in Fremantle in early 1986.
00:44:10Looking down the dimensions, the KZ-5 boats,
00:44:13the two Kiwi boats, don't seem to be especially long
00:44:16because we believe their J is 25.
00:44:19They seem to have a normal-looking sail plan.
00:44:22The idea that they might have the longest boat
00:44:24competing for the America's Cup
00:44:26made the Sail America team nervous.
00:44:28Probably longer than 45 feet.
00:44:31What we have to do is two different things.
00:44:33You have to look at what would be an optimum boat
00:44:35if you didn't have any idea who the opponent was.
00:44:38And the other thing is once you know something about the enemy,
00:44:41you have to have an optimum boat to race against that particular enemy.
00:44:44And the two solutions are entirely different.
00:44:46Mathematically, strategically, game theoretically,
00:44:50however you go about doing it, they're different situations.
00:44:53The optimum solution isn't to pick the boat
00:44:56that in a vacuum would be perfect.
00:44:58It's to pick the boat that gives the best probability
00:45:01of beating these other 13 guys.
00:45:04Though their weather analysis had led them
00:45:07to design and build long boats,
00:45:09it had also left them out on a limb.
00:45:12Common sense said, stay long,
00:45:14but not so much longer than the competition.
00:45:17And that's eventually what they settled on.
00:45:19Stars and Stripes 87 would be almost two feet shorter than 85.
00:45:24Having settled on a length,
00:45:26it was time to make a final commitment to the Model 32 design.
00:45:30Though her test results had been very good,
00:45:32some team members still felt that she was too radical,
00:45:35too risky a design.
00:45:37Marshall and Clay Oliver reviewed test data
00:45:39for other candidate designs
00:45:41and ran hundreds of computer simulated races
00:45:44between them and Model 32.
00:45:46An hour before the conference call,
00:45:48two possibilities remained,
00:45:50Models 30 and 32.
00:45:52Model 30 is what we might call a more conservative model.
00:45:57It goes less far away from traditional yacht design trends,
00:46:02and its characteristic, I think,
00:46:04is that it is a more broadly competent sort of a boat
00:46:09and has good performance characteristics
00:46:11pretty much across the board.
00:46:13Model 32, first of all, is more radical,
00:46:16which I think does imply a certain amount more risk-taking.
00:46:19What we're buying with that chance
00:46:21is a boat that shows some real brilliance
00:46:23in the design target conditions.
00:46:26Marshall didn't make up his mind
00:46:28until ten minutes before the call came through.
00:46:31When it did, he recommended building Model 32
00:46:34and making her almost two feet shorter
00:46:36than Stars and Stripes 85 and 86.
00:46:40He was then stunned to hear arguments from Conor and others
00:46:43against building a third boat at all.
00:46:45The issue was money.
00:46:47The call ended without resolution.
00:46:50The board would look for more money,
00:46:52but without it, the future of Stars and Stripes 87
00:46:55didn't look promising.
00:46:57All right.
00:46:59Yeah, so long.
00:47:04Oof.
00:47:06Hmm?
00:47:08Not easy, no.
00:47:11Well, it's very discouraging and depressing
00:47:14to people working on a technical problem
00:47:16to put intense concentration and effort onto it,
00:47:19and ultimately you have come through a period of real doubt
00:47:22whether they could do something better,
00:47:24finally find a superior solution
00:47:26and something that looks really promising,
00:47:28and then ultimately find that you can't find the funds to build it.
00:47:31So it's a downer from that point of view.
00:47:36Well, yacht designers from the beginning of time
00:47:38always are confident that their boat is going to be
00:47:40the best thing since sliced bread,
00:47:43but that after you've been around a while,
00:47:46you realise that all their dreams and their best intentions
00:47:49don't always come to fruition.
00:47:52I saw in 1974 how a boat that was supposedly going to be
00:47:56a major breakthrough was one of the slowest 12 metres
00:47:59ever to be designed.
00:48:01In 1977, the Enterprise Syndicate
00:48:06spent several hundred thousand dollars in designing a keel
00:48:09that was supposedly going to be a breakthrough,
00:48:11and courageous, a five-year-old boat came out and beat it.
00:48:14So time and again we've seen these designers tell us
00:48:17that what has been great in the tank
00:48:20is going to come out and whip up on the old boats,
00:48:24but we've seen that not be the case.
00:48:27Sailors, I think, always are worried.
00:48:30Maybe distrustful is a good word,
00:48:32but they're certainly worried that they are dependent
00:48:35on something that they can't control,
00:48:37and it's just a very human reaction.
00:48:39And in Dennis' case particularly,
00:48:41he's been dependent on design that he couldn't control before,
00:48:44and it let him down.
00:48:46So he's not surprisingly worried this time.
00:48:49It's a responsibility that we have to try to do the best we can.
00:48:54We're all much more than committed to a good design
00:48:58or committed to winning,
00:49:00but that isn't going to allay anybody's fears
00:49:02until they get the boat in their hands and can sail it
00:49:04and are sure it's what they need.
00:49:09If Stars and Stripes 87 was to prove she was more than a great idea,
00:49:13Sail America's fundraisers would have to work overtime,
00:49:16intensifying their courtship of corporate sponsors.
00:49:20Rather than go to corporate America with our handout,
00:49:24we designed the program, as the Olympics did,
00:49:27in a partnership marketing mode.
00:49:30That is to say, we offered corporations
00:49:33the opportunity to market their product and services
00:49:36around the involvement of Sail America and the America's Cup,
00:49:40or we offered them corporate perks
00:49:42where they can come out and visit with us,
00:49:44get on the inside of the camp,
00:49:46see what we're doing from a technical standpoint.
00:49:48And it's working. It worked with the Olympics.
00:49:50It's working with us.
00:49:52Sail America's projected budget approached $15 million.
00:49:57When Stars and Stripes 87 was put on hold,
00:50:00over $5 million was still to be found.
00:50:02Yet after 10 days of thinking it over,
00:50:04the trustees decided they couldn't afford not to build a new boat.
00:50:08They'd gone too far to go to Australia with less than their best.
00:50:13With the decision to proceed,
00:50:15a series of last-minute decisions had to be made.
00:50:18The most important involved the curve of the deck, or shear line.
00:50:22The technically best thing would be to have a shear line
00:50:25that looked like that and a flat deck there.
00:50:27But all the designers agree that, in case of argument,
00:50:30we don't want to disagree with the crew
00:50:32because that would be a mistake to get in trouble on that.
00:50:35And that's why John proposed a .3 of a foot.
00:50:37This was a question that had both a technical and a not-so-technical side.
00:50:42I can't believe it.
00:50:44Aerodynamically, it's not better.
00:50:46And weight-wise, it's not better.
00:50:48And resistance through the water.
00:50:50So why isn't anybody else doing it?
00:50:52It's ugly?
00:50:54Yeah, but we can dress it up to make it look good.
00:50:58We've already gone ugly. We can go all the way now.
00:51:01We can paint it red.
00:51:03It's going to be difficult to style that to look what you would say is pretty.
00:51:07But if it's well-executed, it could look pretty racy.
00:51:10And if it's first across the finish line, it would be a pretty good-looking bow.
00:51:14It would be perfect.
00:51:16Before the boat builder begins cutting metal,
00:51:19full-size drawings of the boat's lines are made.
00:51:22This is a process called lofting.
00:51:25It's done to ensure the boat's lines are fair or completely smooth, without discontinuity.
00:51:31The final boat that's going to go in the ocean has to be fair in every direction.
00:51:36The water has to flow over it with no drag.
00:51:39And the sea is going to discover any imperfections or bumps or discontinuities in that surface.
00:51:44So it has to be lofted full-scale,
00:51:47where the human eye, which is really the most precise computer of all,
00:51:50can see the fairness of the lines and detect anything that's wrong.
00:51:55And this lofting of the boat full-scale is traditionally a very time-consuming process
00:52:01that takes a great deal of skill.
00:52:03We've tried to squeeze that process down to the minimum amount of time
00:52:06by using computer-aided lofting as an intermediary step.
00:52:11For over a week, designer David Pedrick and his associate Sean Fawcett work day and night,
00:52:17creating a numerical version of the plans for Stars and Stripes 87.
00:52:22With these numbers, full-scale drawings of the boat could be produced on Mylar strips 60 feet long.
00:52:32Time is running out.
00:52:33The lofted plans have to be completed tonight and delivered to the boat builder in the morning.
00:52:38If they're not, the boat may not be completed before the team departs for Australia.
00:52:43Well, it's early by most standards.
00:52:44It's 12.30 in the evening.
00:52:47And, let's see, last time I was in bed was Saturday afternoon, and it's now Monday night.
00:52:55No, it's Tuesday night.
00:52:56So I guess it's Sunday afternoon.
00:52:59They never decide what sort of boat they want until the last minute.
00:53:03And then you have 12 days to get a boat properly designed,
00:53:08and normally it should take about three weeks.
00:53:10It's a little unnerving, but you got to do what you got to do.
00:53:20At 10 a.m. the next morning, the plans for Stars and Stripes 87
00:53:24were delivered to the director boatyard in Mamaroneck, New York.
00:53:29Construction of an all-aluminum 12-meter hull takes three months.
00:53:33The process begins with fabrication of the skeleton,
00:53:36which is made up of thousands of precisely cut individual pieces of aluminum
00:53:40that are checked against the full-size plans
00:53:43and then welded together to standards set by Lloyds of London.
00:53:50These initial stages of construction are time-consuming,
00:53:53but they can't be hurried, even when the competition seems to be way ahead.
00:54:07On May 16th, the New York Yacht Club christened its third new boat.
00:54:11The party was crashed by the Chicago Yacht Club's new boat, Heart of America,
00:54:15which had been launched the day before.
00:54:19I christen thee America Two.
00:54:37At the same time, interesting gossip about the San Francisco boat was making the rounds.
00:54:45Well, we've got a pretty good indication now that the San Francisco group
00:54:48is experimenting with, or will be experimenting with, a forward rudder.
00:54:52And we already know from our own experimentation
00:54:55that you can't steer a 12-meter with only a forward rudder,
00:54:58and in fact, optimally you're going to end up using an aft rudder for steering.
00:55:02So the question is, what's the forward rudder for?
00:55:05Well, most likely it's really going to be a volume-carrying pod
00:55:10that would possibly form a wave that would cancel the primary wave of the boat
00:55:16and reduce the total wave drag.
00:55:18That might be fairly threatening,
00:55:20and I think we're going to have to do something about it in terms of exploring,
00:55:23first of all, does it really make the boat go faster,
00:55:26and secondly, really tracking down the rules interpretation
00:55:29with the International Yacht Racing Union.
00:55:32The fear in your mind is that maybe somebody developed something
00:55:36that we didn't think of and didn't test or didn't try, didn't consider,
00:55:41and maybe they have something that is radically faster than anybody else
00:55:47and is going to blow everybody out of the water and make you look bad.
00:55:53Who knows who's going to be the one who comes up with the idea
00:55:57who's going to be the one who comes up with something that no one else thought of.
00:56:05While the designers worried, the boat they counted on to put their words to rest
00:56:09was beginning to take shape.
00:56:11By the end of May, Stars and Stripes 87 was up off the floor.
00:56:15The framing was complete,
00:56:17and quarter-inch aluminum plates were being cut, bent, and welded into place.
00:56:22Though everyone hoped construction could be completed ahead of schedule
00:56:26and give the crew more time to sail her in Hawaii,
00:56:28the boatyard was already pushing hard just to finish on time.
00:56:36As hull construction continued in New York, work on the keel began in Los Angeles.
00:56:42The keel is cast in a giant sand mold using molten lead.
00:56:46When finished, it'll weigh nearly 45,000 pounds,
00:56:49nearly three times the weight of the rest of the boat.
00:56:53Keel Co. will make keels for almost all of the American syndicates.
00:56:57They've developed a secret lead alloy that's heavier and stronger than any other in the world.
00:57:05We used to have a metallurgist that worked for us that came from South America,
00:57:09and he brought up a book with him from South America
00:57:12that was written by the Nazis back in 38,
00:57:15and the Nazis and currently the Germans now are doing some excellent work in lead metallurgy,
00:57:20and with this we've been able to achieve this extremely high strength.
00:57:25Besides having the best lead alloy,
00:57:27Huseman treats his 12-meter keels with almost religious care.
00:57:31Bringing the cup back home has become for Don Huseman almost a personal mission.
00:57:36On these keels now, my goal is to get the American Cup back.
00:57:39As a keel maker, my goal is to make the winning American Cup keel, not the losing.
00:57:43Our dedication to this is 100% that anything it requires, we will do,
00:57:49and when we started seeing the Australian commercials that say,
00:57:53if you don't know where Australia is, that's where the Cup's at,
00:57:55my youngest son used to, you know, jokingly say,
00:57:58I'm so ashamed of my father, but it bothers me, it really bothers me.
00:58:01I don't think as much as Dennis, but I want that Cup back.
00:58:05Pouring lead in such large quantities is an art.
00:58:08It's also difficult and dangerous.
00:58:11Lead shrinks as it cools.
00:58:13Keeping the surface molten for the 20 or more hours it takes for the bottom to cool
00:58:17means more lead can be added as it shrinks.
00:58:20Any impurities will weaken the keel.
00:58:23Enough will make it useless.
00:58:25With 45,000 pounds of lead,
00:58:27there's the constant possibility that the mold will leak and break apart.
00:58:32And finally, some of Huseman's secret ingredients are explosive.
00:58:38Yet this time, everything works perfectly.
00:58:40The keel measures accurately to within 1 16th of an inch,
00:58:44and the lines are fair to within 5 or 6 one thousandths of an inch.
00:58:51With a new hull and keel seemingly under control,
00:58:54it was now time to panic about sails.
00:58:58I'm basically discouraged about the sail testing program at the moment.
00:59:02We've put enormous emphasis on the boat design.
00:59:05I think that's made us very vulnerable to being complacent
00:59:08in the sense that the sails aren't getting the attention they got in 80
00:59:12when we felt sails would be the breakthrough,
00:59:1583 when we worked very, very hard on our sails.
00:59:18Sails are the power of the sailboat.
00:59:21That's the motor, and you can't disregard it.
00:59:25We're just starting serious sail testing.
00:59:27We know that if we don't have excellent sails,
00:59:29we'll be giving away increments of speed
00:59:32that are as big as the things we've been talking about.
00:59:34We talk about 4 or 5 seconds a mile.
00:59:37It's possible, easily possible,
00:59:39to lose 4 or 5 seconds a mile with inferior sails.
00:59:44A sail shape is determined by how two-dimensional pieces of fabric
00:59:48are sewn together.
00:59:50How that fabric is cut and seamed
00:59:53determines how good a three-dimensional airfoil is created.
00:59:56Getting those curves right used to be an art form.
00:59:59Today, computers have begun to turn the process into a science.
01:00:04Danish engineer Michael Rikkelsen creates computer programs
01:00:08to help sail designers refine their ideas.
01:00:11He describes how one stage in the process works.
01:00:14Having created an idea in my mind of what sail I want to see,
01:00:19I can use our computer to generate that sail,
01:00:26and I input my numbers.
01:00:28I may have sort of a database of sails I've already built,
01:00:31and I call one of those up.
01:00:33I get it up on the screen, and I sort of look at it from different angles.
01:00:37I can rotate it, zoom in on critical areas,
01:00:40and get a feel for what it is.
01:00:42And then I go back, change some of the numbers,
01:00:44I call it up on the screen again,
01:00:46and get to know the sail that I'm going to build.
01:00:53One of Rikkelsen's programs
01:00:55models how the sail will respond to specific wind speeds and directions.
01:00:59The resulting pressure gradients across each sail
01:01:02are represented by colored bars.
01:01:05From this, the designers know
01:01:07if the side force on their sails will overbalance the lifting force of the keel.
01:01:12Also, it's possible to see how the two sails are interacting,
01:01:16and if they are interfering with each other.
01:01:20We've gotten a pretty good feeling for what shapes work,
01:01:23what shapes are fast, what don't work,
01:01:25what works in rough water, what works in smooth water.
01:01:28The big consideration for us now
01:01:30is how to get that shape to stay that shape over a period of time.
01:01:34It doesn't help to come up with a real fast sail
01:01:36that changes shape the second time you put it up.
01:01:39Computers are helping here as well
01:01:41by predicting the stress and strain on the sailcloth,
01:01:44and indicating how and where stretching is likely to occur.
01:01:48The sail designers can then choose the right fabric,
01:01:51Kevlar, Mylar, Dacron, or combinations of the three.
01:01:55Design the best layout for the pieces of fabric,
01:01:58and then sew seams and reinforcing
01:02:00that will help the sail hold its shape.
01:02:04And we feel that if we can slowly but surely
01:02:07come up with a sail that we think is a fast shape
01:02:10that will last through a very wide range of wind strains
01:02:14and a very wide range of conditions,
01:02:16that we have a leg up on being faster than our competitors.
01:02:20So if you believe that that's true,
01:02:22then you also must believe that if you don't do this analytically
01:02:26through computer programs and stresses and strain analysis,
01:02:29there's a very good chance of missing on something.
01:02:34Sail making and testing is a long process,
01:02:36one that will go on even after the trials have begun.
01:02:40In fact, Sail America will have its own mini sail loft in Australia
01:02:45that will be nipping and tucking through the nights between races.
01:02:49Refining sails in the hopes of shaving a few more seconds
01:02:52off Stars and Stripes time around the course.
01:02:58By June 13th, Stars and Stripes 87
01:03:01was looking more and more like a real boat.
01:03:04While the deck and interior received some final welding,
01:03:07the hull got a first coat of micro-balloons,
01:03:10an epoxy resin, which when dry can be planed and sanded
01:03:14to a perfectly smooth or fair line.
01:03:19On June 27th, 5 a.m., the finished boat began a two-week journey
01:03:34from Maranek, New York to Honolulu, Hawaii.
01:03:43Upon her arrival, Dennis Conner would have less than two weeks to decide
01:03:47if she was the best thing since sliced bread.
01:03:51Conner knew and liked Stars and Stripes 85.
01:03:55He was prepared to sail her in the America's Cup.
01:03:58If Stars and Stripes 87 was going to be Sail America's race boat,
01:04:02she'd have to prove her stuff right out of the box.
01:04:17Music
01:04:35Looks like a good boat.
01:04:37She seems to be working out just as our design team forecast,
01:04:40which is encouraging.
01:04:42We've been pleasantly surprised to see her be able to keep up
01:04:45with a boat that's been in the water for nine months,
01:04:47that's been finely tuned and looked after in every way.
01:04:51So I think things are promising.
01:04:53And over the next six weeks down in Perth,
01:04:55we hope to fine-tune her and get the most out of it.
01:04:59And I'm undoubtedly optimistic that it'll come through
01:05:02and be everything we hope.
01:05:05Stars and Stripes 87 had passed her first test.
01:05:09In Australia, there would be many more challenges to come.
01:05:12But 87 was going to get a chance to pass them all.
01:05:15Music
01:05:24It's so hard to say at this stage whether this is a great boat.
01:05:28We all have the feeling that she's living up to the promise
01:05:32that we'd seen in the early design stages
01:05:34and the preliminary testing of the concept.
01:05:38Our big question mark now is where is the rest of the world?
01:05:42How far have they come?
01:05:44These people are very, very capable.
01:05:46They're people I respect a lot,
01:05:48people we're competing with in the design environment.
01:05:52And if there's some hesitation,
01:05:54it's simply out of respect for everybody else in the world.
01:06:01This is going to have an absolute rating.
01:06:03It's either going to be fast or it's not.
01:06:05We're going to know without any question whether we've succeeded.
01:06:08Better, perhaps, than scientists in most cases ever do know
01:06:12how good their creation is.
01:06:14That's very, very exciting and it's very strong.
01:06:18It's not something that lets you sleep easily at night every night.
01:06:22Music
01:06:36Music
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