AES and the America's Cup
AES
has been involved with the America's Cup since the Fremantle Cup in
1987. Whilst Chris was concluding studies at the University of
Auckland, the NZ Challenge had mast problems and this in turn lead to a
job for Chris appointed by Michael Fay. The NZ Challenge built masts in
Fremantle using kitsets designed in Annapolis by Chris under direction
from BFA. The etched, tapered masts were built at Proctors in the UK
and shipped down to Fremantle. The masts were then assembled and
finished off using NZ mast builders and Barry Wraight from Proctors.
The work was very successful and eventually lead to a position back at
the University of Auckland at the Yacht Research Unit which was funded
by Michael Fay. Part way into this work the KZ1 big boat project turned
up and Chris became involved with this along with several other well
known designers. The yacht KZ1 was designed by BFA, but the rig was
designed in Auckland and approved by BFA. The rig design team consisted
of Tom Schnackenberg, Richard Karn, Rudy Struyck, John Clinton, Peter
Jackson, Richard Honey; Chris was chairman. Roger Hill was draughtsman.
All the construction was undertaken by Marten Marine who were also the
builders of the yacht itself. For the 1992 America's Cup Chris was due
to do a big trip to Europe and the opportunity came up to design rigs
for Il Moro di Venezia. There were NO opportunities to take on the NZ
Challenge work as BFA as successfully bid for the complete design
supply in 1992. So for 3 years Chris put everything into the Italian
team's effort and this team did a great job to wind the LV Cup and
become the Challenger. Since then AES has maintained a number of
Italian contacts and clients for repeat business. For the Italian masts
the builders were Sparcraft, ACX and Omohundro Company. For 1995 a new
opportunity opened up in mast design with Team NZ and this was carried
out with the mast builders Southern Spars Ltd. Team NZ won the
America's Cup in 1995 and so at last we had a win after KZ7 the big
boat and Il Moro. We were very proud of our involvement with the 2000
America's Cup Defence where we again assisted Team NZ. Rigs for the
2000 cup have been a major area of development and Team NZ has been at
the forefront of this now for two Cups in a row. In comparison the
involvement in 2003 was larger than in 2000, but the result was the
opposite. We have to take that on the chin and look at the big picture
I guess. There was much controversy, about the team. I would say that
the reason that NZ only had one team in each Cup was that the size of
the country and the pool of people is not big enough to have more.
Possibly this is also true of Australia which struggled in 1987. In
terms of the pool of personnel, NZ effectively had two or three teams
in the 2003 event and the resources were spread thinly, but you make
your own luck and we blew it. Still even though we were up against it,
we did try as best we could. The next Cup chapter was with
Emirates Team NZ, with both Chris and Andrei being [design] team
members. The masts, booms and poles consolidated the innovations of the
previous Cup becoming considerably more reliable and proving that the
innovations were on the right track.
The current AC chapter is only just starting to unfold with a bunch of
legal challenges. But the proposed new boats appear to provide a lot of
room for interesting rig development...
