How many structural problems in offshore race yachts are primarily the result not of design, material failure or an error in manufacture... but of an imbalance in the manner in which all three of these areas sometimes relate to each other in practice?
Exceptions and rules – Andrew Hurst
Back in the early days of the America’s Cup Class (ACC) rule I travelled to Venice to look over the intriguing new Tencara composites facility that had recently been created at the instigation of the late Italian tycoon and America’s Cup challenger, Raul Gardini, to build his Cup yachts and in turn offer the market a well-resourced service for the construction of high performance sail and power craft. It was an extraordinary few days, the large Tencara facility hidden away within a still operational and enormous Montedison plant, the chemical giant constituting a rather more sizable part of Gardini’s expanding industrial empire.
Access to the boatbuilding facility was like a James Bond movie. First you entered a huge, derelict-looking ‘outer’ factory before the gleaming new Tencara facility revealed itself to you… like peeling off that first Fabergé Egg (it may help to imagine the famously polished McLaren Group HQ, the Paragon, concealed within an abandoned nuclear power plant.)
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