In no time at all New Zealand composites company C-Tech have gone from making some of the world’s fastest battens to building substantial chunks of (very) fast boats

When Alex Vallings set about building composite spars for his skiff two decades ago he had little idea that his efforts would blossom into a specialist facility building custom components for America’s Cup campaigns, superyachts and spacecraft – not to mention 50,000+ spars, battens, tubes, poles and booms. His primary interest in the hot cauldron of skiff racing was in ‘making cool things go fast’ – and 20 years later that goal remains the central philosophy of the company he founded.

In a world where loads are constantly increasing but the competitive edge demands lighter and lighter components, C-Tech have carved a niche in precision composite engineering, taking them to the limits of material properties.

When C-Tech was established it operated out of a farm shed to the west of Auckland. Now its fourth premises is a modern 2,000m² factory, with a 600m² world-class temperature-controlled clean room, an autoclave, 10m flatbed plotter and recently installed five-axis CNC cutter. The factory was purposebuilt for C-Tech seven years ago, but already it looks as if further expansion might be required.

‘It really began with making 49er wings and foils for Mackay boats,’ says Vallings. ‘At the same time we were developing spars and hulls for 12ft skiffs. Then in 2002 we started getting into making carbon sail battens. I went to Europe and watched the start of the Volvo Ocean Race and listened to sailors complaining about battens breaking.’

That got him thinking that C-Tech could step up into bigger boat battens, so he worked up a prototype and presented it to Team New Zealand, who were busy preparing for the 2003 America’s Cup defence. ‘After trialling a full set of the C-Tech battens they reckoned ours were lighter and stronger than those they had been using, so they agreed we would become exclusive batten supplier. This was the beginning of the large square-top mainsails and batten technology had to take a big leap forward to support the leeches.’

Alinghi had also tested the new battens, so in the 2003 regatta C-Tech battens were on both sides of the America’s Cup match. For the 2007 Cup cycle all the teams specified C-Tech mainsail battens.

There is much more to battens than meets the eye. At the top end the C-Tech battens are high-tech, hollow and tapered rectangular structures of varying stiffness, individually designed to match the sail’s curvature and chord-depth.

An in-house software program for batten design provides predictions that allow sailmakers to evaluate stiffness, camber and weight before confirming batten specifications. This is particularly important on high-end projects for performance yachts and very large superyachts.

Also widely used on the grand prix circuit, including the Volvo Ocean Race, is the PlateBatten range. These are like a modern version of pultruded battens, but made with a pre-preg autoclaved system, which is much stronger. The C-Tech product has the taper built in on the centreline, rather than ground off afterwards, which eliminates outer skin delamination issues under bending.

In 2007 the AC rule also allowed headsail battens, spurring C-Tech into developing inflatable versions that could withstand the constant bending and abuse inflicted during tacking duels. The Cup projects enabled C-Tech to invest in a new plant to improve their processes, while the kudos of working in the Cup also attracted attention from the superyacht market, where their Air Battens found an application on large furling headsails.

As part of their constant R&D, which is both internally driven and responds to customer demand, C-Tech later came up with a better headsail batten solution with their C-T Flexifurl battens, which comprise two curved composite plates encased in a durable webbing cover. They resist bend up to a certain point and then kink, but spring back. ‘It sounds pretty simple in principle but there are a lot of technical challenges in producing something that rolls up when the sail furls and takes a lot of abuse as the sail goes through tacks. Another challenge is that headstay foils are getting smaller, so the sails have to furl ever tighter. You need to find a balance between stiffness and furlability.’

Although inflatable battens are no longer on the product list the technology has been applied in another superyacht application. Improving on the solid bucket spinnaker snuffer, C-Tech came up with an inflatable ring system: the C-T SnuffAir. The advantages are that, with the snuffer deflated, the huge sails are easier to stow; and when they are hoisted fully inflated the soft structure poses no danger to crew, or to the expensive paintwork of masts, communication domes and so on.

Meanwhile, when the America’s Cup moved to multihulls, C-Tech became even more involved, supplying both Oracle and Alinghi for the 2010 Deed of Gift Match before stepping up a notch for the AC72 cycle in San Francisco, with many of the jib battens and wing components including the control systems and quadrants from C-Tech.

For the AC50s in Bermuda the company’s involvement ramped up yet again, producing complete foil sets for the Emirates Team New Zealand SL33 training catamarans. Work on the AC50s included complex, high-loaded structures such as daggerboard cases, bearings, spine tubes, rudders and foil tips, along with wing control systems, fairings, hydraulic pump boxes, tubes and accumulators – even the bicycle set-ups. ‘They started with aluminium bikes and then, when they were happy with all the positioning and ergonomics, we made up the carbon components.’

C-Tech also drew public acknowledgement from team CEO Grant Dalton for delivering under extreme pressure when things went wrong in Bermuda. ETNZ broke a rudder before the Challenger Series began and the C-Tech crew worked night and day for two weeks to get a replacement out to them in record time.

‘That happened again after their capsize,’ Vallings recalls. ‘There was extensive damage to the fairings and we built another set and also had to replace a cant strut for one of the daggerboards. We worked pretty much non-stop from the Tuesday of the accident. I had a friend who was flying up to Bermuda, so I got him to hand-deliver everything to the team by the Saturday morning in time to go racing again.

‘The work we did with Emirates Team New Zealand has been good for us – it has put us at the leading edge of foil design and technology. We have been able to apply that experience to other projects. For example, we are currently working on lifting dagger foils for a production 10m catamaran.’

Above: still lots of careful hand work involved but C-Tech’s modern 2,000m2 factory is a very long way from where the company started out hand-making sail battens 20 years ago. The facility now includes a 600m² climate controlled clean room as well as an autoclave (below) large enough to cook foils and components ranging from Moth wands to hydraulic pump boxes and foil cases for Team New Zealand’s America’s Cup-winning AC50s; C-Tech also supplied many of the key elements of the team’s cyclor and wing-control systems

With the 36th America’s Cup moving to C-Tech’s home ground in Auckland, Vallings envisages yet more work ahead. The return to soft sails takes the game right back into C-Tech’s arena of advanced batten technology and sail hardware. ‘The new capacity that will come with our CNC machine will also expand the range of things we can produce.’

All of which is a long way from the origins of C-Tech in high performance dinghies and skiffs. But the company is determined not to stray from its roots. It continues to produce masts, booms, prods, aerofoil hiking wing frames, rudders, dagger boards, wands, battens and components for a wide range of high-performance boats, including the foiling monohull Q23s on Lake Garda, Moths, skiffs (from 12-footers to 18-footers), OK dinghies, Contenders and sport boats. ‘There is always development going on in these classes, some of it involving ultra high-modulus composites,’ says Vallings, who still competes at international level in the 18ft skiff class and this summer won the 12ft skiff Interdominion title.

‘In the Moths we are producing the new bent booms, where the vang loads at purchases of 54:1 are getting up pretty high. We are seeing loads of over 1.3 tonnes on an 11ft boat, which is asking a lot of the materials.

‘More recently we have brought some more experience onboard with Tim Willetts, formerly with Southern Spars and Hall Spars, joining us. He has taken our spar building to a new level, with more refined and better build techniques. With masts we tend to stick to our area of special expertise and focus on dinghies, skiffs and sport boats. Probably 35-footers are as big as we want to go at the moment.’

Although it seems there is a dichotomy between this small boat sailing and the bigger projects, there is in fact considerable crossover. ‘A lot of the people sailing skiffs and Moths, like Tom Slingsby, Paul Goodison, Peter Burling and so on, are also involved in other high level sailing projects. They know about our precision component manufacture, attention to detail and involvement in the latest materials and systems. Innovation is what we are about – and it is also fun.’

With the company’s roots firmly in the marine industry, it is also attracting work in a wider field, including communications and aerospace applications. This has led to developing much larger tubes, up to 1.4m in diameter, and represents a potential market for expansion. ‘At the moment the split is about 75 per cent marine and 25 per cent other projects, but we constantly get all kinds of enquiries,’ notes Vallings.

‘Every time the phone rings it is about some fun project – there are a lot of weird and wonderful ideas out there. It is always exciting and usually firmly within our mission to make cool stuff go fast.’

Click here for more information on C-Tech »

Click here for more information on Sailbattens »

The goal with the Dutch-built Agile 42 was to identify and then deliver a very different type of offer in terms of high performance and quality…

A designer’s dream and a builder’s vision seem to have recently coalesced rather nicely to create the Agile 42, a brand new high-performance, all-carbon luxury cruiser from the Netherlands.

Successful entrepreneurs are hard to please. They’re demanding, uncompromising and don’t easily settle for second best. They’re also the market that Tim van Daal, CEO of VMG Yachtbuilders, and designer Maarten Voogd decided to target with a new brand, Agile Yachts, of which the Agile 42 was the first example to be launched last winter.

Voogd is one half of the design partnership Simonis Voogd, formed with Cape Town-based Alexander Simonis in 1991. Voogd and van Daal have been friends for over 20 years and both are based in the town of Enkhuizen on the Ijsselmeer, which is where they hatched the initial plans for Agile Yachts.

Agile: adj, able to move quickly and easily. The name is a promising start but how would they go about satisfying this exacting clientele?

‘We were thinking about what kind of boat we should build to target a new generation of successful professionals between 40 and 50 years old,’ says van Daal. ‘What kind of boat would they want? It was quite an organic process, starting with talking about what we like ourselves…’

It was fortunate then that both were more or less their own target market, and even more fortunate that Voogd already had a boat in mind. ‘I designed this boat on spec for myself as a follow-up to my own 35-footer,’ says Voogd. ‘If you like, my brief was more speed, so I could do the occasional medium-distance race, and more comfort, so I can sail more pleasantly with my family.

‘It was important to be able to sail the boat shorthanded, and that she handled easily. Having sailed extensively on the Fareast 31R and 28R over the last four years I know how well a boat like this can sail – now the challenge was to combine this with a simple but functional and stylish interior.’

Voogd’s work with the Fareast brand enabled the process to be fast-tracked, taking just one year from design to launch. ‘Over the last four years we have designed a full range of sportsboats, but every design had improvements over its predecessor. The hull shape for the Agile 42 is an evolution of this work – full-scale tank testing, you might call it!

‘We settled on a clean and tidy hull shape with a very flat run aft, but minimal wetted surface,’ adds Voogd. ‘This makes the boat slippery in all conditions. The SA:DSPL ratio is of modern proportions, but not extreme, accentuating the efficiency of the hull shape. However, the bow and chamfered hull deck joint are driven more by aesthetics than by performance!’

‘The choice of a single rudder over twin rudders is to minimise wetted surface, weight and cost,’ Voogd continues. ‘The hull shape doesn’t lift the rudder out of the water that quickly, so control is not really an issue. The soft chines are dictated by the maximum deck beam we allowed ourselves.

‘I wanted the boat to be interesting for shorthanded sailing so I added 750 litres of water ballast per side with an additional 250 litres in the transom corners for downwind trim.’

The build was a collaboration between Voogd and van Daal’s VMG Yachtbuilders. ‘VMG was started about 30 years ago under another name as a classic carpentry specialist yard,’ says van Daal. ‘When I came to the company in the middle of 2014 the former director stepped down and I took the lead. That’s also when we changed the name to VMG.

‘As a second speciality we introduced high-quality composite work. It was an easy decision to make because the yard was completely rebuilt in 2012 after a fire. Our premises are start-of-theart with full climate control and excellent insulation, the perfect conditions for composite work.

‘We already had a 3D measuring machine and a CNC milling machine so almost everything was there. We have a dedicated hall for composite work where we have a lamination machine; this is all well separated from the carpentry department which is actually in another building.

‘The keel bulb was cast by a specialist company but we made the mould in which it was cast. The welded keel fin was also fabricated by a specialist contractor. Apart from that we didn’t have to outsource anything.

‘We CNC milled the frames to which we bonded the foam hull core,’ explains van Daal. ‘Then we laminated on the outer skin with carbon pre-preg, vacuumed it, and the carbon inner skin was then added using resin infusion. Both skins have 0.8mm of carbon in two layers, and there are unidirectional carbon fibre reinforcements in the appropriate areas. There is a web frame under the floor with 30 layers of carbon that supports the keel.

‘The steering system is chain and cable with a carbon quadrant, engineered and produced by Jefa. It’s a plug-and-play system that always works perfectly. She has an Axxon Composite mast. The whole rig is 150kg and the boom only 15kg. It’s a beautiful rig, stepped by Tuned Rigs in Enkhuizen. For Code sails she has a 3m telescopic bowsprit, with 1.5m fixed and 1.5m retractable.’

On deck the dual-purpose, hybrid nature of this boat is most clearly displayed in the cockpit, where Voogd has drawn an L-shaped bench to starboard and offset the companionway to port. ‘It’s an important feature, and one I like. It makes the cockpit a fantastic social area after sailing and is not in the way when racing. More importantly, it enabled an efficient galley layout, and an almost symmetrical interior, which gives a spacious feeling.’

The Agile 42 can be ordered as a stripped-out racer, but the first boat is the High Performance Luxury Cruiser (HPLC) version, which features bespoke interior design. ‘Owners are invited to bring their own stylist,’ explains van Daal. ‘This target group tends to have a well-known stylist to take care of the family home, holiday home, office, even sometimes the family aircraft, so why not bring that guy to style the boat? The client really liked the idea and in this case he brought in Eric Kant, his stylist.’

Any potential performancelimiting issues with mahogany sideboards and grand pianos were soon sidelined as Kant sails too, so he understands how critical weight is to performance. The result showcases stylish, muted tones in leather, thin teak veneer over core joinery, dimmable LED lighting throughout illuminating the carbon fibre hull and gunmetal deckhead.

Below: All this and water ballast too… To achieve the sailing performance required of Agile’s target market of young entrepreneurs meant a very carefully conceived and executed solution to delivering a comfortable as well as attractive interior space. This is not a boat, nor a target client group, for a heavy and dark old-school interior; nevertheless, the builders have created an attractive modern look with quality finishes to assemble an appealing interior space without weighing the boat down. Far too many so-called dual-purpose yachts in reality just turn out to be fast cruisers and this is a trap that this confident young team made it their mission to avoid. Rather successfully, it transpires…

For weight saving and quiet propulsion she has Lithium Super B batteries, 8kW at 48v DC, powering a 10kW Oceanvolt electric motor that has regeneration capabilities. Deck gear is by Harken and B&G sensors drive Sailmon instruments with navigation controlled by mobile devices.

So have they managed to satisfy the owner? ‘He’s delighted,’ beams van Daal. ‘He’s been out in her about five times now, but he’s not a very experienced sailor – the last boat he had was a Laser. He says it’s like having driving lessons in a Lamborghini! He’s a fast learner, a very intelligent guy. He said, “I know I’m extremely demanding, but this is more than I ever expected.”

‘The boat is delivering so much more than even we expected. Every time Maarten Voogd joins us for a sail he says it keeps on surprising him. In 30kt of wind you never hear anything, it’s completely quiet, which is rare for a carbon boat. It just doesn’t give anything, it’s so stiff – that’s one of the things we’re so happy about. Maarten himself said, “I’ve built lots of boats, but never with this level of quality,” which was a great compliment.’

‘The biggest surprise is the actual feel of the boat,’ adds Voogd. ‘It feels so much bigger than a 42-footer, very stiff both structurally and in sailing behaviour. It’s a real blast, downwind as well as upwind. So far we have achieved 20kt of boatspeed on the Ijsselmeer in 20-25kt of TWS.’

The success of any brand is measured in a healthy order book so at this early stage in the brand’s genesis is there evidence that demand for the Agile 42 (priced from €595,000 ex tax for the raw race version) exists? ‘Absolutely,’ says van Daal. ‘We get enquiries every day, one in five of which is serious. In my opinion the interest is there because there’s not much choice in this market. We found a unique point between cruising and racing with a lot of comfort and all with super high quality.

‘One of our prospects has a team of good race sailors that go around Europe every year sailing the bigger ORC regattas. He said he was looking for a boat somewhere between the GP42 he used to own and the X-41 he sails now, and that’s exactly where this boat is.

‘It also very much appeals to my own sailing tastes. This is a boat I could very happily have myself!’

Click here for more information on Agile Yachts »

More than 20 years on and Hall Spars’ reputation for creating elegant – and seamless – proven performance carbon spars still only improves…

Almost every raceboat of any size built in the past two decades has been fitted with a carbon spar, as have many larger cruiser/racers and every large sailing yacht of any type over 20m. The advantages in safety and performance are just too great to ignore, and composite spar manufacturing has been refined to a remarkable level of reliability that exceeds even where alloy was at its peak a quarter of a century ago.

Hall Spars have been a pioneer in this field for almost four decades. The company has produced countless championship-winning spars, with a clear commitment to continuous development to remain at the cutting edge of a competitive field, where not only is light weight important, but strength and reliability are crucial. This is especially true for spars supplied for series-built production boats where efficiencies in production timing and cost are also important parameters.

Hall Spars’ approach to carbon sparmaking was from the very beginning to build their rigs in a seamless process, which has set them apart. Ben and Eric Hall recognised the advantages of using male mandrels in construction when they started building their first carbon spars in 1984.

With this method a tapered mast plug is selected, which matches the dimensions of the tapered and untapered portion of the spar. These are typically alloy extrusion blanks that have sections that can be added as needed to match the dimensions of the final product, and then made smooth. The simplicity of Hall’s mould designs also makes the sealing of these moulds straightforward, which in turn allows for high autoclave pressures to gain good fibre consolidation.

With the aid of a motor-driven mechanism to rotate the plug, unidirectional carbon fibre tapes are placed longitudinally as well as wrapped in tension concentrically around the mandrel so that the fibres are aligned to the load paths in the spar at a range of ply angles (typically 0, 45 and 90°).

Main picture: Hall Spars manufacture their custom rigs at their original plant in Breskens and in Auckland, along with a new service centre in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Seamless has long been the company’s watchword: ever since they began making carbon spars back in the 1980s Ben and Eric Hall recognised the positive merits of laying up over male mandrels (below)

The tube is then reinforced with patch stacks of biaxial cloth used at attachment and reinforcement points outside the basic laminate, such as at spreader roots, halyard exits, the boom gooseneck, vang lug and so on. The amount of material, its modulus and cloth weight, number of layers and their orientation can all be customised to the locations where needed in the spar structure. This produces ‘power’ bulges on the outside of the spar where there is reinforcement. As this is a process where inside lamination is not required, it is faster and more cost-efficient.

After initial lay-up the laminate is wrapped tight and placed with its mandrel in the heat and pressure of an autoclave to catalyse hardening of the pre-impregnated resins. Once cured, the mandrel is removed and, with minimal grinding and fairing needed, the spar is either clearcoated or finished with a paint coating of the client’s choice. The result is a seamless carbon tube ready for assembly and, particularly when clear-coated (as it often is), the visual effect is always stunning.

Hall Spars’ use of a range of pre-fabrication and remote access techniques developed over many years ensures a strong, clean and effective internal fitout of the spar as well. This has benefits by reducing friction when internal halyards and other cables and fittings are run inside the spar. It also almost total eliminates carbon waste: all the fibre that is laid in the laminate ends up being cured into the spar.

In summary, advantages include:

• Composites are at their best when load-bearing fibres are continuous in the structure, and the reliance on resins for bonding are at a minimum
• Fibre layouts can be customised easily to the desired engineering characteristics of the spar design
• Use of pre-preg materials optimises fibre-resin ratios and thus strength-weight ratios as well, and is clean and efficient in the layup phase, with little waste material
• This lay-up method is faster
• Autoclave pressures can be higher, allowing for greater finished strength in the laminates.

Hall Spars were recently acquired by the North Technology Group and now operate out of their original facility in Breskens in the Netherlands as well as in Auckland and a new service centre in Portsmouth, RI, in the US. With successful integration into this major marine industry group Hall’s strong commitment to quality and reliability has only been reinforced.

‘We see the addition of Hall Spars as a further strengthening of the group’s mast-making skills,’ said Sam Watson, CEO of North Group’s mast businesses. ‘It broadens our reach with the addition of the male mandrel mastbuilding technology, which is a great approach for series production.

‘We are aware of the advantages both production processes bring, however, and will endeavour to ensure the client is always fully informed to make the correct choice.

Click here for more information on Hall Spars »

Ron Rosenburg was one of an experienced group that developed the latest Version 6 Petticrows Dragon. As the coach to the Turkish Provezza team he then watched his crew use their new boat to dominate the 2017 World Championship in Cascais, leading from the first race to the end of the regatta

The final race
It’s the final race of the 2017 Dragon World Championship in Cascais, Portugal. You’ve just enjoyed yet another tense, exhausting but thrilling downwind sleigh ride in more than 20kt of solid sea breeze, surfing those big, beautiful Atlantic Ocean waves, and now you’re locked in ready to endure the last, long, final upwind beat to the finish.

Ready to tack? You remind yourself to stay focused on the three most important steps to a great tack and remember, timing is the key… just like so many times in practice. Nice one. You dig deep and manage to find the energy required to work the boat over each and every one of those large, steep waves. Powered by what seems like nothing more than adrenaline, you cross the finish line in 10th place, good enough to secure your overall victory.