Now seriously for sale, the majestic gaff cutter Alexa of London is an improved version of the iconic Royal Yacht, with great potential for long-distance cruising

Have you ever wondered what it was like to sail the first Royal Yacht Britannia? The 37.5- metre (123ft) gaff cutter Alexa of London – now seriously for sale – is built on the same beautiful classic lines as GL Watson’s iconic original, which was one of the most successful racing yachts of all time.

With the same immense sail area, similar displacement and better weight distribution, Alexa carves through the sea with the super-smooth, steady motion that Britannia was renowned for, rather than bouncing over the waves like a typical modern yacht. When fully powered up she pulls a dramatic displacement wave behind her like a vintage 12-Metre, which adds another dimension to the joy of sailing in a fresh breeze. The view forward from her helm, past the low deckhouse and across a huge expanse of flush teak decks with a graceful positive sheer, is just as elegant as her perfect silhouette when seen from afar.

The foredeck dining table is a spectacular setting for an evening with family or friends

Modern versions of famous classic yachts need to tread a careful line, authentically capturing the essence of the boats that inspired them while being much more efficient to run, with far lower maintenance overheads, than a real museum piece. Designed, built and refitted with a practical, pragmatic mindset, Alexa is extremely successful in this regard. ’The hull is laid in steel and modern materials and equipment are used,’ says Alexa’s long-serving captain, Ross Murray, ‘but the undeniable splendour and refinement of a true gentleman’s thoroughbred sailing yacht is present in every detail.’

She offers a more refined sailing experience than an actual relic from the late Victorian era, with the great benefit of modern sailing systems. The comfortable passenger cockpit is a secure place to relax at sea, safely away from all blocks and pulleys, lines and winches. Her centreboard gives a significant boost to her upwind performance and enables her to access a much wider range of harbours and anchorages. This also means she’s suitable for exploring shallow cruising grounds like the Bahamas, the Baltic and the coast of Maine, with a board-up draught of 3.5m. Hydraulic powered winches and furlers make her easy to manage, so there’s no need for an army of crew – she currently operates with five. Her spacious interior is airy and bright, beautifully finished in a timeless and uncluttered New England style, so she’s just as luxurious down below as any modern superyacht.

One of her most remarkable features is the feel and response of the helm. ‘She is amazingly well balanced,’ says Captain Murray. ‘The enormous mainsail must be counterbalanced with headsails and the centreboard fully deployed to its full seven-metre (22ft) length. In calm waters it’s literally fingertip sailing, with chain and cable direct to the steering quadrant. In any type of seaway Alexa is a very stable yacht, offering good protection to the helm and comfort down below in all manner of conditions.’

With both headsails powered up to balance her enormous mainsail Alexa’s helm is fingertip light and responsive

With 483sq m of upwind canvas and 636sq m when going downwind, this is a very rewarding yacht to sail. ‘With 8-10 knots of breeze we are sailing,’ Murray says. ‘Inner jib and staysail is a good combination upwind. She has a flying jib for off the wind; she won’t sail dead downwind so we sail the angles, depending on the conditions.’

‘There is a topsail which hanks on to a cable right to the top and this offers lift and balance,’ he explains. ‘This same cable could be used for a storm mainsail, which is great for anyone planning a circumnavigation or going round the capes. The mainsail has one reef point.’

The secure, comfortable guest cockpit is ideal for dining or relaxing under way

Aside from the rich yachting heritage of Britannia, Alexa has an interesting history in her own right. Built in Gdansk and launched in 1992 as White Eagle, she was then the largest single-masted gaffer in the world. She was later renamed Caledonia and based in North America, then restored and refitted as a luxury blue water cruiser by the entrepreneur Julian Metcalfe who sailed her until 2013. Her current owners upgraded her extensively in a two-year refit, investing in new machinery, electrical systems, galley and teak decks. She made her début on the regatta circuit at St Barths in 2016, where she won the Spirit of the Bucket trophy.

‘Her purpose in recent years has been as a family yacht for cruising primarily in the Med and Caribbean,’ Murray says. ‘The raised gunwales make her feel very safe and needless to say that children love Alexa for her style and for the watersports we offer.’ Based in Palma and commercially coded for a 150-mile cruising range with guests on board, she has built up a notably successful charter business to help pay for her keep, easily attracting eight weeks of bookings in a typical season, with many charter clients returning year after year.

In charter mode, one of the keys to her success is undoubtedly the vast expanse of deck space on board, which really comes into its own when the anchor goes down, offering many different zones. A huge white canvas awning is rigged over the foredeck for shelter and shade, the bowsprit netting becomes a double hammock, sunpad cushions are fitted on the bow, sunbeds and classic teak reclining chairs are placed on the side decks and an elegant 10-seat dining table is set up on the foredeck with spectacular views all round. The passenger cockpit is a secure area for young children to play, with ample shade, and it’s an ideal place to gather for games, relax with a book or enjoy a leisurely breakfast in the gentle morning breeze. The air conditioned deckhouse is a comfortable indoor lounge with an excellent view and a direct connection to the passenger cockpit.

In a recent refit, Alexa’s interior was beautifully upgraded in a timeless, uncluttered New England beach house style with white paint and chrome details offsetting fine carpentry

The fold-out side boarding ladder is an especially nice feature which works well in all conditions, as Murray explains. It’s ideal for swimming from the yacht and also for transfers to and from Alexa’s Williams 460 jet RIB tender, which can run you ashore to a harbour or beach in minutes when she’s anchored a mile away. The centreboard provides exceptional stability and even when it’s raised in a shallow anchorage, her displacement ensures an easy, comfortable motion.

Down below, her spacious beach house chic interior – refitted in 2019 – is a welcoming blend of contemporary style and old-world charm. Polished chrome fittings and details, white-painted vertical surfaces and white headlining offset the solid hardwood joinery and traditional teak sole. She’s fully air conditioned, with state-of-the-art A/V systems throughout.

The full-beam lower saloon is a large, sociable space with U-shaped sofas in a cosy lounge area with a TV and surround sound system to port, while the starboard side has further seating and a large dining table, plus a cocktail bar. Traditional lantern skylights flood the whole area with natural light and there’s a good view out through four large portholes on each side.

Traditional lantern skylights flood the interior with natural light. The master cabin is a bright and sumptuous king size double

The lower deck layout offers four separate guest cabins, each with its own private en suite bathroom – a configuration that has made her popular for charter work, Murray explains, because it’s versatile enough to accommodate families, couples or groups of friends. The master cabin is a bright and sumptuous king size double with a spacious bathroom, copious wardrobe space, several portholes and deck hatches for ventilation. The other two doubles convert into twins, and with an extra pullman berth in the twin-bed cabin she can comfortably host up to nine guests on board.

While she’s proven her worth as a great family cruiser and successful charter yacht in the Med and Caribbean, Murray points out that Alexa would also be ideal for a much more ambitious sailing programme. Her steel hull and rigging, stout aluminium spars and carbon topmast are extremely robust. Twin 315hp engines and generators give full dual redundancy of propulsion and hotel systems; she has a vast amount of tankage for fuel and fresh water, plus a 180-litre per hour watermaker, so she’s very well equipped to cruise in remote areas with full autonomy for long periods of time. She’s offered for sale in turn-key condition, well maintained and ready for her next round of adventures.

‘Due to her 120-tonne steel hull, Alexa is safe, stable and very capable offshore,’ says Murray, who has skippered her across many thousands of ocean miles. ‘With her gaff mainsail and easily controlled headsails, this yacht is an ideal ocean passage-maker that looks after you well. Whether it be a full circumnavigation or a trip to the Caribbean for the winter months, Alexa is in her element.’ At £2,950,000 and VAT paid, what’s not to like?

Click here for more information on Alexa of London or call Alastair Shove on +44(0)7476888939

Lessons learned from racing two-handed in a rough 2023 Fastnet race

The 2023 RORC Rolex Fastnet Race had its toughest weather conditions in recent years. Three frontal systems crossed its track, the first of which was a SW gale force eight, gusting nine from the Needles to Portland Bill. In these conditions, with only two co-skippers aboard, any equipment failures can have significant consequences as there can be little slack before you are overwhelmed by the conditions. After the race I spoke to a range of different boats in the UK Doublehanded Series fleet to find out what worked and what didn’t.

The biggest failure across the doublehanded boats was the electronics. Despite some carrying out extra waterproofing pre-race, the persistent rainwater and waves found their way into the network and on most boats, electronics failed.

Autopilots are critical on a doublehanded boat, especially in a long race, so many shorthanded boats carry two autopilots. On Cora the autopilot malfunctioned, probably from a short circuit in a damaged cable elsewhere in the system. The pilot kept auto-engaging and trying to go hard over so it was fortunate that they had installed a breaker switch specifically for the pilot. Another boat had the pilot auto engaging whilst they were hand steering and trying to tack the boat. Bellino has a second pilot that the crew can run without any data from the network and this proved fantastic as it was merrily steering the boat at speeds of over 20kts as their primary pilot wouldn’t work because of corrupt data on the network.

Red Ruby had issues with the chartplotter after water incursion. It took on a life of its own and began creating thousands of man-overboard waypoints. On top of it all, the chartplotter turned to Polish and they subsequently had lots of grimacing fun trying to silence the alarms. On other boats the chartplotter just randomly shut off.

AIS was also unreliable. Some reported AIS data was very limited due to steep heel angles, on another boat the AIS decided to lose its cable connection with GPS and therefore they stopped transmitting. Finally, laptop and phone chargers don’t like salty water either and charging problems were common.

Knowing the electronic layout and being able to fault-find proved crucial. Jangada ran without instruments for six hours whilst the crew considered all options, including retirement. Fortunately, time spent before the race indexing all the connections on the network meant they were able to clear the fault once the sea state had eased.

Another common failure was loss of deck safety gear. Disko Trooper had a lot of safety gear washed off the transom/pushpit by the waves. The crew concluded the standard fastenings need reviewing for strength whilst retaining quick release mechanisms. On Jangada the dan buoy jumped off its bracket and self-inflated. Black Betty had the life raft self-inflate after they had turned the boat around and got swamped by a wave, it then fell off the back and was towed for a while before detaching itself. This caused extra traffic on Ch16 as many boats called in to report it.

Three teams I spoke to lost wind instruments, or part of them. Jangada lost the seawater pump and toilet pump; both broke their mounts due to flimsy designs that could not withstand the battering if knocked.

Above: Conor Corson and Matt Bird, both under 30 years old, raced the SunFast 3300 Asgard.

It is particularly important to secure heavy items. Bellino had a fire extinguisher go flying, another boat had the EPIRB fall out of the holder, luckily not going off. Jago had a cupboard door open and a spare bottle of gearbox liquid emptied itself with an awful smell, making the skipper puke for next 48 hours.

It was essential to have a handheld radio or VHF speaker on deck, though both proved difficult to hear in the wind. The crew of Cora sums up the reality of the situation for many boats; ‘Despite having our radio on the loudspeaker upstairs it was so noisy, the Rolex backstay flag sounded like it was breaking the sound barrier three times a second, and the radio was largely drowned out. It is difficult to manage and monitor this when you’re trying to negotiate 35-40kt breezes as a double handed team.’ The upgrade most wanted was the ability to clear the VHF DSC alarms from on deck as this would have saved many precarious trips below.

Above: the SunFast 3200 Cora 2 sailed by Tim Goodhew and Kelvin Matthews won the UK Doublehanded Offshore Series for the third time in 2023

When you are doublehanded in heavy upwind conditions it’s unlikely you are going to find the time or energy to go below to cook hot food. On Red Ruby it was 18hrs before either skipper went below for any significant time. Quick access snacks and sandwiches are essential with a mix of healthier food (nuts/seeds, eggs, chicken, fruit) alongside the need for sugar and caffeine. Some packed foulies with bars, others just had them ready in the cockpit bags. Ready-made breakfast milkshakes (oats, milk, sugar) were useful for getting calories in quickly. Orbit had food that heated itself up with cold water. One crew made hot drinks in flasks before leaving the dock which kept hot for six hours. Another had a big box of homecooked vegetable pasta ready to eat. I’m told oranges proved a great source of energy in bad weather – no need to worry about the mess, it's gone with the next wave.

When you do finally get below for a rest don’t forget if you have heating to fire it up. Jago got to Land’s End and reported ‘… it dawned on me “why not put the heating on” …. oh, wow did it have an immediate impact on our wellbeing and mood!’ Thanks to the co-skippers of Fastrak, Jangada, Disko Trooper, Cora, Jago, Surf, Solenn for Pure Ocean, Orbit, Black Betty and Mzungu! for sharing their insights.

If this has inspired you to join us then the UK Doublehanded Series welcomes new members into our supportive group. Our race schedule for 2024 is now live and the series includes the IRC Doublehanded European Championship (Drheam Cup and Cowes Dinard St Malo) and the IRC Doublehanded UK Nationals.

Click here for more information on the UK Double Handed Offshore Series »

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Doyle Sails builds on success with a renewed focus on next-level R&D

A stellar showing at the 2023 Maxi World Championships might have been just cause for celebration at Doyle Sails. Instead, the mood of quiet satisfaction was eclipsed by a determination to keep focused on pushing the technology, design and development of high-performance sails on their upward trajectory.

‘We are obviously very pleased for the owners and teams who did so well,’ says Doyle Sails CEO Mike Sanderson. ‘We are part of those teams and hope that together we can add more good results next year. We have exciting new products in the pipeline that will move the bar again.’ Business as usual.

Teams racing with Doyle Sails in the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup included: Maxi A Division – Galateia 1st, Leopard 3 2nd, Bullitt 3rd; Maxi B Division – Bella Mente 1st, Proteus 2nd, Pepe Cannonball 3rd; Super Maxi Division – Y3K 1st; Multihull Division – Convexity 2 2nd equal.

‘This result has been quietly building for quite a long time now,’ says Doyle Sails director and designer Richard Bouzaid, who has been directly involved with all three of the Maxi A podium yachts, along with Proteus, Pepe Cannonball and Y3K. ‘These results are also being backed up in other Grand Prix classes and superyachts.’

For Sanderson, the showing at Porto Cervo is testament to a strategy he has pursued since taking over the leadership of Doyle Sails a dozen years ago. ‘What we are seeing now is the result of a huge investment in sailors and sailmakers, who occupy key positions within high profile Grand Prix and superyacht teams,’ he says.

Behind the company’s ‘by sailors, for sailors’ credo is a hand-picked team of 24 leading sailmakers and Grand Prix sailors who apply to every project experience accumulated from 12 America’s Cups, 30 Volvo Ocean Races, 31 World Championship medals, an Olympic gold medal, multiple maxi regattas and too many national titles to list. ‘We aim to have our people deeply embedded with their respective teams, who believe that having Doyle Sails as part of their team is a sound pillar of what they’re trying to achieve,’ Sanderson explains. ‘They are there because they can help make boats go faster and have earned the respect of the people they sail with on merit, not because of the logo on their shirts.’

But it only works as a dialogue in which the sailmakers respect the particular sailing characteristics of the team and tailor the sail package to their requirements.

Sanderson has a long-standing relationship with Bella Mente, which won Maxi B Division. ‘Doyle Sails do not produce Bella Mente’s sails in isolation,’ he says. ‘Team Bella Mente does that by working with us to produce winning sails. We consult closely with their decision-makers – the owner, afterguard, trimmers and so on. Once you are an integral part of the team and you have proved you can translate their input into reality and repeat that consistently, results follow. With that, you build trust and more results follow. It is the gift that keeps on giving.’

The ideal scenario is to work within a team from the ground up on a new build, or a major refit. Y3K, the stunning newly-launched Judel/ Vrolijk Wally 101, is a case in point. From the outset, Richard Bouzaid collaborated widely with the design team on the rig, deck layouts and structures. ‘The result is a beautiful 30.8m cruiser-racer, which won the Maxi Worlds on its first outing,’ he says. ‘By taking full advantage of the benefits of Structured Luff, right through to components like furlers and hydraulic rams, we were able to reduce headstay loads to between 10.5 and 11 tons.

‘Compare that with the Wally Cento Galateia, which was designed and built for conventional sails with headstay loads up to 26 tons. Since switching to Doyle’s Structured Luff Sails Galateia, which won Maxi Division A, is running headstay loads around 20 tons. This shows you can make improvements by applying Structured Luff to conventional set-ups, but not as much as when the technology is fully integrated throughout the entire design.’

The extensive refit of Leopard 3 was another project that fully embraced the Doyle Sails technology and came storming out of the blocks straight afterwards. Chris Sherlock from the Doyle Sails Palma loft is an integral part of the Leopard 3 sailing team and, with Bouzaid, worked closely with all the relevant disciplines on the programme.

Sherlock has been involved with Leopard programmes for 32 years and with Leopard 3 since its build 16 years ago. ‘Currently, I run the race programme and work closely with the boat captain, Gian Ahluwalia, who managed the refit.

‘We began this project with a lot of naysayers but we undertook a massive study before going ahead with it. I always had faith in the boat, which was the last project where Bruce Farr himself drew the lines.

‘Because of charter requirements, the boat was always overweight. We stripped out all the MCA chartering requirements, redesigned the deck layout, replaced half the deck and much of the equipment and built a new rig. The weight went from 51.5 tons to 42 tons. The next step is to get to sub-40 with a new deeper keel fin and lighter bulb and by replacing the daggerboard system, which dates back to 2007.’

Above: Y3K showcasing full Doyle Sails Structured Luff technology integrated throughout the design and build process.

‘In many ways this was like a new build,’ says Bouzaid. ‘One of the first decisions was a new rig, so Steve Wilson was brought in early. We worked with Steve, Southern Spars and Farr Yacht Design, providing extensive modelling on the sail load interfaces to get the mast stiffness exactly right for the aero package and to inform decisions about loads going into the deck and structures.

‘The outcome is a 100ft cantingkeel maxi race yacht with only 10 tons of headstay tension. These load reductions are amazing when you consider that the headstay tension on a TP52 is 8.5 tons.’

The results speak for themselves. At the Aegean 600 in July, Leopard 3 swept the boards with seven trophies including line and handicap wins and a new monohull race record, then finished 2nd at the Maxi Worlds.

Dramatically reduced headstay tensions are achieved by transferring much of the load onto the Structured Luff sails through the cunningham control. ‘For every ton you put on the sail, you can take two tons off the headstay, with the added bonus of less forestay sag than you had before,’ Bouzaid explains.

‘On a 100-footer, by adding 5 tons to the jib tack load, the headstay load reduces by 10 tons and headstay sag will reduce from about 0.8 per cent to virtually zero – particularly when you consider that, apart from the load reduction, Structured Luff actually projects the sail forward. There are lots of ways you can play with that ratio, but that is how it works.’

On Structured Luff mainsails, higher cunningham loads are largely used to manipulate mast bend. ‘We have used that to good effect with the Maxi 72s, where you can change the mast bend profile quite significantly, even though you are locked in with checkstays,’ Bouzaid notes. ‘We played with this a lot on the AC75s during the last America’s Cup. We were using very high cunningham loads to bend those great big Dsection masts. That was very useful on those boats, because you want the sails to be full and powerful when you are going for take-off and then you want them to be super-flat when you are foiling – and you are doing all that without a backstay!’

While best results are obviously best achieved with a new build or a refit on the scale of Leopard 3, even when working with legacy equipment the performance of Galateia, Bullitt, Proteus and others is testament to what can be achieved. A common modification in those cases is to upgrade the hydraulic rams to cope with higher cunningham loads.

Building vital close relationships within teams often proceeds incrementally. ‘Even if it begins with one or two new sails, the switch to a full commitment generally happens quite fast. Otherwise you quickly run into compromises,’ says Sanderson.

‘If you are making a new light jib, for example, do you design it to match the crossovers with the existing heavy jib from a different sailmaker? Or do you build the new light jib with the crossover to match a Doyle Sails heavy jib and fully optimise the potential? It usually doesn’t take long before teams see the advantage of going all-in.’

Above: back in full racing trim after a refit, Leopard 3 has new Structured Luff sails from Doyle that reduce headstay tension to just 10 tons

These team entrenchments set up curious dynamics within Doyle Sails, where a balance has to be struck between internal competition on behalf of rival teams and wider co-operation on progress and development.

‘The teams all have their own programmes and ideas and we must be very respectful of the investment they are making to get an edge,’ Sanderson says. ‘We have had to come up with internal firewalls to deal with that. Where a team has come up with an idea, we are very careful that that IP stays exclusive to that team, until it is in the public domain. Then the race is on for other teams to try to figure it out.’

The benefits are very much a two-way street. Sanderson is the first to acknowledge that he savours the privilege of rubbing shoulders with owners who are highly successful and competitive individuals in their various business fields.

‘I am a huge believer in trying to tap the knowledge and wisdom of people we are associated with. Although we are just a very small part of what they do, many of them are quite passionate about the Doyle Sails story. What they can teach us about building a brand, for example, has value that money can’t buy.’

One of the lessons is that in sport and business, past success – however satisfying – brings with it pressure for continued future achievement.

‘We never stop trying to learn and improve and we are excited about new developments coming on stream,’ says Sanderson. ‘We see our new Hybrid product as a tier above Grand Prix level for teams stretching for those last small percentage gains and we are doing some interesting work with new composite gennakers that could be a big deal in the world of narrow apparent wind angle, high- performance monohulls.’ The work goes on.

Click here for more information on Doyle Sails. »

The new generation of large, high-performance luxury cruising catamarans are making great use of the latest developments in AC rig technology

You simply can’t miss them, big cats on the prowl. Their numbers have exploded in recent years as the market for luxury multihulls grows by the season. But this is far more than the product of a new trend. The rapid development of the modern performance cruiser cat scene is feeding off some of the latest and most advanced technology at the sharp end of the sport where it nurtures fast, easily driven boats that are comfortable and easy to handle. Essential to this impressive growth is a new breed of sail plans and rigs where Southern Spars is at its centre.

‘One of the big key differences with this new generation of boats is that they sail off apparent wind most of the time,’ says Southern Spars co-founder and director Mark Hauser. ‘This means that they build their apparent wind very quickly as they accelerate which means that the sail shapes need to change to match. In the past, rigid masts restricted the amount of bend you could achieve to help this change in shape. But today, not only can the rigs change shape, but they work in conjunction with the structured luff mainsails to allow the sail to be flattened off quickly and efficiently as the apparent wind speed builds and the angle reduces. Typically, these boats can be starting at five to seven knots and accelerating to 15-20kts in very little time, so you have to switch through the gears pretty quickly. A lot of the time the cunningham is the key control for making significant sail shape adjustments. It also makes it much easier to produce a set of trimming notes that are easy to follow and effective, especially when sailing shorthanded. So, like adding gears to a gearbox, this gives a much wider range to the sail plan.’

For designers, the way that the rig and sail plan interact and the control systems that make this possible has taken them into new areas.

‘From a large cruising cat design and engineering point of view, being able to power up the mainsail more effectively with a structured luff main coupled with a diamond spreader mast was a combination that didn’t exist before the last America’s Cup,’ says sales engineer Jarrard Wallace. ‘With cunningham tension, the structured luff allows the sail to move forwards at its leading edge while the internal structure of the mast is designed to match the shape that the sail has been designed to take. Traditionally, the cunningham would simply drag the draft forward a bit. Today, the control is far more sophisticated and effective. Diamond spreaders allow us to achieve a more predictable sailing bend range. They also allow us to use smaller, lighter mast tubes. Plus, we have the ability to change the set-up of the mast and its characteristics with the internal mast jacks which allow us to pre-tension the diamond stays.

The Persico 72 is likely to be the first of many large, foiling cruising cats that will have a major influence on rig design in the near future.

‘Trying to pre-load the rig in place in the yacht using halyards and then putting spanners on turnbuckles just doesn't get you there. Instead, an internal jack achieves this with relatively low effort and provides the accuracy to know how much tension you have in the diamonds. It means we can target preload and prebend measurements which also means that when we get both of those things together, we know that the diamond tension is spot on and we're ready to go.’

Such technology and techniques are of course well known in the racing world where at the very leading edge, the America’s Cup has been an important driver. But, modern multihulls are bringing their own set of conditions and requirements into the mix. Righting moment is one particular area where multihulls by definition can generate very high loads and the power that goes with it. But now the development in foils on multihulls is taking the power game onto yet another level.

‘We are currently working on the Persico 72, a 72ft performance cruising cat that is fully foiling, and this looks set to be just the start,’ says Hauser. ‘While not everyone will want to head down this route, it is clear to us that we will be needing to work in this area more and more as foiling becomes the norm and where the speeds take another step up. Even just from an aerodynamic point of view the greater speed thanks to foils has a big knock-on effect for our design and engineering.’ Indeed, the integration of the complete rig package with the rest of the boat will be influenced as Wallace explains.

‘The Persico 72 project was a good example of the collaboration that’s required. One of the key decisions was where to put the forestay. Given the size and proportions of the desired sail plan, the balancing act involved establishing the right place so that the mast bends where it needs to, but at the same time supports the various configurations of foresails while still achieving the lightest solution. Sometimes knowing where the forestay needs to go from the sails’ point of view will lead to a heavy topmast which is clearly not desirable. So, being involved at an early stage allowed us to work with the entire team to achieve a lighter overall package while still achieving the original design objectives.’

An area of required development that is less obvious, but can have big implications, is in providing accurate loads for designers and other equipment manufacturers.

Above: the overall weight of Highland Fling’s rig package was significantly reduced by bringing Southern Spars into the design loop at an early stage

‘Producing accurate load mapping is really important for the overall design,’ said Wallace. ‘From the total amount of mast compression, to the amount of torque that is required to rotate the mast on the ball, these are key factors that feed into making the rig easy and safe to handle, especially for small crew numbers.

‘If the boat has a rotating rig there is another level of detail that is crucial when it comes routeing control lines from the mast into the deck superstructure.’

A bi-product of modern multihulls is that their stability and structural rigidity along with high loads can sometimes make it difficult to assess just how loaded the boat is.

‘Because multihulls don’t heel like a monohull, knowing when loads are building and getting close to their peak can be quite difficult,’ says Hauser. ‘The risk is that loads can go through the roof quickly, so load monitoring is a big part of these powerful new boats. Load cell monitoring systems have become increasingly important and the Synapse system developed together with Future Fibres has taken this onto another level by accurately measuring and recording the loads as the rig, rigging and boat are seeing them.

‘This allows the North Design Services software to compare the designed loads with those that are being experienced across a full range of real-world conditions. From here we can set limits and red lines along with being able to create accurate tuning guides.’

A good example of the latter in operation came with a recent rig installation.

‘The recent Highland Fling 80 rig was stepped in a day and the boat was sailing the next day. From arriving on the dock, to dressing, stepping and sailing was less than 36 hours,’ says Hauser.

‘One of the big advantages we have throughout the process from concept to delivery is that within the North Technology Group we have the mastmaker, the rigging supplier and the sailmaker all working together. Given just how sophisticated, refined and complex the process now is I honestly don’t know how you would do it without that kind of group.’

Click here for more information on Southern Spars »