You could be chilling (literally) at one of Europe's mid-winter regattas or you could be enjoying sparkling and warm one-design racing... your call

Exhausted but still buzzing after racing 150nm down the stunning coastlines of Oman and the UAE, Caterina Nitto is enjoying some downtime at the halfway point of EFG Sailing Arabia - The Tour. With a day to spare before the action kicks off again, the Italian sailor finds herself at Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. Tranquil and serene, it’s a world away from her busy life as a professional sailor – perfect place to reflect on the first few legs of a unique regatta.

‘The best thing about this race is the mix of cultures and religions, and the adventure,’ she says. ‘We might all be from different backgrounds but we share the same passion for sailing.’

One week in and Nitto is fast discovering the ethos of EFG Sailing Arabia - The Tour: five offshore legs totalling 763 miles raced on identical Farr 30s around the Arabian Gulf, offering thrilling competition for the international crews while showcasing the very best of the region.

Nitto’s Sardinian Adelasia di Torres team, owned by Renato Azara, was among a fleet of eight international teams that set out this year from Oman’s capital city Muscat, heading north to pitstops in Sohar then Khasab on the stunning Musandam Peninsula. From there it was south to Abu Dhabi before the two longest legs to Doha in Qatar then returning to Dubai, with three rounds of inshore racing thrown in to spice up the mix.

The line-up was as diverse as the countries and cultures they experienced. Two crews from Oman, Al Mouj Muscat and Team Renaissance, went up against rivals Zain from Kuwait, DB Schenker from Germany, Team Averda from Great Britain, Bienne Voile from Switzerland, Adelasia di Torres from Italy and title holder EFG Bank from Monaco.

Main picture: It is surely inevitable that more European sailors in particular will soon wake up to the enormous and diverse appeal of a one-design regatta held in one of the best one designs ever invented, competing over a mix of inshore and offshore courses, around a coastline like no other… and once ashore then sampling a fascinating, historic and completely different maritime culture offering unparalleled levels of hospitality. Naah, on reflection it’s much more fun frostbite racing somewhere like Annapolis or Kiel… Really?

Among a cast of top-level competitors were some of the biggest names in sailing, including French former match racing world champions Mathieu Richard and Thierry Douillard, Volvo Ocean Race navigator Libby Greenhalgh, 2003 America’s Cup winner Guillaume Berenger, Olympic silver medallist Annemieke Bes and 2020 Vendée Globe hopeful Andrew Baker.

But there were also plenty of amateur sailors: physicists, architects, physiotherapists, business leaders, students… all enjoying the chance to go head to head with their heroes in the inshore and offshore disciplines. No wonder, either: the warm waters of the Arabian Gulf and temperatures of 25-30°C combine with stunning scenery to make EFG Sailing Arabia - The Tour an attractive alternative to European winter sailing.

Raced in Farr 30 one-design yachts that can be chartered from race organisers Oman Sail, teams compete on a level playing field for the Tour trophy. This year’s race boasted a strong Omani contingent thanks to the work of Oman Sail, a national initiative to reignite Oman’s maritime heritage.

EFG Sailing Arabia - The Tour veteran and Oman Sail offshore success story Fahad Al Hasni led Omani-crewed Team Renaissance, a team determined to finish on the podium after missing out by 1pt in 2016. Al Hasni has competed in every edition of the regatta since its inception in 2011, first under the mentorship of French sailing star Sidney Gavignet before working his way up to leading his own entry.

The 2017 race also saw the welcome return of an all-female crew, a feature of the event since 2012, this year in the form of DB Schenker with a mix of Omani and European sailors.

EFG Bank Monaco, winners of three editions prior to 2017, started the regatta as hot favourites despite the absence of their injured skipper Gavignet, and they didn’t disappoint. Under the stewardship of Thierry Douillard they claimed their fourth consecutive title, winning four of the five offshore legs and one in-port series in the process despite an epic battle with Omani crew Team Mouj Muscat.

But it wasn’t just seasoned pros on the podium in February. After moving up through the rankings with each leg, Nitto and the Adelasia di Torres crew rounded off their first EFG Sailing Arabia - The Tour with third place in the final stage. ‘Finishing on the podium in the final leg was proof to ourselves that we have a good crew and if we do our best we can be on the same level as the other teams,’ she said. ‘This has been a great experience, especially the spirit of all the teams. We’ve shared a lot and everyone has been amazing – always smiling, always having fun. I will have a lot of stories to tell my friends.’Nitto is already planning the team’s return in 2018.

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Forty-five years after it was built to host the 1972 Olympic Regatta, Keil Schilksee remains host to one of the best-known regattas on the planet

Just around summer solstice the Baltic Sea will once again draw the full attention of the sailing world. When the legendary Kiel Week opens on 17 June it will not only be one huge waterfront festival for approximately three million visitors from all around the globe. More importantly, at its heart, one of the biggest regattas worldwide will now be revitalised with a programme finally befitting its former fame.

‘Kiwo’, as Kieler Woche is often dubbed, has seen all the big names at the startline over the years – from recent superstars like Peter Burling and Blair Tuke in the 49er class and America’s Cup team leader Ben Ainslie, to Robert Scheidt, Jochen Schümann, Torben Grael and Dennis Conner, to name just a few.

Kiel has always been one of those go-to events on the sailing calendar: you simply had to race and better still win here in the usually windy and variable waters off former Olympic playground Kiel-Schilksee at the entrance to the Kiel fjord.

The Notice of Race for the 135th edition boasts a variety and relevance rarely seen before. It includes, among others, the first competition in the new Nacra 15 class, the 29er Eurocup, the European Sailing Series of the Melges 24 and the Para World Sailing Cup – along with the full line-up of Olympic classes. The sheer quality of the event underlined not least by the excellent live video coverage made possible with the help of premium partner Audi.

In fact, demand was so big that the organisers had to turn down a couple of classes – and this is a problem likely to continue. Mid-term between the Rio and Tokyo Olympics next year Kiel will even host the World Cup finals, putting it once again on the calendar of any top international athlete.

‘We want to set the standards for the future,’ says a confident Dirk Ramhorst, head of the organising committee. He is sure Kiel Week will draw ‘a lot of attention in many different ways’ – even big boat and club racing will be given a lift.

The logo for the event (above), showing an artist’s view of different keel shapes and alluding to the fact that Kiel and keel are homophones, may be a telling symbol. After nearly a decade the so-called ‘Eel Regatta’ – a longdistance race for pros and amateurs – will be part of the programme once again.

So it’s not just at the top that it’s setting the pace: Keel Week is expanding its reach as well.

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UBI Maior Italia are bringing innovation to (and from) this America's Cup

For those on the cutting edge of technology the shift in platform choice to wing-sail catamarans in the America’s Cup may have reduced the number of sail-handling systems to develop, but it has created new opportunities for innovation in hardware solutions across a multitude of entirely new applications. Foil and wing-control systems, for example, have been designed, fabricated and evaluated for the past two years and more, with this year’s start of competition being the final test for their efficiency, reliability and ultimate contribution to performance.

The Emirates Team New Zealand squad are famously uncompromising on demanding the best from their equipment, so it’s no surprise that their relationship with UBI Maior Italia has evolved to be an even tighter fit. Development is more than just a process at Maior Italia, it is an inherent part of the culture at this small producer of custom and semi-custom hardware – focused exclusively on meeting the high demands of highperformance yachts.

The process starts with describing the system and its load parameters, and from here the company’s technical team go to work developing 3D models of the new product through the use of specialised CAD software to use a finite element method (FEM) approach to optimise dimensioning, well before the production of the first prototype. This helps define the parameter space and all the material choices for the job at hand.

Main picture: it’s not a bad test bench when equipment developments get to be road-tested by Team New Zealand on their ACC raecboat – it also shows a fair degree of confidence by the team in UBI’s product at this stage of the Cup cycle when downtime is particularly costly. Those who’ve watched the movie Cool Running, about the Jamaican bobsleigh team, will immediately spot an affinity to the new Cup crewing arrangements

Above: FEA stress analysis of a UBI roller pulley. By carefully matching the different mechanical properties of the rollers and the races the internal stresses are kept evenly distributed and remain uniform up to maximum design load and rotation speed. And an exploded view (below) of a full titanium tulip sheave. This X-Bearing system allows the lateral loads to be carried by the conical rollers again ensuring smooth high speed and high load performance. This sheave has been designed for the gennaker system onboard the latest WallyCento, designed by Mark Mills with styling by Pininfarina

It starts with innovative design
The physics of how blocks and rollers can handle on and off-axis loads approaching breaking strengths, the deformation of materials under load and the minimising of friction in the system is not simple, and to understand these forces is essential to designing optimised to these loads.

The UBI technical team model the physics, beginning with an Excel spreadsheet and back-of-theenvelope calculations. Once an outline has been made, more advanced models and software are used, such as UBI’s in-house 3D FEA analysis and automatic parametric optimisation software, to investigate the behaviour of the rollers and bearing races at microscopic levels.

The initial assumptions and predictions are then tested in practice, building simplified models and mock-ups and performing load and life tests. The results are fed back onto the design board and a new design loop is executed. This continues until the requirements are met.

As this is a custom process the design chosen has to represent the most efficient and reliable method of load transfer within the available operating space. Optimal dimensions and attachment methods are also considered.

Every choice is usually a tradeoff. For example, while a stiffer and more robust sheave suffers less deflection under load, thus providing less friction, it will also necessarily be heavier.

As Emirates Team New Zealand’s timeframe was so short for both the racing itself and the maintenance schedules of the shore team, a higher-grade carbon fibre/ptfe-PEEK material has been used on some rollers. This material allows higher loads and less friction than normal but has a shorter life because it is more sensitive to fatigue. In this environment, where every system is lubricated and inspected after each sailing, it is possible to push the boundaries.

Likewise, the choice of the exact ball race diameter, built to within tolerances of a micron, is very significant. A larger groove or race will allow the sphere to deform more under load, but it will also provide a smaller contact surface with the ball, causing a sharp increase of pressure. In contrast, a tight-fitting groove/race will provide excellent support on a large portion of the diameter of the ball, but any deflection of the sphere will make it squeeze out of the groove, probably prompting a catastrophic failure.

The material difference
Once a design has been chosen that best meets the demands of the system, materials are selected that match the load, strength and weight requirements, and for the America’s Cup only the best will be acceptable.

This goes not only for the grade of alloy used, such as 6082-T6 aluminium, but the finish materials on each part. On some sheave parts, for example, Maior Italia opt for a material that outperforms the typical hard-coat anodising with a super-hard silver oxide anodised surface that they have sourced from a food service equipment supplier based in Bologna operating a system under licence from the Japanese patent holder. Its gold colour distinguishes this from other surfaces.

Viewed with an electron microscope, the anodised surface is formed of thousands of microtube-like structures. These tubes of hollow aluminium oxide are filled with silver ions, resulting in a higher hardness (from 550 to 650+ HV) and a friction coefficient one-sixth that of conventional hardcoats (from 0.15 to 0.025).

Torlon comes in different flavours and is a good material for roller bearings. It can be natural, reinforced with glass or carbon fibres, loaded with Teflon to decrease friction or with graphite nanoparticles to increase the hardness and wear resistance. As often within any plastics material, mechanical properties vary wildly depending on composition. Torlon can have a tensile strength from 120Mpa to 225Mpa for the most sophisticated composition, so there is quite a margin to work with here as well. After being press moulded, Torlon parts undergo heat treatment for one month in an oven at around 260°C to further harden the surface.

Often it is not enough to simply swap materials in search of higher performance. The material and dimensions of the rollers and their races have a significant non-linear effect on each other depending on deflection, stiffness, surface hardness, friction coefficient and so on. A stiffer or harder surface will increase the contact stresses in the roller; likewise, if the roller is too stiff compared to the race, it may cause micro-cracks and holes to form, which will destroy the bearing.

Fabrication and testing
Whether parts are custom or semiproduction, computer-controlled high-precision machinery is used in manufacturing UBI’s prototypes, which are then tested in a booth at maximum working loads as well as at break strength. The resistance of the materials to marine corrosion is verified in parallel by testing samples subjected to continuous saltwater exposure.

For parts intended for production, the manufacture of every block, furler and connector is undertaken with precision machinery controlled by software in accordance with ISO 9001. Every single unit produced is then tested to ensure that UBI’s high quality and performance standards are met.

Putting the pieces of this approach together for Emirates Team New Zealand in their wing and foil systems yielded some fascinating solutions to the unique needs of an AC Class catamaran. While all the details cannot be discussed yet, the first and foremost request from the team was light weight and, maybe even more importantly, low friction. The resulting products included a variety of solutions such as the use of double ball races. The general trend has been to provide blocks to reduce the specific loads on the rollers while producing the least friction possible.

It is envisioned that these parts developed for Emirates Team New Zealand will in due course be applicable in a wide variety of both multihull and monohull systems. For example, the latest Wally Cento's blocks employ some interesting new pin load bearing configurations. Up until now sheaves have used a main bearing pin that attached them to the hull or the mast, and an anti-rotation pin to prevent the rotation of the inner race on the main pin. But using a new triple-pin configuration UBI are able to provide both the load-bearing and the anti-rotation feature in a single homogenous package, in the meantime spreading the load over a larger surface… the result being lighter systems with stiffer blocks.

‘There is no better atmosphere for innovation than the America’s Cup, where we are free to explore all possibilities to get the best possible solution,’ says UBI engineer Vieri Abolaffio. ‘Our collaboration with Emirates Team New Zealand has been both interesting and stimulating and we’ve enjoyed working with them to develop their wing and foil control systems.

‘We have both benefited from this relationship – them in performance and us in knowledge to apply to these and other systems in the future…’

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When Emirates Team New Zealand were placing the order for their latest America's Cup challenger where could be better than a 'local' company with a worldwide reputation for delivering long, thin carbon structures...

Building an AC50
Southern Spars have been building some of the best masts in the world for more than a quarter of a century, and for their first few challenges outside the realms of masts and rigging they haven’t lowered their sights even a fraction.

Equipped with some of the best minds and hands in the world of composites, in mid-2016 the company set out to flex their design and manufacturing muscle outside the world of carbon spars. The first challenge they took on was revolutionising track cycling wheels for the New Zealand Olympic Track Cycling Team. Southern’s R&D and production teams produced a set of 32 wheels, which helped the NZ team set the fastest opening lap of a velodrome ever recorded at sea level and take home a silver at Rio.

Even before the wheels had been delivered the second challenge appeared on the horizon. Southern Spars’ co-founder and head of sales, Mark Hauser, got a call from Kevin Shoebridge, Emirates Team New Zealand’s COO. The contract for building Emirates Team New Zealand’s yacht for the 35th America’s Cup was up for grabs.

‘I absolutely knew we could do the job,’ says Hauser. ‘We are perfectly set up, we’ve got one of the best carbon fibre manufacturing plants in the world, and some of the best guys to do the job.

‘Our relationship with Southern goes back a long way,’ says Team New Zealand CEO Grant Dalton. ‘This is our sixth campaign together, so we knew that we could trust them to deliver. Their skills in carbon manufacturing – be it masts or anything else – are of the absolute highest standard. Producing the rest of the yacht at Southern Spars became a natural choice because of the experience and skills they have on offer.’

Southern were already building two of the complex 23.6m wings for Emirates Team New Zealand when it was confirmed that they would build the most technologically advanced yacht that New Zealand – and potentially the world – had ever seen. At this point progress on the first wing was very advanced. It was delivered well in advance of the raceboat so that it could be used in training and development on their 45ft test boat.

Much smaller than the AC72 wings that Southern Spars built in the last America’s Cup cycle, the ACC wings must adhere to rules that govern the overall shape, weight and centre of gravity. The main spar, or leading element of the wing, is also one-design. However, within a defined planform, the design of the three trailing elements is left to the teams, finding the balance between flexibility that lets the sailors manipulate the shape of the wing, against strength and reliability.

Building two ACC wings took Southern’s production teams some 15,000 man-hours. Adding the hulls, daggerboard cases, aerodynamic fairings and detachable bow sections to that piled on another 14,000 hours. The total job was ‘equivalent’ to one person working a normal 40-hour week for more than 15 years.

Main picture: on weight, on time… on budget, the Emirates Team New Zealand ACC raceboat arrives home in time for Christmas – the boat with which the New Zealand challengers aim to right the wrong of losing the 2013 Cup Match in the most painful manner imaginable. Other teams are aware that the political and financial hurdles with this challenge will just make Dalton’s team that much harder to beat

Quasi one-design maybe, and with tight restrictions on build spec and materials as well, but the builder still plays a big part in this year’s ACC contest. There is a weight range of 200kg for the latest Cup boats to allow leeway for boats coming from different yards. The fibre and cores used have all been supplied and controlled under the ACC rule so there’s little wriggle room there; but the better the build quality, the better the weight distribution and, crucially in a multihull, the rigidity of the platform, especially measured in terms of torsional deflection under load. No place for amateurs…

The protocol for this America’s Cup also dictates that each team has identical hulls, built from moulds provided by the defender. The port and starboard hulls are a mirror of one another, so moulds for only one side are required for the build, with two hulls being popped off the single-set moulds.

To maximise efficiency and ensure build accuracy, Southern Spars set up the moulds inside one of the big ovens at their 10,000m2 factory in Auckland. The inside of this oven is 3m wide, 4m high and 25m long. It is usually used for curing superyacht booms and America’s Cup wings… but it is also perfect for building a 15m ACC multihull.

A large dedicated clean-room was erected adjacent to the oven so that material preparation could occur close by with staff working inside the oven, laying fibre and core into the moulds. ‘Having the clean-room right there and the moulds locked in place inside the oven made for a much better build,’ says Steve Birdsall, the project’s build manager. ‘It meant all the materials were in an environment we could control in terms of temperature, humidity and contaminants.’

Aligning and fixing the moulds in place in the location that the hulls would be cured guaranteed maximum accuracy in the finished product. It also removed any risk of movement or misalignment in the laminate that might occur while shifting the moulds between lamination and curing locations.

As with the size and shape of the hulls, their fibre content is also defined by the America’s Cup Class rule. Predominantly 150 and 300gsm-weight fibre with aluminium honeycomb core was specified by the Cup Protocol. Aluminium honeycomb is higher performing than ‘traditional’ Nomex, exhibiting better stiffness and strength properties. However, the cost and the fact that, when left in a salt environment for extended periods, aluminium honeycomb will react with carbon, resulting in corrosion of the core, mean it is not normally used in building boats. For the ACC yachts this is not an issue. They are hauled out each day and actually spend very little time in the water…

Because of the tight restrictions on the type of fibre used in the build, Southern were unable to use their most advanced carbon technology. Deep inside the Southern Spars factory is a carbon fibre plotter, which allows them to place the thinnest layers of carbon at any orientation they desire with extreme accuracy and speed. (While the Emirates Team New Zealand ACC yacht met the weight tolerances of the rules – between 2,232kg and 2,432kg (the use of TPT thin ply carbon would have made the yacht even lighter.)

Once cured in the oven each hull was brought into a special fit-out area for assembly, where bulkheads, floors and cockpits are completed, and the top and bottom halves of each hull are joined.

Both hulls were painted on site by Southern’s paint team. They were lined up end to end inside the company’s very large paint booth, which is temperature, pressure and humidity controlled to create an optimal painting environment. The booth stretches 62m, making it the longest paint booth in the southern hemisphere. Well accustomed to working within weight guidelines, the paint team measured every millilitre of paint that went into each coat, ensuring the hulls did not deviate from their specified weight targets as they progressed through the final stages of production.

Emirates Team New Zealand’s ACC yacht is one of the most technical yachts ever launched – a challenge that Southern Spars stepped up to and met with great enthusiasm. ‘For us this is another opportunity to demonstrate how strong we are as a composite manufacturer,’ says Hauser. ‘Our staff and facilities are as good as or better than any other composite manufacturer anywhere. We have just built a yacht that is capable of winning the America’s Cup.’

And the customer seemed happy too… ‘Southern Spars are always reliable for getting a top-quality job done on time, which is hugely important for us,’ says Kevin Shoebridge. ‘Spar building is a very precise and controlled process, components are built to tight specifications and weights, and so on, so we were completely confident that our own “long and thin structures” would be delivered on time and down to weight.’

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