By focussing on a single region that has existing strong awareness of ocean health, groups in Newport RI are working towards a scaleable solution-oriented model with potential to be exported worldwide

We all know that the health of our oceans is deteriorating and most of us want to do something about it before it’s too late. But where to start? The scale and complexity of the problem are daunting. Rising sea levels, soaring sea temperatures, acidifying seas, toxic runoff, and plastic pollution are just a few of the symptoms – and that’s before you begin to consider the fundamentally interconnected nature of land and water, soil and sea. But there’s hope. In the coastal city of Newport, Rhode Island, where 11th Hour Racing has fostered a coordinated shift towards a sustainable future in partnership with a wide-ranging, forward-thinking group of local organisations, an answer is starting to emerge.

This solution-oriented approach to building a community that cares about the ocean needs to be socially and economically sustainable, while also robustly scalable. From local grassroots initiatives to the regional, national, and global levels, we need a paradigm shift from an extractive economy to a sustainable model that uses resources wisely and enables communities to flourish and allows lands, coasts and oceans to thrive.

Why Newport, Rhode Island? ‘We strongly believe in taking care of our own backyard,’ says Rob MacMillan, president and co-founder of Newportbased 11th Hour Racing. ‘We know the community well, sailing is part of the culture and we can use that to talk about ocean health. We have some great partners here who are easy to work with and have the vision to look beyond the short-term grant cycle.’

The city of Newport hosts a passionate, ocean-loving community with an economy focused on boating, tourism, and nature, and residents have become awakened to the seemingly endless human-made issues affecting the ocean. But there’s a lot more to Newport than sailing. ‘It’s not the community that people think it is,’ MacMillan says. Beyond the mansions, yacht clubs and marinas it actually has the demographics of a working-class town and is home to many lowincome families. With its diverse community, limited size and strong ocean connections, Newport is an ideal venue to trial sustainability schemes that can then be scaled up and deployed elsewhere.

One of 11th Hour Racing’s longstanding grantees, Sail Newport, is addressing the social aspects of sustainability through sport. New England’s largest public sailing centre, it is best known in the sailing world for hosting large-scale regattas and grand prix events. However, its main purpose is to offer affordable public sailing instruction, attract new sailors to the sport, and foster personal connections with the ocean.

One of its great successes is the 4th Grade Sailing Programme which provides sailing and STEM education to every 4th grade student in Newport public schools as part of their curriculum. Summer sailing courses for grades 1-5 are also offered and both programmes encourage all students to become ocean stewards. By enabling the younger generation of Newport residents across the socio-economic spectrum to grow up enjoying a positive, personal experience of their local marine environment, they too will be inspired to protect it.

Inspiring, educating and entertaining to build community and propel change is also the mission of another 11th Hour Racing grantee, newportFILM. Its public outdoor screenings of environmentally focused documentaries are popular with Newport residents and visitors alike. Screenings are usually followed by curated Q&A sessions with the film’s directors or producers, creating a relaxed space to delve into topics that can be controversial. Up to 3,000 people of all ages gather on Thursday evenings (socially distanced these days) to engage in powerful storytelling that opens their eyes to the threats of climate change and the impact humans are having on ocean health.

Fostering ocean literacy and stewardship is a major component of 11th Hour Racing’s grant-making strategy that goes beyond sailing centres and community events. Projects like Healthy Soils, Healthy Seas Rhode Island (HSHSRI) have entered households, backyards, restaurants, and local events to collect food waste and stop it from entering landfill. Learning about food waste and its connection to climate change and ocean health has become top of mind in Newport. While HSHSRI is firmly rooted on dry land, the methane produced by food waste that gets buried in landfill is arguably the most serious threat to marine ecosystems, as it is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO2). When food waste is composted rather than sent to landfill, oxygen is able to circulate as it degrades, and no methane is produced. Composting sequesters CO2 out of the air and puts it back into the soil. The result of replacing chemical fertilisers with compost is healthy soil that absorbs more water and reduces the runoff from land that contributes to toxic algal blooms and water quality issues in rivers, lakes and coastal waters.

Diverting all the food scraps – currently, 35 per cent of total landfill waste – from homes, schools, restaurants and other businesses that have signed on to the programme is a complex undertaking, and a consortium of grassroots organisations have joined forces to tackle it around Newport and surrounding communities. Clean Ocean Access, an ocean-focused non-profit and a grantee of 11th Hour Racing, is spearheading the initiative.

‘Ocean health starts on land,’ says programme manager Eva Touhey. ‘The most effective and accessible behaviour change is composting, but it has taken a lot of legwork to get people interested.’ Businesses are offered subsidies and marketing resources to help get them involved. In its first year HSHSRI composted 465 tons of waste from households, restaurants and other businesses, establishing proof of concept. This year’s goals are to scale up rapidly, and work with farms to establish local composting facilities, reducing a haulage trip of 30 miles each way to five miles or less, which will make composting more economically viable as well as reducing fuel usage and carbon emissions.

11th Hour Racing is also funding Clean Ocean Access’ Marina Trash Skimmer Project. Trash skimmers are essentially giant versions of swimming pool filters, and the first ones on the East Coast of the US were installed in Newport Harbour. Most harbours and marinas have a corner where flotsam and jetsam tends to collect and that’s where trash skimmers are installed. Others are strategically located near outflow pipes and in places where trash accumulates naturally due to wind, waves and currents. The skimmers pull in marine debris, 33,325 pounds of it since 2016 to be exact, and also filter water through an aerator to help oxygenate the surrounding areas.

Eight skimmers are already operating in Rhode Island; three more are planned. They run 24/7, costing about one dollar per day for electricity, and only require 15-30 minutes of daily labour to empty and maintain.

‘They have three purposes,’ says project coordinator Max Kraimer. ‘They remove trash, help us to understand where it comes from and they’re a tool to educate the community.’ Clean Ocean Access hosts public skimmer tours to showcase how they work. Marine biologists use them to study the movements and sources of pollution, and in some places they will deliver a return on investment by reducing the need for dredging.

11th Hour Racing is also supporting two pioneer programmes spearheaded by Newport based charity Clean Ocean Access.
Above: the Marina Trash Skimmer project puts filtration devices in Rhode Island harbours and marinas to remove pollution, teach people about it and support researchers with their studies.
Below: Healthy Soils, Healthy Seas Rhode Island diverts many hundreds of tons of food waste from landfill and prevents emissions of methane, one of the worst greenhouse gases

Most of the waste is seaweed commingled with microplastics. Of the rest, around 75 per cent is single-use food wrappers, containers and straws, and 20 per cent is cigarette butts of a type sold from the 1960s to the 1980s. ‘The more we look into it, the more light is shed on how serious an issue marine pollution really is,’ Kraimer says.

Partner organisations ranging from nonprofits to businesses empty and maintain the skimmers, and Kraimer is hoping to scale up through sponsorship. ‘Most cities have trash cans on every corner,’ he says, ‘so why not skimmers in every harbour?’

About 19 nautical miles north of Newport, another 11th Hour Racing grantee is developing coastal resilience with the help of nature. A pioneering project to combat severe coastal erosion is trialling a natural method of shoreline protection that may soon become a vital tool to combat the catastrophic effects of rising sea levels and storm surges on coastal communities. The traditional approach of building seawalls and dikes can actually exacerbate erosion, whereas restoring natural features such as sand dunes, salt marshes, and oyster reefs can be a better and more cost-effective solution. The Nature Conservancy in Rhode Island is building two “living shorelines”, with native dune grass and salt marsh habitats, to test their effectiveness in protecting the shores of Rose Larisa Park in East Providence. Suitable sites for oyster reef restoration are also being identified. With sea level rise a growing and increasingly urgent concern, people responsible for local flood defences throughout the New England region are watching this pilot project with great interest, as it has the potential to be replicated in other areas that may be at risk.

All of these organisations have a unique approach to protecting and preserving the health of our ocean and local waterways, but the complexity of these environmental threats requires a multi-disciplinary approach. There is no single solution, which is why the Newport community has banded together to face these challenges from every angle. It has shown us that whether or not we live by the water, our behaviours on land do impact ocean health, and we all have an important role to play at a local level. Driven by the vision of a future with cleaner and healthier waterways, 11th Hour Racing supports a community of strong environmental stewards that are leading by example for other communities to take similar action for the ocean.

Click here for more information on 11th Hour Racing »

For some time now they have been monitoring developments in this growing sector but now South African and Dutch designers Simonis Voogd have entered the performance multihull space... in some style

The performance luxury catamaran market has been growing quickly, with many designers and builders entering this sector. The plethora of new ideas being presented are exciting, driven by smart people using cutting-edge design and engineering tools, advanced composites and good old-fashioned boatbuilding insight and skills. The new KC54 from Kinetic Catamarans represents the latest in this genre, squarely hitting well-thought targets of quality, performance, comfort and style.

Concept history
It was in December 2018 that Bob Hayward and Leon Scheepers had recently bought the Harvey Yachts boatyard in Knysna, South Africa and had a 60-foot carbon catamaran designed by Simonis Voogd well into build. A meeting with Alex Simonis in Cape Town to discuss which project the yard should take on next evolved into a discussion of how to launch what they intended to be a new worldrenowned brand: Kinetic Catamarans.

With a strong cultural heritage in cost-effective boatbuilding in both carbon-infused composites and traditional materials, the challenge lay in what new product size to offer . To go large in size would appeal to a small market, whereas going smaller would have a broader appeal but more price sensitivity and less flexibility in features.

‘We are a semi-custom yard making performance carbon cats,’ says Scheepers, ‘so we are inherently more expensive than the production boats. Fifty-five feet seemed like the right target since it’s the upper limit for a cruising couple to handle comfortably, and keeping the boat under 55ft would help with marina berth spaces in some regions. Going smaller to 50ft might open us up to more buyers, but people are still going to want to load the boat with paddle boards, diving gear, washer dryer, etc. So we decided it was better to keep to the higher end of this range and asked our design team at Simonis Voogd to come up with a proposal in the 53-55ft range.’

But the gap between this and the 60-footer under build was too small so Hayward and Scheepers decided to add two feet to the 60. ‘This would also give us more space on the aft steps for getting on and off the tender, swimming, and fishing,’ says Hayward, who was taking this boat for himself. ‘Also, terminating the outer hull skin short of the stern creates a pad for stepping on and off the boat when it’s side-on at the dock. The 60-footer thus became the KC62.’

The Kinetic team then wondered how to define the DNA of the new boat and its yard and identify who is in its market – will this be a yard producing comfortable performance cruiser cats that you can race or a more racing catamaran with less features, that you can still cruise? This decision would go to the core of the KC brand. Active racing fleets of Gunboats, HHs and similar boats are on the US East Coast, in the Med and Caribbean. The first KC62 would also be out there racing, having also made a commitment to enter the LA-Tahiti Race. But exactly how broad is this market?

‘After a healthy debate we decided we are building performance ocean cruisers that you race,’ says Scheepers. ‘We want to target monohull sailors who are interested in the comfort of catamarans, but want a fast, responsive and fun boat to sail, as well as catamaran sailors who want to trade in for a quicker boat. Our boats will be comfortable but we will keep them light and as easy to sail as possible.’

This adaptability is important: the expectations of racing-only clients can be met with fewer interior elements to save weight while also enjoying a turbocharged sail plan. Conversely, if a client wants to focus on cruising, the boat can still be pre-built for racing with strong spots on the coachroof for sheeting and in-hauling the genoa. This flexibility in turn helps resale value because expectations can be met for generations of future owners.

Design execution
The brief for Simonis Voogd to create a raceable cruising design between 53-55ft came with another sensible request. Catamaran performance is highly sensitive to the loaded weight and fore and aft trim – get this wrong and the boat will miss all its target speeds. So rather than create a design with a target weight defined in light ship trim, they were asked to provide a design with a target weight that people will actually be sailing it in, which turns out to be 18-20 tons.

‘This was important,’ says Maarten Voogd, ‘because we want to keep the leeward hull from sinking too far into the water under load. This also keeps the bridgedeck high to reduce wave slap.’

Next came important decisions on how the features and options offered on the KC54 could fit within the weight targets. The hulls had to provide four comfortable cabins (two with en suite heads) or a three-cabin owner’s version where the spare cabin in the owner’s hull can convert to a fourth cabin when needed.

Popular elements from the KC62 would also be adopted, like the large main salon with open views, and a few other design details such as having a curved traveller mounted on the coachroof rather than a straight traveller on the bridgedeck transom: this allows the traveller to be dropped without tightening the leech of the main. To give versatility on draught and performance, both centreboard and daggerboard versions would also be offered, as would the size of the carbon spar package from Marstrom.

‘Most importantly the boat also had to have clean lines and be a looker,’ says Hayward.

The first set of plans arrived in early 2019, only a few months after the initial meeting. KC62 hull number 01 was completed and launched in May 2019, shipped to the US in July, and being readied for the Annapolis Boat Show in October. Here it was decided not to formally launch the KC54 but to show plans to potential buyers and solicit feedback on details.

The initial plans specified the mast to be mounted above the bulkhead on the foredeck with all control lines leading aft in covered channels around the outside of the salon to the outboard sections of the aft cockpit. Having the mast stepped this way on the bridgedeck would be simpler to build and lighter.

However, in Annapolis the KC62 showed well and people liked its large salon with 360-degree views, its forward interior helm and forward cockpit, and they wanted to see the same features on the KC54.

‘Maarten [Voogd] was with us at the show and said it could be done with some redesign effort,’ says Hayward. ‘We’d need to add a compression post, an athwartship beam and reinforce the coachroof mullions. It would add complexity and some weight, but we’d also be able to increase the salon size, add the forward helm station and move the mast to a more preferable position further aft. Another benefit was that the increased infrastructure would also add rigidity to the boat. So it became time for another one of those central DNA decisions!’

At that time the mould for the KC54 hulls was already started, so the team had to decide quickly on the next move, and by the end of Annapolis show they decided to pull the trigger and make the design change. Within a month new plans arrived which showed the forward cockpit space to be about the same size as the KC62, seating five people.

“Based on our experience with the KC62, this cockpit not only improves the sailing function, it turns out to also become a social centre on the boat and beachfront real estate. We decided to make this along with the coachroof-mounted mast and large open salon key features of all of our boats,’ says Hayward.

Above: the brief for Simonis Voogd called for a versatile and genuinely raceable cruising design with a target weight that took into account a typical ocean cruising payload while providing an upgrade path for those owners who are keen to maximise the yachtʼs performance potential with an ultra-light interior and a race-spec rig

Key details
To make the boat accessible to a cruising couple, the team at Kinetic had to address other key details in the design phase: (1) the need for easy sail controls to raise and lower the sails; (2) make anchoring easy; (3) make docking easy; and (4) provide solid reliability and aftersales service.

Hayward says the last of these is easy to address: ‘We are fortunate to have good partners in Cay Electronics in Newport who did our systems and electrical equipment specifications, in addition to being able to offer after-sales service. The same holds true for Rigging Projects in the UK for the carbon spar and rigging, and North Sails for the sails. We are also dedicated to only using readilyavailable high-end parts and equipment.’

Anchoring any multihull can be a challenge, but with forward cockpit now in the KC54 design this allowed the team to manage this issue by having the anchor recessed into the forward bridgedeck and having the anchor locker immediately forward of the forward cockpit. This enables the bridle to be attached and detached whilst standing in the cockpit.

‘We had begun testing the Dockmate docking system on the KC62,’ Hayward says, ‘which controls the engines and windless and allows boat to be kept into the wind using a joystick remote whilst standing on the foredeck. It also controls lowering and raising the anchor. The Dockmate system was working well so anchoring was handled. Dockmate also addressed ease of docking as it integrates the drop-down bow thruster with the engines and allows the boat to be controlled from the joystick remote at the dockside rail.’

The remaining issue to tackle was arguably the most relevant for performance-minded sailors who want to have as few barriers as possible to enjoying their time under sail: efficiency and ease of boat handling, particularly for the shorthanded crew. This is handled through several features:

• electric winches with forward sails on electric, continuous and singleline furlers
• self-tacking jib
hydraulic mainsheet and Antal line driver for the main traveller
• a roller-furling boom for the fullbatten 25-30% square top mainsail to achieve fast sail reduction while retaining upper mainsail sail area.

The latter system does, however, require some specific conditions for its use… Hayward explains: ‘The boom angle to the mast needs to be 87 degrees for the sail to roll correctly and the issue was how to set the boom reliably. Even when using low stretch line for the topping lift and the mainsheet at preset positions, there is still the possibility to create stretch variances and inconsistent rolls.

‘So, working with Offshore Spars, the first suggestion was to have a system that uses the mandrel length inside the boom, but this would be complicated. On a monohull you can simply put a chock in the vang to set the boom angle, but our boom is only one metre off the coachroof and we didn’t want to lose mainsail area to create space for a vang.

‘We eventually figured it out: our traveller is coachroof-mounted and curved to the arc of the boom and the boom is low to the roof, so this allows for use of a king post which drops down from the boom onto a cup on the mainsheet cart. The length of this post will be adjustable to set the boom at the correct angle, and tightening the mainsheet will put the boom in position for the furl. The cup on the mainsheet cart will pivot to allow for boom swing. Lowering the traveller will also enable the main to be shortened off the wind without having to sail through 90 degrees.’

The topping lift and mainsheet are the backups in the system and the mainsail can be lowered without having to leave the front cockpit. For remote monitoring a camera could be placed under the spreader so that the helmsman could check on progress of the roll. And at anchor the king post does away with the need for a topping lift or boom crutch.

Below: the decision to move the mast step aft from the foredeck to the coachroof required extra reinforcement and a few additional structures such as a compression post and an athwartship beam. While this does add a bit of extra weight, it also improves the overall rigidity of the platform and allows for a more balanced sailplan with a larger foretriangle. The main traveller was also moved up from the aft crossbeam to the coachroof which keeps it out of the cockpit

More adaptations in design
Offshore multihull owners vary in how they want to drive: some like the convenience and protection of an in-cabin station, while others want to have a direct feel of the breeze and spray. The KC54 offers both as standard, with a forward interior helm and two aft tiller stations. The second KC62 that’s in build has a more complex three-wheel helm setup with Jefa Steering. The unused stations are disengaged with lowtorque carbon shafts and gearboxes to retain lightness of feel. The helm seats fold away into the outer bulwarks to leave the areas above the aft steps clear when not in use.

‘Naturally buyers wanted to have this feature on the KC54,’ says Hayward, ‘but there wasn’t sufficient space for the aft stations to be organic to the boat and not seem like a subsequent add on.’

Another challenge presented itself from a Dutch buyer’s request to have a bridgedeck transom drop down to become a swim platform bridging the aft steps. The team agreed this would be great feature and asked Simonis Voogd to redesign the back of the boat to incorporate both this and the helms. After a few iterations both objectives were achieved. The helm stations became organic to the boat and the platform simply lowers onto recesses in the aft steps to minimise extra weight. The aft couch is replaced by two seats with swinging backrests to create the isle and the davits hinge back on themselves to be out of the way. This is an example of a win-win offered by carbon, creating the desired features without incurring significant additional weight, hassle and expense.

Order interest is already strong for the new KC54, with hull number one expected to be ready for the 2021 summer season, and more in the queue.

Click here for more information on Kinetic Catamarans »

Smooth and consistent power delivery from the grinders is the key to keeping your AC75 aloft... and that took a bit of a Harken rethink

Have you noticed something different about the way the AC75 grinders are working their pedestals? It’s not what you see in the videos (if you catch a glimpse of them at all as they now practice their art low in their cockpits well out of the airstream); it’s what you don’t. You’ll never see any of the grinders pause, shake their handles or reverse direction when changing gear. Instead they just keep going at a constant cadence, maintaining the optimal 80rpm. The new technology that enables them to do this – a game-changing innovation by Harken called True-Clutch – has been on the AC75s for more than a year but until now it’s been kept strictly secret.

For a very long time, pedestal systems on sailing yachts have relied on ‘dog clutches’ that activate by manually engaging sets of teeth to shift from one gear or function to another. The dog clutch mechanism can be activated in various ways with a button, lever or switch, or with the grinder handles themselves, but whichever way it’s done the whole team of grinders has to stop working while the clutch is engaged, which inevitably results in a loss of efficiency. Generations of sailors just accepted it, even in the highest echelons of the sport. But with the advent of large, fully foiling raceboats it quickly became a very big deal.

‘Once the boats started flying, almost everything changed,’ says Mark Wiss, director of Harken’s global grand prix and custom yacht team. ‘On the AC50s the grinders never stopped. They had to keep the oil constantly moving and that pause was a real problem. The grinders lost momentum, it slowed them down and stopped the flow of oil.’

The output of each pedestal drives a far wider range of functions than ever before: mainsheet and traveller, jib sheets, barber haulers, runners, main and jib cunninghams, mainsail outhaul, foil and rudder wing flaps, code sail halyards and more. Trimmers’ reaction times have to be a whole lot quicker and while they’re at it the flight controller is relying on power from the same source, at the same time. With all of this going on, the power from the grinder pedestal must be shifted between functions and gears much more frequently – perhaps a dozen times during one 90-second gybe – and when every shift requires a pause, the boat becomes much harder to sail.

‘True-Clutch was originally developed towards the end of the 35th Cup cycle in Bermuda,’ Wiss recalls. ‘Oracle came to us and said this is a real issue. The grinders had an optimum cadence that they wanted to preserve, at about 80rpm.

They’d speed up to 100, 120rpm at times but mostly they’d maintain that ideal speed.’

Above: ʻyou can measure its effectiveness by the smiles on the grindersʼ facesʼ. Until now, teams of grinders on every large, manually powered racing yacht have had to pause while changing gear. Now they can just keep going – and keep the hydraulic oil constantly moving.

The pressure was on to design a solution – and deliver it fast. Harken assembled a crack team of engineering talent from its Italian and American operations to work alongside Oracle’s own in-house team, with Harken Italy’s chief engineer, Michele Cazzaro, taking the lead.‘ We couldn’t just steal a clutch solution from the automotive industry because there wasn’t anything suitable,’ says Harken engineer Ben Biddick, who was part of the design team. ‘Weight is less critical in those applications than it is for us, and we were working with a different range of torque. We have to start with what the human body can do and then tailor that into a transmission device.’

Several solutions were considered including a constant mesh gearbox but that was too heavy, too complex and a suitable one for a humanpowered pedestal would have taken too long to design, test and build.

Cazzaro’s elegantly simple bespoke solution for was more akin to a motorcycle clutch: a stack of friction plates and a spring-loaded pressure plate in a slim, lightweight housing. But unlike a motorbike clutch, which is activated manually, True-Clutch uses small electric servo motors to control its activation. ‘We have to think harder about ways of conserving power,’ Biddick says, ‘and the ever-creeping saltwater is a challenge with everything we do.’

Above: True-Clutch can be fitted on the base of a pedestal, as shown, or in various other places throughout the system.
Below: the single True- Clutch is used for fully hydraulic functions.
Bottom: the double True- Clutch with an overdrive box is used with a winch for hoisting and gybing

‘For every Cup cycle we download the rule, try to imagine how the boats will develop and put together a general package of the sort of things they might need,’ says Wiss. True- Clutch was part of that package.

The new Single True-Clutch is a refinement of the original but it's built entirely in carbon fibre (even the spring, which is has a lower modulus than the other components). It can handle more than 1,000Nm of torque (the maximum output of an eight-strong team of world class grinders), yet the whole assembly weighs just 1kg. ‘People will probably ask why we didn’t do this before,’ Wiss says. ‘The answer is because the technology wasn’t there to make it small and light enough.’

The Single True-Clutch allows seamless, full-power shifting in and out of individual functions and is adequate for most if not all of the manual-powered hydraulic functions on board. For functions involving a winch, such as hoisting code sails or gybing, a more complex Double True- Clutch has also been developed and delivered to the teams. This enables the grinders to shift throughout the sequence of winch gears without having to stop or change cadence, and it’s integrated with an overdrive gearbox that allows the output to accelerate and return to normal, on demand. ‘It’s a new concept for the AC75s that we developed with a mindset that came out of that cycling world,’ Biddick says.

On an AC75 it’s the trimmers and flight controller who decide where the power goes, using electronic push-buttons mounted at their stations and linked back to the servo motors on the Single and Double True-Clutch assemblies. The reaction time of this electronic relay is much faster than any mechanical linkage could achieve, Wiss explains.

Wiss and Biddick are both tightlipped about the actual numerical efficiency gains for a team of grinders using pedestals with True-Clutch over an equivalent team using a regular dog clutch system – that’s the sort of data rival manufacturers would love to get their hands on – but while it’s clearly substantial, the functional benefits of True-Clutch are probably more important. ‘You can measure that by the smiles on the grinders’ faces,’ Biddick says with a grin. ‘You no longer have two guys fighting each other or trying to shake the handles slightly out of sync. One key factor is that the accumulator charges stay up. You don’t have the problem of ‘I can’t trim the mainsheet while the other guys are bleeding off something else.’

It’s a testament to Harken’s rocksolid resolve to be at the absolute forefront of sailing technology that the company puts so much effort into developing niche solutions like True- Clutch for America’s Cup teams and other grand prix campaigns even when there isn’t a strong commercial motivation for doing to. ‘The Harken brothers have always encouraged us to do that,’ Wiss explains. ‘Sometimes the technology transfers into commercially viable products for the broader sailing market. However, a lot of the time we develop something that works very well for the team but then that’s the end of it. And that’s alright.’

True-Clutch is undoubtedly relevant for any racing yacht, with or without foils, that has a team of grinders on board. ‘For now it’s available in standard AC75 size,’ Wiss says. ‘How we expand the range depends on what the market requires.’ There are clear benefits for boats like TP52s and Maxi72s if class rules allow the technology, which remains to be seen.

Will grinders remain part of grand prix sailing? ‘I hope so and I think they will because it’s an important part of the athletic side of sailing,’ Wiss says. ‘It’s interesting that they’ve disallowed the bicycle technology that was used in AC35 because of the disassociation with sailing – and it was Team New Zealand that wrote the no-bike rule despite having used it to win the Cup. We were already preparing a bicycle grinder solution and have put it to one side (for now!).’

Click here for more information on Harken »

Sicomin have been in the green resin business for longer than you might think...

There is nothing new in the pursuit of environmentally friendly resins, at least not for Sicomin. Founded in 1983, the composites arm of this French company started creating green epoxies more than 10 years ago.

‘Our interest in green resins started well before it was in fashion,’ explains Sicomin’s president Phillippe Marcovich. ‘We started working with the ski and surf board markets where the end users, who were very much aware of the importance of their playgrounds in the mountains and at sea, already understood the need for environmentally friendly materials.

‘Over time, we proved our green credentials with epoxy products that clearly worked. This helped to create a growing number of customers who understood and believed in what we were doing, which in turn led to us into other areas.

‘Because it was still early days for this type of technology, we were conscious that we had to proceed carefully to avoid being perceived as trying to capitalise on the green agenda by developing materials that were environmentally cute. For example, we had been supplying a fire-retardant Epoxy gelcoat – SGi 128 – that is 38 per cent green to the civil engineering industry for several years, but we hadn’t made a big deal of this to avoid deflecting the attention away from the key fundamental properties that make our materials the best for the task.’

The reality is that for Sicomin’s Greenpoxy range, where an excess of 50 per cent of molecular structure derived from plant material is possible among some of the products, the technical performance and the cost are the same as those based solely on petrochemical derived products. Furthermore, the fact that Greenpoxy is available in industrial volumes and is the largest range of sustainable epoxy resins on the market today, drives the message home that these are resins that make no compromises and are already well accepted across many other markets.

‘Today we are involved in many areas beyond ski and surf including marine, automotive, renewable energy and civil engineering projects throughout Europe, the USA and Asia,’ he continues. ‘One marine user that has really impressed us recently has been Greenboats, especially with their Flax 27 day-sailer. This followed on from their GreenBente24 and has raised the bar while at the same time demonstrating once again their impressive commitment to producing an environmentally friendly boat.’

Greenboatsʼ Judel/Vrolijk designed Flax 27 is an impressively elegant modernclassic daysailer with equally impressive ecological credentials. The flax fibre hull is built with Sicominʼs InfuGreen and Greenpoxy 33 resins and its SD477x range of hardeners. As can be clearly seen above, the quality of finish is superlative. The hull is also just as strong as one thatʼs made with the finest petrochemical resins

Perhaps it should be of no surprise that the Judel/Vrolijk designed Flax 27 has turned so many heads since her launch at Boot Dusseldorf earlier this year, after all, she’s an elegant boat that strikes an impressive balance between modern and traditional styles. But her flax fibre and Greenpoxy laminate is what has drawn a good deal of attention.

Built using the infusion resin InfuGreen 810 and GreenPoxy 33 with different hardeners of the SD477x range being used for handlaminated parts, both materials are DNV-GL type approved – an important validation for Sicomin customers.

But the relationship between builder and supplier cuts both ways.

‘Since 2012, we have worked with more than a dozen different Bio Resin systems. Some with Bio Contents of up to 80 per cent,’ explains Greenboats’ founder and CEO, Friedrich Deimann. ‘However, from our perspective Sicomin has the most complete bio resin on the market today. But this doesn't come as a surprise because the company has also the most experience in this product category. We have been in contact with Sicomin since 2014 and the company has continuously invested in improving the product range.’

Michael Thon is also well versed in the reasons why Sicomin’s Greenpoxy is such a significant product going forwards. His company, Time Out Composites – Sicomin’s distribution partner in Germany and Austria since 2002 – was established 20 years ago to help builders choose the right composite materials for their tasks.

‘It is very important to be able to offer our clients a green epoxy that matches the mechanical properties of the conventional petrochemical products that they have been used to,’ he says. ‘They need to be able to work with the epoxy in the same way as well and in all these areas we know that Greenpoxy is a perfect match.’

In a sport that has seen some big steps forward as a result of developments in materials science, the price has often meant accepting compromises in other areas. In this regard, Greenpoxy is clearly different.

Marcovich says there is still more development to come with the possibility of resins with a far greater green content. But perhaps the most interesting affirmation as to why Greenpoxy is such an exciting new resin came in a simple comment: ‘If we didn’t label it green, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.’

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