The maxZ86 phenomenon

We talk to the various parties involved with the new CBTF maxi box rule class

Next week making their competition debut at the St Maarten Heineken Regatta, will be the two brand new maxZ86 turbo sleds, Morning Glory of Dr Hasso Plattner and Roy Disney's latest Pyewacket.

Created in 2001 by Californian sled guru designer Bill Lee, now class Technical Director, the maxZ86 class was designed to succeed the previous generaton of TransPac turbo sleds. The maxZ86 is a box rule that typeforms to create 86(ish)ft long maxis (obviously) that are state of the art in terms of their design and speed potential, can race both inshore and offshore and provide close, tactical time allowance-free competition.

To date three maxZ86s have been built, all of them from the most prolific design house when it is comes to monohulls of this size - San Diego-based Reichel Pugh.

The first maxZ86 to be launched was Bob McNeal's Zephyrus V, in March 2002. That summer she won the West Marine Pacific Cup to Hawaii (see Gordon Maguire's account here). In Europe last summer she came second over the line in the Rolex Fastnet Race behind Neville Crichton's larger newer Alfa Romeo.

Autumn of 2002 saw the class take a significant step forward when it voted to allow canting keels and specifically CBTF (canting ballast, twin foil) technology as advocated by Reichel Pugh. The decision was based on the success of Bob Oatley's subsequent Admiral's Cup winner Wild Oats at Hamilton Island Race Week.

Both of the two new maxZ86s are CBTF boats but this change over has outdated the water ballasted Zephyrus V and Bob McNeal has since sold her to the deVos brothers. She has now been rechristened Windquest, the latest in a succession of boats of this name the family who founded the direct selling group Amway have owned.

The new maxZ86s boats are almost identical. Both launched in December, Pyewacket and Morning Glory were built by Cooksons in New Zealand and McConaghy's to the north of Sydney, respectively. American racing legend Dee Smith, who runs Morning Glory, says that the two boats weighed in within 60kg of each other.

During the development of these two sisterships the two teams pooled resources developing the CBTF system together, the hydraulic mechanism for the keel canting, etc. "We've been working together all the way along, so it's been good. If we have a problem we tell them, if they have a problem, they tell us. It's made the project go smoother. We're even going to do two-boat testing which is great but then when the gun goes the marriage is off! Divorce starts!" says Dee Smith.

"We have identical rigs, identical keels, the bulbs are made at different places, the designer's the same, we have a number of sails that are the same design and then we've gone out from that to start the sail program because we figured that if we work together we can jump ahead because we don't know what the boat really needs - full, flat, big, small etc. We have some idea but there's some testing to be done,"

Morning Glory's wardrobe has been developed by North Denmark while Pyewacket's was from North San Diego but the two lofts have been collaborated on the initial suits. After St Maarten it is likely that some two boat tuning will even take place between them.

The biggest issue with the boats is obviously their appendages for they are the largest CBTF boats ever built (to read more about canting ballast twin foil technology - click here). Reichel Pugh are big exponents of CBTF and their first attempt was Bob Oatley's ground breaking Wild Oats. They are now working on a new 66ft Wild Oats II that is currently under construction at McConaghys. The first Admiral's Cup winning Wild Oats has been sold to an Australian owner, yet the new owner has given Reichel Pugh the opportunity to develop the CBTF system further.

"It is really good so we are able to make some changes and test the changes and play around with the appendages," says Jim Pugh. "In terms of balance they are quite a bit different from a normal boat. They take a bit of getting used to. We're looking at appendages sizes and just trying to understand what is going on. Then there’s appendage shape and position. There are quite a few variables. Wild Oats is a really good boat and we think we can make it better and we’ve learned a lot in the design and development of Morning Glory and Pyewacket."

Pugh adds that CBTF provides some unexplained benefits such as motion in a seaway. "You don’t have that thing you get on modern fixed keelboats - that hard jerky motion. It's a lot more subtle, with the bulb canted and the CG up there. It is just a lot softer motion and the boat just seems to go faster."

Jim Pugh is reluctant to put numbers to how much faster the canting keel twin ruddered maxZ86s will be compared to the water ballast Zephyrus V. These days in the Open 60 world canting keel boats are better in most conditions, although conceivably water ballasted boats are better upwind in heavy conditions (canting keel boats have got round this by adding forward water ballast trim tanks). However even canting keel Open 60s lack the all-important forward rudder.

The new CBTF maxZ86s don't have water ballast tanks to alter fore and aft trim, however upwind their ability to angle the forward rudder to give lift to weather should more than compensate for this. Reaching they have the benefit of the canting keel - thus they don't have to bring on extra displacement to gain stability. Zephyrus V must take on up to 5 tonnes of water ballast each side and will be fully ballasted in 8 knots of breeze. Running? Well, they'll never go running...

With the CBTF system and no water ballast the hull shapes on the two new maxZ86s are very different from Zephyrus. "Principally with the water ballast you have a lot more of a flared shape to accommodate the tanks and get the water out there," says Jim Pugh. "So you end up with more heel drag. When you are sailing that type of boat, you ballast up and you want to sail it fairly upright.

"The boat without the flare [ie the new boats] you tend to sail it more pressed or at different angles. With the water ballast shape you are always constantly trying to keep it upright because the drag goes up really fast. You feel that you want to press a bit harder and power it up a little. That’s the nice thing about these other shapes: they can sail at different angles of heel and the drag and shape of of the boat isn’t changing a huge amount as it heels. So the balance isn’t changing so much because the shape is changing. The boat is more symmetrical."

Maxi boat comparison table

	Morning Glory/Pyewacket	Bols	Alfa Romeo
Format	CBTF	Water ballast	Water ballast
LOA	26.63m	28.3m	27.43m
LWL	23.18m	24.3	24.00m
Beam	4.90m	6.0m	5.60m
Draft	4.50m	4.8m	4.40m
Disp	21,000kgs	23,000kg	22,000kgs
Water ballast	n/a	4,800kg	6000kgs
IM	31.20m		32.00m
J	10.00m	11m	10.50m
ISP	35.70m	35m	36.00m
SPL	14.00m		14.00m
P	33.20m	33.25m	34.00m
E	11.80m	11.5m	12.00m
Upwind s/a	402.65m²	425m²
Downwind s/a	872.18m²	1000m²

Thedailysail had the opportunity to have a poke around on board Morning Glory prior to her leaving Sydney. On deck she seems narrow and the sidedecks are very clean with many of the lines running aft below deck. Otherwise there is all the normal state of the art race boat gear. Her rig is a five spreader carbon fibre affair from Hall Spars with Future Fibres PBO rigging.

Down below the finish is very pleasant - generally white (for a change), with a few parts left in bare carbon fibre with a layer of clear coat on it and even the odd bit of wood trim. All very nicely finished by McConaghys. However the big difference is the forward rudder and canting keel.

With no Open 60 static inclination test to comply with, the CBTF boats can cant their keel by up to +/- 50degrees. "It's working perfectly, just goes whack-whack," says Smith of Morning Glory's keel. The keel has twin rams located side by side rather than on opposite sides of the keel as is the normal Open 60 arrangement.

There are also a lot more fail-safe devices. "The rams are push-pull so either one of them will work," says Smith. "There's a lot of safety built in - there's the engine drive which is the main drive for the keel. We have a DC pump which backs up that and then we have this Carboni rotary pump which sits on the grinders which we can use to take a real long time to pull it across if we have to. And there's valves if we get stuck, we can centre it - there's all sorts of stuff. "

There is also a system that will centre the keel automatically in the event of the boat doing a Chinese gybe with the keel on the wrong side.

Down below one gets the impression that the aft rudder is a long way forward compared to a conventional boat. "It's probably similar to Wild Oats," Dee Smith told us. "There's a big reason to keep them in for wave-making and also just to keep the rudders out of the air. Also - they're keels, they're not real rudders so they've got to be centred around the sails and they balance out better that way." Because the rudders also have to act like a keel fin on a conventional boat (to prevent leeway) they see more load and so the quadrants are substantial.

The twin rudder set-up is such that the rudders normally turn against one another ie to go to starboard, the forward rudder pushes the bow the starboard while the aft rudder coaxes the stern to port, thus upping the G-force during manoeuvres. However key to the system is that when sailing upwind the forward rudder can be angled the same way as the aft rudder to 'lift' the boat to weather. The forward rudder is controlled by an inner wheel as one finds for the trim tabs on Cup boats.

"We use it mostly upwind," says Smith of the twin rudder configuration. "You can use it in other areas but when you're just sailing the boat they're match, we haven't tried it enough on reaches or runs to figure out whether we just leave it straight or whatever. So far it feels pretty good.

"The most difficult thing is to keep accurate measurements on your rudder angles. Saying that, just playing with it upwind you can still feel it. So you kind of start tuning and you're supposed to hit a degree and then you go a little bit more or a little bit less and all of a sudden the boat jumps a knot and a half..."

This season race pundits (such as ourselves) will be jumping up and down to see firstly how the two new maxZ86s compare against one another and how they compare with Windquest. The DeVoses are known to run highly competitive campaigns and won't be keen on having the new boats running rings around them as all the stats suggest they will.

The first occasion Pyewacket and Morning Glory will lock horns in anger will be at the St Maarten Heineken regatta next week. They will then take part in Antigua Sailing Week before heading north again to take part in the Newport-Bermuda Race where they will come up against Windquest. While Windquest is likely to remain in the States, the two new maxZ86s are then planning a tour of Europe starting with Cork Week. Pyewacket should be racing at Rolex Maxi Worlds in Sardinia but this conflicts with the Farr 40 Worlds in San Francisco where the Morning Glory Farr 40 will be racing. However both boats are expecting to compete in the Voiles de St Tropez and Rolex Middle Sea Race. In these latter two events they are certain to come up against Neville Crichton's larger, but water ballasted and non-CBTF Alfa Romeo (there's no word yet as to what the Sydney-based car magnate's new boat will be).

2005 will see the maxZ86s back in the States for the Pineapple Cup followed by the Transpac. Smith hopes that other maxis will join them on this circuit. "It's a nice circuit and we're hoping that people will join us either with the boats they have now or build new ones. I don't think you can go much bigger on basic sizing without having some real problems with gear. We're pushing the America's Cup gear a little hard... "

He adds: "The biggest problem we have right now is to try and get the powers that be behind the major races around the world, to say what the real new maxi class should be. These are just cool boats. I don’t think there’ll be anything under 30m that will touch us."

In terms of rules, Jim Pugh says that the new maxZ86s are designed to their own box rule without being compromised by the likes of IMS or IRC. The boats will obviously be optimised for whichever rule they are racing under. This could present a difficulty for the Bermuda race, because at present the IMS rule has no way of handicapping CBTF boats...In theory the boats will compete in the race's new Big Boat Demonstration Division under IMS for boats with a GPH between 344 and 413.9s/m.

"I know us and Pyewacket fit into IMS interior-wise so we're okay there, I'm not sure about Genuine Risk [the new Dubois maxi in build at McConaghys], then there's the safety issues that still have to be done," says Dee Smith.

For IRC he says the boat fits into Category 1 at present but they'll have to make a test to ensure they get into Cat 0. "I think we're very close. We just don't know. We might to have to change the weight here or there or mount the keel again, it's like if we go from 50°-45° it might pass Cat 0. It's not a problem for us but they're talking about making the bulkheads watertight aft of the forward rudder and we don't have that at this point, although we have a watertight bulkhead in front of it." To do this it is likely they will fit a rubber, flexible type watertight bulkhead (a la Rothmans).

Her rating under IRC is 1.711 - this compares to 1.745 for the Bols maxi.

The number of crew on board will depend upon whether they're racing inshore or offshore. Smith says the biggest job is wielding the pole. "The pole's so heavy and the sails are big and heavy so that's where we need the strength. Everything else seems to be okay. We're thinking 18-20 crew inshore. I think Robbie [Haines - Smith's equivalent on Pyewacket] is talking 24. Offshore, depending on the race - we can do a Transpac at 12, a Fastnet or Bermuda race you might go with 16-18 crew."

To date Morning Glory has sailed 3,000 miles. During the delivery from Fort Lauderdale to St Maarten they took just four days to sail 1,200 miles - upwind with their delivery sails... "The boat is unbelievable," enthuses Smith. "You’d be braindead to do something different. Going across from Sydney to Auckland there was about an eight hour period of time when we were sailing at 80deg true wind angle in 20-24 knots of wind and we were averaging 21-22 knots under number 4 and two reefs in the main. And we were into the waves."

For the forthcoming months Dee Smith is going to have his hands full geting the boat up to speed, but it will be an exciting time. "As we go through it we're going to find little things that are better - it's just a baby in technology. So we can get big headstay loads and we can load up the boat and we can pull the sails in and then you cant the keel and then 'boom' you're off, it will only take a puff to get going. I don't think this boat will ever go under 10 knots. There's no reason for it."

Check out Paul Todd and Outside Images' photos of Pyewacket