British C-Class challenger update

Norman Wijker updates up with future plans for Invictus Challenge

Last years 'Little America's Cup' in Rhode Island seems an age ago. We are still feeling a mixture of emotions, having been soundly beaten by the Cogito team, but at the same time rather proud that we produced a boat that steadily improved over the series and was starting to come right towards the end. I am not kidding myself that we would ever have beaten the very experienced Cogito team, but bearing in mind this was the first boat we have ever designed, I was pretty happy!

The C-Class association is now active again, and will soon generate a website. Graham Fraser has now handed over the reigns as president to Steve Clark who was unanimously voted in during the championship.

The rules for the next event were discussed and it was decided that the only change that should be made was for the introduction of twin trapezes at the next event. This continues the C-Class philosophy of keeping the number of rules to an absolute minimum.

The event was a great success, but now we are looking forward to the next one. This is going to be held in Perth, Western Australia in March 2007. This date was chosen so that it would give other challengers an opportunity to form a team and make a boat, no mean task as we found out! We all have just two years from now.

The idea seems to have worked, a team headed by Fred Eaton has officially challenged via the C-Class Association, the team will be based in Toronto and has already purchased Patient Lady VI and will be sailing her as soon as they can break the ice off the lakes.

Other challengers are also working away to see whether they can get something together. There are sounds coming out of Spain, Italy and a second challenge from Australia. With these, as well as the Ronstan team, Cogito team and Team Invictus. 2007 looks like it will be the biggest gathering of winged C-Class cats ever!

It is certain that Clark/Maclane/Hubbard will not be resting on their laurels and I suspect that they will be fielding a formidable update to Cogito in 2007. Steve Clark fully expects that both his challengers in Rhode Island last year will be coming back much stronger, and we are aiming not to disappoint.

Our game plan is to investigate as many ideas as we can, but the main lesson of our first challenge was that simplicity and reliability count for as much as radical ideas so don’t expect anything too wacky to start with!

New designs have been evolving in our minds even before we flew home from Rhode Island and the whole team are fired up to challenge again. We are aiming to build a new wing for Invictus this year, in time for some testing and possibly entry into some open events. We are also building a research boat to test out some new ideas. This will be based on a modified newly-built F16 catamaran from John Pierce at Stealth Marine.

Next year (2006) will see a completely new boat with a new wing to match. This will then give us a two-boat capability and this will really accelerate development leading up to us shipping the boats to Perth.

The team is largely unchanged; Paul Larsen and Helena Darvelid are still with us, though they are currently otherwise involved with with their SailRocket sailing speed record project. John Downey is heading the research into foil technology and is working with Clive Everest, Joddy Chapman and the Wolfson Institute in Southampton. The fruit of this research will hopefully become apparent with the launch of the F16. The rest of the team remains largely the same also. This is mainly made up of young graduate aeronautical engineers and we expect a few new recruits as well.

Our team built Invictus in our spare time last year, and the same will happen this time. It was a matter of personal dedication and a lot of sweat and late nights, but it is a fantastic project for young engineers (and old) to practise their craft!

We have not yet secured a major sponsor to support our challenge, though we are hopeful that our smaller contributors such as Harken, Marlow and Henri Lloyd will continue their support. If you read this and think that you may be able to help us please contact Norman.Wijker@team-invictus.co.uk.