Rival platform?

We take a look at the new Graham Eeles Tornado

Since the Tornado Sport was officially adopted as the Olympic catamaran in 2000 Marstrom boats have enjoyed a monopoly on the hulls being produced. The Swedish manufacturer has a solid reputation with the majority of the Tornado fleet and it is generally perceived that another manufacturer would struggle to make a faster boat. However this is now being challenged by Graham Eeles who has just finished his first Tornado to a new design by himself and Ian Howlett. The new boat is to be sailed this year by Skandia Team GBR World Class Performance squad members, Andrew Walsh and Ed Barney.

Eeles has a long association with the marine industry and specifically Tornados. He has spent many years working with White Formula, alongside Tornado legends the White family, headed by 1976 Gold medallist in the class, Reg White. In recent years Eeles has been manufacturing spinnaker chute assemblies the majority of the fleet are using as well as centreboards, rudders and some of the other Gucci carbon bits and pieces required for Tornado sailing. Eeles believes about 90% of his business now comes from the Tornado class. This, he admits, is part of the reason for his building the new Tornado: If he can build a platform at least as fast as the Marstrom one, it will enable sailors to buy the complete Graham Eeles package in one go.

For Eeles the time feels right for another Tornado manufacturer to come onto the scene, but he does not believe he will take a significant amount of business away from Marstrom. “We are not looking to build lots and lots of Tornados, we are looking to build a small number of very high quality Tornados,” he says. It has certainly been the case over the years in sailing that competition only serves to benefit a class by forcing manufacturers to constantly refine their building processes, but can this new boat really be as fast as the all-conquering Marstrom and if so, is it significantly different or just a rehash of their design?

The boat, according to Eeles, is different from the Marstrom in a variety of ways. To begin with the boat is not modelled on any other Tornado but rather came about from a series of discussions that he had with Howlett. His co-designer was responsible for putting together some of the basic lines for the boat but it is largely an Eeles creation. The main concept behind his design is to try and make the boat as fair as possible. “The way we constructed it is slightly different to the way other Tornados are done. The way we think they make the Marstrom is to construct two sides and a deck and then glue it all together. My boat is built in two halves and you just stick them together, so in theory it should be a stronger and smoother construction. It is really just another manufacturer looking at how to build a boat differently,” comments Eeles.

In terms of the actual design of the boat Eeles says that it is subtly different to the Marstrom Tornado, but due to the optimised design of the Tornado and the strict rules subtle changes are about as radical as it is possible to get. The main difference between the two boats is the Eeles bows have a finer entry than the Marstrom ones. Part of the problem and part of the reason Marstrom has been so dominant for so long is that the rules can be quite prohibitive. Eeles says if you put his boat next to a Marstrom Tornado you can see a difference between the two but it takes some looking.



(Above, left Marstrom hull, right Eeles hull)

Eeles also believes he is using slightly different materials to Marstrom and thinks this may well give his boat an edge. “You are not allowed to use carbon but you are allowed to use S Glass - a magnesia-alumina-silicate glass, especially designed to provide a very high tensile strength. We have used S Glass through the entire construction of the boat. S glass is basically one step down from carbon. I know that Marstrom uses some S glass, but how much we do not know. If you tap the boats ours feels more firm but that is obviously very unreliable.” Eeles stresses he is not trying to take on the Marstrom with his boat, nor is he criticising them - it is not his place to comment about other boats because he simply does not know their manufacturing processes, etc.

Although carbon fibre is not allowed in the manufacture of Tornado hulls it is in other areas of the boat, carbon masts being the biggest and most obvious part. This is where Eeles has spent a lot of time and throughout the boat there are many little widgets made in carbon fibre specifically tailored to the job. Some of these are things he has been selling already, like the carbon spinnaker chute assembly, while some are entirely new for this boat. Among the new parts is a new rudder stock. This looks very chunky and has a new downhaul system for the rudder blade. As you can see in the picture the system consists of a plastic bobble that sits in a groove and then the whole thing can be twisted to tighten it.

The advantage in building a new Olympic class boat is obvious: if it is even marginally quicker than the other boats available on the market then teams will be forced to buy one to ensure they can be competitive at the Olympics. Even if the boat is not quicker, provided it is not slower then some Olympians are still probably going to buy it even if it is in smaller numbers. The important thing for Eeles is for there not to be a monopoly. “I think that competition is always good and the time felt right for another manufacturer to come along,” he explains. “I seem to have built up a good reputation on the Tornado circuit so it felt like people would probably trust me enough to give the boat a chance.”

Perhaps the most surprising and encouraging thing about Eeles’ new boat is the commitment to it by Skandia Team GBR sailors, Andrew Walsh and Ed Barney, who will be sailing the boat at all of their major events this season. 2006 represents a very important year for Walsh and Barney as much of their funding and event qualification hangs in the balance. As such they genuinely can’t afford to get any bad results.

Last week should have seen the pair training all week against GBR Development Squad members Chris Rashley and Marcus Lynch sailing on a brand new Marstrom platform. However this has not happened as the weather in Weymouth has been terrible. They did manage to get out for a brief sail on Thursday - despite the snow - and were pleased with the boat’s performance. “We had a good sail against another Marstrom boat, so we are starting to get a fair idea of the differences and similarities,” says Walsh. “I think we will have a better idea in Palma next week when we are training against Rob Wilson and Mark Bulkeley. We trained with them all last year so we have a good idea of how fast we are compared to them in a range of different conditions, so comparisons should be easier to make at that stage.”

What little they have learned about the boat in the last week seems to be encouraging. The pair say that the most obvious and important thing to note is that it feels like a Tornado and does not seem to perform in any strange or unusual way. Beyond this they have been experiencing some minor rig problems and these have stopped them being able to train in an efficient way. “One of the big problems we have experienced is to do with the mast rake. We measure that from the hounds at the front of the boat and on Graham’s boat they are in a slightly different place. This means that our rake and bend settings are all slightly off,” comments Barney. This is not a total disaster for the team as all they need to do is find the correct set-up for their base setting and then they will easily be able to work out where the rest of their settings are in comparison. Even this small set back has been relatively positive for the pairing. As Barney explains: “Even with the rig problems, which were giving us a little more weather helm than we would have liked, we were at least as quick as and generally quicker than the guys we were training against. But then we normally are anyway. We did swap boats and we were very pleased because they seemed more competitive against us when they were sailing Graham’s boat.”

Walsh and Barney are off on a cross country skiing fitness camp with the rest of Skandia Team GBR next week while the Eeles Tornado will be at the Dinghy Show. After that the duo are off to Palma for training and then it is straight into the Olympic campaign trail at the Princess Sophia Regatta.

There is little doubt that Eeles is respected within the Tornado community and the commitment by Walsh and Barney is a good stamp of trust. But at present no one knows how quick this new boat will be. Despite the lack of on the water testing we are able to draw some conclusions. We know that whether the boat is faster or slower the difference is likely to be very marginal. We also know that with Eeles’ history in the Tornado class the boat will be well thought out and everything will do its job efficiently. It will certainly be interesting to watch Walsh and Barney this season as they compete against the best sailors in the world on the Marstrom platform. Watch this space.