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From Robert Middlemas, Seattle
Would I risk a Millennium Rig? This seems to be a question having to do with reliability and/or safety. If I were to be making a cruising ocean passage tomorrow? Not on your life. If I were a part of the America's Cup? You bet I would.

Here's why: From a purely numbers standpoint, it makes sense to go with one. Less windage and weight aloft is always a good thing.

These rigs, historically speaking, are still right out of the box, brand new. Very little base line data would seem to exist. What of it there is, is constantly being added to every time one is sailed.

From your article, it would seem that not all that needs to be known about them is known. Those things simply won't be known unless people make the choice to use them. Which is, in fact, the choice to learn from them.

From a relative layman's viewpoint, it would seem like an engineer's dream come true. When designing an appendage so crucial to performance, so close to the edge of that performance, for conditions that change on a constant basis, in an environment that changes three dimensionally from one second to the next, bad things are bound to result. And good things will result as well.

When, not if, they get this rig figured out and operating on as close to reliable as anything else that exists in yacht racing, we will all have learned and gained from it. When man went to the moon, except at take off and re-entry, the physical environment for the most part remained constant.

The forces at work were pitch, roll and yaw. Straight forward physics for the most part. Still, some ticklish problems still had to be solved. As we all know, wonderful things and valuable new knowledge resulted from this quest for answers. So to with pushing the envelope of yacht racing.

If one is to be at the forefront of the sport, one must take chances and hang it out there. The rewards for doing so, like the defeats for NOT doing so, are just too great. I, for one, applaud and encourage innovation and forward thinking. Indeed, the future of this sport, as with all things, depends on it.

From Mike Richards
Would I risk a Millennium Rig? First I would like to disagree with Andy Rice in the statement about the handicap success of the Kerr's. If anything the IRC results this year were dominated by the Swan fleet and IRM was dominated by the IC 45 a 1996 design. The millennium rig on Roaring Meg fell down more than once and during the Commodores Cup the crew were repeatedly told to stop altering the standing rigging while racing.

Jason maybe missed the point with an IACC rig as there is a minimum weight and centre of gravity and any saving (by reducing spreader numbers) can go into the laminate to make the Tube stiffer, the IACC rig is not small in section and it is held very straight.

From Kim Klaka
Carbon fibre rudders - are they safe? That's not a very sensible question. You might as well ask if 3/4 rigs are safe (some of them break, you know). The problem lies not with the material, but with the design, construction and installation methods used. I remember this same question being asked in the 1970s after the carbon fibre rudder on a famous racing yacht broke.

The reason for the failure was that the stock was a bit too big for the lower bearing, so some silly sod filed off the outer layer of carbon fibre to get it to fit nicely! A carbon fibre rudder is as safe as any other rudder if suitable design procedures, factors of safety (factors of ignorance really)and construction techniques are used.

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