On a Wing and a Rudder - Part II

Andy Rice's assessment of the International 14 World Champion's T-foil technology concludes today

Zach Berkowitz and Trevor Baylis

Continued from yesterday's article

Newly-crowned 14 World Champions Zach Berkowitz and Trevor Baylis spent eight months training three times a week in the build-up to Bermuda, working out how to use the T-foil rudder system, as well as getting used to sailing with each other. They discovered that the angle of the foil was extremely critical, so much so that they decided to lead the control to both side decks next to the vang and cunningham controls. Then they put it on a 10:1 purchase system, not because it was difficult to adjust but to help sensitise the adjustment. Baylis says he would tweak the system to determine how far they would trapeze fore and aft on the boat.

The Americans rake the leading edge of the wing up when sailing upwind, to generate a hydrofoil effect that sees both chines lift clear of the water. The result is reduced wetted surface area, and the end effect is devastating speed upwind. Downwind, they let the system off which returns the wing to a neutral angle. If you forget to do that, you soon regret it, as Elliott and Hancock found to their cost during one of the windy races in Bermuda. "Our purchase system was a little bit agricultural," admits Hancock, "and when we let the system off it didn't release the rudder." The result was a spectacular pitchpole the moment they bore away round the top mark.

One of the other potential applications is to reverse the angle of the wing so that it pulls the transom down into the water and stops the boat's tendency to nosedive in a big breeze downwind, but Berkowitz found the motion of the boat a little disconcerting and has not yet used this technique in the heat of battle.

Some of the other American teams have found the T-foil a bit disconcerting to use in pretty much any condition, and Berkowitz admits it does make the boat feel very different. "It's more like you're steering an 18-footer - it is not as responsive. You head up and the boat wants to carry on heading up, you bear away and it wants to keep on doing that."

But Berkowitz believes there is more to come from T-foil technology, and is all in favour of the class persisting with it. "This is what 14 development is all about," he says in defiance of the naysayers on the official 14 website. According to Hancock some of the language used against T-foil technology has been on the strong side, but he too is in favour of continuing with it. "The boat is about as fast as a 49er upwind with the T-foil on, and it's been faster downwind for some time."

It seems strange that a class that has thrived on pioneering developments like the trapeze, the fully-battened rig and the asymmetric gennaker should shy away from such a breakthrough, especially when the cost implications are relatively small. It is just this sort of development that has seen the 14 maintain its small but loyal following, and left the copycat one-designs spluttering in her wake. You can bet the brains that produce the RS line of one-design boats have taken note.

And even if the 14s abandon their new-found technology, it has already captured the imaginations of some bigger fish, according to Berkowitz. "I showed the new T-foil to Paul Cayard and Bill Erkelens at Oracle Racing - they were pretty impressed with it." Sufficiently so that a month later Paul Bieker was on the payroll as part of the design team for the San Francisco-based America's Cup challenge.

Baylis said Bieker had already tried the T-foil concept on a carbon, 39-foot lightweight cruiser he designed for current 49er world champion Jonathan McKee and his wife Libby. "Jonathan reckoned it added two-tenths of a knot to their performance, which is quite a bit over a long day race," says Baylis.

But the biggest gains are likely to come when a boat is planing, and especially for a short boat like the 14 whose lack of waterline length has always been her Achilles' heel upwind. "We've had a light wind worlds and now a heavy wind worlds, but I think the greatest gains from the T-foil are likely to come in moderate conditions. That's when it really works."

Even Berkowitz was surprised at just how easy it all was in Bermuda, because he spent the year more or less sailing around by himself. He didn't have a benchmark against which to measure himself, unlike the large fleets that exist in the UK and Australia. And yet the last two worlds have now been won by two different American teams. A lot of success must be attributed to Paul Bieker, whose designs have set the pace in 14 racing for the past five years.

But it is also the Americans' willingness to experiment, and aside from the T-foil, there was very little that Berkowitz and Baylis didn't research in their quest for victory in Bermuda. "I thought most 14 mainsails looked too full," says Baylis, who went into a development programme with Aussie sailmaker Dave Alexander. The team also commissioned a new jib from Ullman and bought their kite from Irwin Sails in Australia.

The only thing that remained unchanged was the hull, a three-year-old Bieker 2Z (Z for the bumps and tweaks specified by Zach). "It's narrower than most modern 14 hulls," says Berkowitz, "and uglier, which is why Paul [Bieker] did not want to make his standard hull for sale to his normal customers."

Its narrowness made it very jumpy in wavy conditions downwind, something Berkowitz is all too familiar with when he sails in San Francisco Bay. "It was hard for me to trapeze on it downwind, but the T-foil has helped dampen down the movement."

So was the T-foil the key to his success? "I don't know - we worked on so many aspects of the boat and rig in particular. It's more complex than that." It is also worth noting that they were the only boat in the 50-strong fleet at Bermuda not to capsize at any point during the racing. Berkowitz and Baylis's boathandling was said to be flawless. And that always helps when you're trying to win a championship.