A Rig Too Far?

With Team New Zealand's mast crashing down, Andy Rice asks Jason Ker what now for the Millennium Rig?

America’s Cup syndicates in Auckland will be scratching their heads about what mast to stick up for the Louis Vuitton Cup this time next year, after Team New Zealand became the latest victims of Millennium rig failure.

Last month it was OneWorld who saw carbon and Mylar crash round their heads, but things are getting really serious when even the originators of the concept are finding their mast just isn’t up to the job. Local newspaper the New Zealand Herald said skipper Dean Barker described last week’s incident aboard NZL57 as a "hiccup we could do without".

"It was not boat-threatening and, thankfully, no one was injured," said Barker. "We had been out in the gulf for about four hours and were near one of the weather buoys when a 25-knot squall came through."

Barker’s greater worry is that after two years of sailing with this type of rig in anything up to 40 knots, it could be back to the drawing board. "The real concern is that this is the second Millennium rig to break in the past month. There have to be questions now about the rig concept."

British designer Jason Ker was quick to adopt the Millennium, or Cathedral rig concept, for his own innovative IRM designs. His 36-foot design Roaring Meg burst onto the scene at the Rolex Commodores Cup in summer 2000, not long after Team New Zealand had successfully defended the America’s Cup with their breakthrough rig.

But on the long offshore race, in rough water just a mile off the Needles, Roaring Meg’s glorious charge on the bigger Farr 40s came to an ignominious end, when her needle-thin rig came crashing down.

It is a rig concept that he sensibly chose to steer away from in drawing the lines for the Ker 11.3 one-design, the success story of Solent handicap racing in 2001. Compared with the simplicity of a conventional rig with swept-back spreaders and a wide shroud base - which typifies the rigs seen on Farr one-designs - the Millennium rig is a cat’s cradle of shrouds, checkstays and interlinked wires. The advantage, says Ker, is that you should be able to get away with a smaller mast section - meaning less windage and less weight aloft. Although there is more wire involved, the rig does enable you to get rid of one set of spreaders, which allows a considerable weight and windage saving overall.

On page 2, Jason Ker says there is still a time and a place for this wacky rig...