Lifting their skirts

The hullah surrounded Team New Zealand's 'hula' at the grand skirt lifting in Auckland today

Property values in Auckland likely shot up today when the two Team New Zealand boats were raised from the water, their skirts immodestly abandoned, to an adoring public. As Kiwi music legend Dave Dobbyn’s ‘Loyal’ screamed out of the loudspeakers, the two black hulls were simultaneously inched out of the water by travel lifts. As they came into view over the pier, a tiny crack appeared to run around the after section of both boats – evidence of what has come to be known as the ‘Kiwi Clip-On’. Suddenly the dock-talk was that we’d all be coming back to New Zealand in three years.

So what was all the fuss about?

The media has called it the ‘Kiwi Clip-On’, Team New Zealand syndicate head Tom Schnackenberg, clad in a Hawaiian shirt for the occasion, preferred ‘Hula’, simultaneously explaining his dress sense and that the term was an abbreviation for ‘hull appendage’.



But this isn’t an appendage in the sense most people think of it. Neither a keel, nor a rudder, the ‘hula’ is best though of as a slice off the bottom of the after section of the boat. Attached along the centreline, separated from the hull by what appears to be about 5 millimetres, the ‘hula’ essentially cheats the rule, by adding length and volume, neither of which are measured.



The ‘hula’ allows the boat to sail as if it’s longer, measure as if it’s shorter, and gives the designers an opportunity to play with things like displacement, draft, and adding more sail area.

Critically, the black boats were designed around this, and that’s why the Team New Zealand designers are loath to embrace the ‘clip-on’ tag.

“It’s not a matter of adding to a boat that you’ve already envisioned. The idea starts with the concept that you want to draw a boat that is long, elegant and fast,” TNZ designer Clay Oliver explained. “It’s not a matter of adding something to a boat that you already envisioned. It’s actually imagining a boat that you want to have and saying how can we get that shape? This is a solution to that. It’s not a clip-on. It’s a hull that’s been drawn the way we want it and that’s the solution to (a measurement rule).”

“It’s taken us a long time to go through the process of figuring out how it works. We’ve done full scale testing, we’ve done a lot of computer analysis to ensure that it’s a rigid body, that it’s working the way we want and we’ve tested in the tank. So we’ve done a lot of work on that, we’ve done our homework and we’re happy.”

The diagrams here, conjured up by Louis Vuitton, were based on guesses that turned out to be not that far off. The main difference is that now the attachment is believed to run all the way down the length of the 'hula', 500mm wide, with the only break around the rudder post. This only a guess as Team New Zealand wouldn't say how its attached. It is also a bit longer than we diagrams indicate, beginning about a metre behind the keel and extending to just forward of the telemetry bar, (probably just over a metre behind the rudder)





But is it legal?

The International Jury received questions on Monday from a competitor questioning the legality of ‘hula’ type appendages, and specifically asking for verification that no part of the appendage touches the hull proper during racing, which would be illegal under the rules.

“We’ve looked at the (hula) idea,” admitted Bruce Farr, designer for Oracle BMW Racing. “You have to prove to yourself that it is in fact faster and then you have to prove to the world that it is in fact legal.”

“It’s been our obligation to satisfy the measurers that it doesn’t touch the hull and we’ve done that. They wouldn’t have given us the certificates if they weren’t satisfied.” countered Schnackenberg.

Alinghi design coordinator Grant Simmer isn’t fully convinced, but he thinks the burden of proof should be on Team New Zealand to prove the appendage remains clear of the hull at all times.

“The International Jury could see it either way. They could say they weren’t sufficiently satisfied that it didn’t touch while racing. Quite frankly, I think the worst thing would be to have a protest during the America’s Cup and I can tell you that the measurement committee and the Jury are aware of these issues and are making sure that they’ll have systems in place where they can monitor whether an appendage touched when racing. I think they’re looking pretty hard at that right now. I would doubt we’ll see a protest, but there could be serious (manoeuvrings) between then and now.”

The Team New Zealand ‘hula’ thoroughly overshadowed the other two unveilings where both Alinghi and Oracle BMW Racing revealed relatively conventional evolutions on the 2000 generation boats.

Alinghi was the first to get naked, and apart from a dead cow illustration on the keel and bulb, this looked like a straight forward, conservative, solid, evolution. But according to head designer Rolf Vrolijk, (and Einstein) God is in the details.

“The appendages aren’t very different from what you saw in 2000, but in the details we have worked very hard and made many subtle refinements. We also developed the square headed mainsail that you see on all of the boats now. I think it’s clear we have tried to push the engine of the boat as much as possible and all of the other teams are trying to catch up.”

SUI-64 was the first new boat in the water, and the plan in the Alinghi programme appears to have been to get it in early, and optimise the hell out of it. Grant Simmer, their design coordinator, estimates the team has picked up about 90-seconds around the course since the boat first went in the water, about half of that since race one in October. He reckons there’s usually about a two-minute gain around the course between generations. If his calculations are correct, then most of the gain Alinghi has made has come through optimising its design, not through original gains on the drawing board.

The Oracle BMW Racing machine, USA-76, in contrast, is well known as the narrowest boat in the fleet, with Bruce Farr pushing the limits on how narrow the boat can be. This boat showed a relatively big rudder – Andy Green (occasional GBR starting helmsman) was heard to say, “I’d have killed for a rudder like that, no wonder Holmberg’s pasting everyone on the starts” – a tapered keel, and the shortest, fattest bulb (less wetted surface, but higher centre of gravity).

“We have our wings at the back of the bulb, rather than the centre of the bulb,” designer Bruce Farr explained. “And we’re quite a bit narrower than Alinghi, especially at the waterline.”

“We do think we can win with this boat. We’ve done a lot of work in the last couple of months and think we’ve made some advances, even since we last raced Alinghi, on all fronts – in terms of improving the boat and the appendages, improving sails, the rig and even the sailing. And so we’re hoping we’re peaking now in time to beat Alinghi and hopefully Team New Zealand.”

In comparison to the Oracle bulb, the bulbs on NZL-81 and NZL-82 were positively monstrous, a design that Mike Drummond described as a trade off between drag and stability.

“I guess if you look at the two extremes, one of ours is very long with a low centre of gravity and so more stability. The price is the extra wetted surface, a lot more wetted surface, which is a drag item in very light airs.”

But at the end of the day, the story is the ‘hula’ and it’s hard not to admire the Kiwi’s for their ‘revolution’. Laurie Davidson said he liked the two Kiwi boats, “at least more than the other two,” referring to the Challengers.

Schnack himself was asked where he would place the TNZ boats in the history of the America’s Cup:

“Well, I suppose the answer depends on the outcome of the next several weeks sailing,” said Schnack to much amusement. “Each time a new design idea comes out it tends to open up the design space and we’d like to think that the appendage will open up the hull design space for the America’s Cup Class…If that happens this boat will be seen as a small milestone.”

More photos on the following pages...

Below: Team New Zealand's monster keel