From Wallys to TP 52s

Luca Brenta and Harry Miesbauer on the design of Austrian Rainer Willhelm's Astra

As with so many yacht designers of his generation - Ed Dubois, Ron Holland, Rob Humphreys, to name a few - Italian Luca Brenta cut his teeth in the competitive world of IOR in the 1970s and 1980s and today is well known for drawing some of the best looking performance cruisers on the ocean wave. With Wally boss Luca Bassani, he set this trend in 1991 with the launch of the defining Wally yacht, the 83ft Wallygator, followed the 100+ft Wallygator II (now called Narida) and Wally B in the mid-1990s with Bassani and culminated last year in the gorgeous 122ft silver-hulled Ghost, racing this week at Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup.

Throughout this time Brenta has continued to draw small performance cruisers and race boats including the IMS 50 Luja and the IMS 60 Boabunda in the early 1990s and more recently with the high performance one designs, the Brenta 38 and 30 built by Adria Sail in Italy and the 55ft Imagine, built by Holland Composite for a former Melges 24 owner.

Brenta's most latest foray into the yacht racing world has been more hardcore with the development of the TP 52 Astra for Austrian owner Rainer Willhelm, who's crew includes Olympic Tornado sailor Andreas Hagara (brother of Roman) and former 470 and Soling sailor Christian Binder. Willhelm has been racing in the Mediterranean for around 10 years, his first boat being an ILC 40 of the same name. He subsequently bought the former Mean Machine IMS 47 in which he won the Rolex Middle Sea Race and then an IMS 50 (the former Exposure)."At the end of the day he was a little bit fed up with the IMS scene, all the measurements going on and all those things, so he decided to go for the TP as well. It is the first design we have done for him," says Harry Miesbauer, who worked on the design of the boat alongside Brenta.
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In the high octane world of the TP 52, there is currently outright warfare between design houses with the mighty Farr office up against Judel-Vrolijk, Reichel-Pugh, and Mediterranean darlings Botin Carkeek. While all these big names in yacht racing each have several boats, Brenta and Mani Frers (with the new Bambakou) have just one.

"The TP 52 is the most interesting boat to design now, which is why we are here trying to compete with the other big teams and the other big designers," Brenta told thedailysail recently. "We know how to approach the research, so we had the opportunity to work on the tank testing and the CFD programs and that is how we decided to approach the design of this boat. Unfortunately the process was a bit late, and with all the races are very close to one another there is no time for modifications, but we are very happy with the performance of the boat and the crew are still improving and trying to find ways to always have the boat sailing at peak speed."

One of the oddities of the TP 52 season this year on the Breitling MedCup circuit is that no one design house has been especially dominant and no one boat noticably faster all around the race track. The strongest teams seem to be those who have the most experience, time on the water and the chance to refine their boats - particularly the mast positioning - and who know their settings. "With our boat they are still trying to get the boat to be quick in different conditions especially if the conditions change quickly they can be slow to react," says Harry Miesbauer. The boat will certainly be more competitive next year after keel and rig modifications and once the crew have had more opportunity to get miles under their belt.

Brenta says that a design house's involvement with a TP 52 campaign does not end when the boat leaves the shed. In the case of Astra he is expecting to be involved in the development of the boat for the duration of the campaign. "Unfortunately the rest of the fleet is growing up and growing up and the competition is very hard, very tough."

The irony of the TP 52 class is while it is open to all designers, the box rule is so tight, that their input only represents a small percentage of the overall performance. "The design of the boat doesn’t seem to be the first or only issue to win," admits Brenta. "Now we are back to the crew, the sails, the trim of the mast - you can see different performances of sisterships because they have different crew. So we can do our job but maybe it is only 20-30% of the total performance. Generally I don’t see any boat that can’t win."

So how is Astra different from the other TP 52 designs? Brenta gets cagey at this point saying that it is very important to have a design that doesn't change dramatically as soon as it starts to heel. Miesbauer adds: "It was very important that we gave the crew a boat that had a good all-round performance. We never went to the extreme of anything although we looked at it. And it was also Rainer’s intention not to do something extreme which might be dangerous or risky."

Unlike some TP 52s Astra is designed solely for the MedCup where the racing is predominantly windward-leeward with some reaching. Thus her performance is more optimised for upwind. The biggest variation between boats and about the only major parameters free from restriction in the TP 52 rule are hull volume distribution and water line beam and Brenta says the new Astra is at the narrow end of the spectrum. Yet while there is some variation in waterline beam throughout the fleet, this does not seem to be showing any marked difference in performance between boats.

Beyond this it is a case of optimising the appendages and for this they spent time in the tank, while they worked with SP Technologes examining ways to optimise the structure. "You have to comply with the ABS rule so there is not a lot of variation you can do," says Miesbauer. "Everyone knows where the pressure heads are and as a designer you also have to make a declaration that you have designed it to ABS."

Brenta and Miesbauer also studied ways to get the best possible weight distribution throughout the hull, and for example the liferaft is further forward than it might have been. The deck layout was down to the choice of the crew including a coffee grinder in the cockpit and what Miesbauer refers to as the 'German' mainsheet system (where it runs forward along the boom, sideways down to the deck and then runs back to the cockpit below deck. On Astra most lines run back to the cockpit below deck.

As we wander around on deck Miesbauer points out the cabintop, which he says going to get the chop, making it narrower to allow headsail sheeting to move further inboard. Hydraulics on board in the outhaul, Code Zero downhaul and the forestay. Aloft, Astra is fitted with a Carbontech carbon fibre rig, as the old Lexus, has and their standing rigging is doubled up, in theory reducing windage. They use halyard locks on the code zero and jib and have the ability to use it on the main too.

At present Astra is the Brenta office's only TP 52 commission, but they have several clients talking to them about GP 42s. "It is a very similar concept," says Brenta. "Maybe just a touch more free than this [the TP 52], but not so much. That is good for the owners - the boats are all very similar, they enjoy the racing because the boats are very close and they have the chance too choose their designer unlike a one design."

Compared to a one design like the Farr 40, Miesbauer says the running costs of a TP 52 are not as ludicrously expensive as people thing. In one design racing he maintains that crew costs are similar and more sail development takes place with some owners having two or more boats.

Brenta pondered one possible future for the TP 52, going down America's Cup type lines. "Maybe teams will have a permanent crew, always working on board and having two boats to make different tests. Maybe you’ll have big teams like Formula One, the teams with designers and only a few teams but very very sophisticated. You never know the end of the story, but it could happen."

Generally Brenta says he prefers the boats produced by the TP 52 rule to the ones created to beat the IMS rule. "Mathematically it is a great job. I think the IMS was driven in a funny way. Instead of creating a nice boat to go sailing on, it created a monster! That is not the fault of the IMS, it is how you drive the formula. Probably the IMS can stay for cruising and racing boats. About this rule I think it is very good. I would like to have more flexibility so that you have more freedom to do you job as a designer, but this is of course a good starting point. After all the boats we have seen at the last couple of years, I think they are much more exciting."

Miesbauer reckons that a TP 52 is perhaps 50% faster downwind than an equivalent sized IMS racing boat and faster upwind too. "If you talk to the crew they say it is much nicer and more fun to sail. It is much more physical and I think everyone in the crew is pretty happy with the boats."

The TP 52s have their last race of the season in Ibiza, week after next.