The engine

There's more being a grinder than looking like Arnie, say BMW Oracle's Craig Monk and Alinghi's Christian Karcher

Grinding? Pretty straightforward you would think. All you need is the build of a prop forward, arms like meat cleavers and you're away.

In fact there is considerably more to it than that. On BMW Oracle Racing for example the eight grinders in the sailing team may be beefcakes but are also to a man all ex-Olympic sailors. The grinders are no longer just the engine of the boat, switched on and off when required.

As BMW Oracle's 110kg brick shit house Craig Monk, now on his 14th year of Cup sailing and his fourth Cup campaign following two with Team NZ and one with OneWorld, puts it: "It is a combination - it is reading the play, you have to know the rules, you have to know what loads you’re dealing with and pre-empt what the helmsman is going to do, because if you can get ahead on a gybe you can move a rope in a lower gear, but if you don’t know what you are doing, it doesn’t matter how strong you are you’ll find yourself spinning the handles more than you have to."

New gear

Through the last century almost all developments in grinding technology have come about through the America's Cup. Back in 1903 Nathaniel Herreshoff had grinders down below on board Reliance operating winches with automatically shifting gears and the grinding team was to be found down below on a majority of 12 metres.

Over the last ten years winch packages have leapt forward in their technology and have halved in weight. Brutal chain drives have been replaced by Kevlar belts, metal has largely been swapped for carbon fibre, steel or titanium only remaining for the vital parts such as the gears. And the torque that can pass through the whole system is enormous now. For this Cup teams are able to get four pedestals, eight men, driving one winch and this feature alone has transformed the grinder's job.



Craig Monk (above) explains: "We are hoisting spinnakers now on winches whereas we used to jump them manually - that used to be part of the grinders role, to go forward and manually pull the halyards up, but now everything is done with the winch. In the old days we didn’t have the range of gears and couldn’t work out how to do it - to grind and pump and get eight guys into one winch. So we put a lot of torque through these winches. We have one gear which is 1:2 and that is spinning quicker than the human can keep up with. It is a lot of horse power to manage. If you get it right you can really haul some line speed, but if you get it wrong you can break the winches which is high risk in the pre-start or you have a stall." Through this technique spinnakers can be hoisted in just seven seconds whereas for the 1995 Cup, 15 seconds was considered a good hoist, says Monk.

Apart from superior engineering of the gear, a lot is down to refinement. BMW Oracle Racing, like Alinghi have a Harken winch package, but they have been working with their German car manufacturer sponsor on the gear box and the ratios to get the right line speeds for the various manoeuvres they must carry out. This also takes into account the venue - the light airs and flatter water expected in Valencia compared to Auckland or San Diego. At BMW Oracle Racing they have even considered an automatic gearbox, but like most racing drivers they prefer to keep it manual.

Better understanding of the loads involved and refinement has allowed the number of gears required to be reduced - BMW Oracle now run six gears, Alinghi five and sometimes only four, compared to eight in the past - and all this weight saving obviously ends up as extra lead on the keel. An added benefit of shedding parts from the winch package is reliability. As Alinghi's main grinder Christian Karcher (below), who began his grinding career on Cup boats in 1989 with Marc Pajot's French team, says: "Sometimes by practising you can get rid of a gear that you thought you needed before, and not having it on board makes the system more reliable, lighter and practising all together you can manage to get rid of the extra part. The less gears you have the less parts you have and the less breakdowns you have. As Enzo Ferrari used to say 'the only parts of a car that won’t break during a race are the ones which aren’t on the car'".



All the present generation Cup boats we have seen are fitted with four pedestals, with the exception of the United Internet Team Germany boat which last year had five.

It may be a case of chicken and egg, but the added pace of the grinding is reflected in the more competitive, less processional nature of America's Cup racing, or maybe it is the other way round. As Monk says: "You can push the hoists and the drops and now the skippers know we can deal with a lot more load a lot quicker than we used to be able." As a result manoeuvres happen a lot faster than they once did.

On a Cup boat there are usually three permanent grinders, typically one for the main and two for the primaries, although with four pedestals there will be eight crew manning the pumps, everyone with the exception of the helmsman taking their turn. Now that they are no longer running around the deck, the full time grinders operate their own pedestal and typically are the ones facing the bow.

"I normally get Jamie [Gale] the pitman on my side," says Monk, who runs the port primary pedestal. "If we are coming off the start line on starboard tack it is my final trim with Ross Halcrow being the jib trimmer - he and I have been launching the boat off the start line together for a long time. We have a good relationship going there which is key between grinders and trimmers."

On BMW Oracle's boats the full time grinders now even have personalised handles on their pedestals. As Monk explains: "We are holding these things for eight hours a day and you can get bad RSI if you have the wrong shape grip. It is a big deal otherwise everything starts cramping up and one injury leads to another."

With Version 5 of the rule Cup boats have shed one tonne of displacement and in theory loads should have come down, but Monk says as far as he's concerned it doesn't feel like they have. "In fact I think the loads have gone up because the sails are generating more power and the racing is closer."

For a grinder Monk maintains that the hardest part of a match race in Cup boats is the pre-start. "They are getting pretty exciting for us. It is like a big co-ordination to get half the crew on one winch and then we split out on to our other winches simultaneous. So it is a bit of a choreographed act the pre-start."

On BMW Oracle Racing, the highest loads they see on the primaries is at the top of the Code 3 in around 18-20 knots of wind. Ironically, Monk says, the least loads are in stronger conditions when they have a Code 4 or 5 up which have such short sheets making them almost self-tacking. "Even the Code 0s and 1s in 6-8 knots is a lot of load and a lot of grinding. In actual fact a heavier air venue is probably easier on the grinders because the wind does a lot of the work especially with spinnaker and stuff, you are not rotating the sails around the boat all the time."

Christian Karcher says how hard the grinder's job is pretty much entirely depends upon wind strength: "In around 10 knots [of wind] it is already difficult. 12 is very difficult and at 14 it is becoming a nightmare. Or it is a nightmare if you don’t practise and train together for that."

With the development of the winch packages, techniques have also changed since the last Cup in 2003. "At bottom marks, the grinders were going forwards to pull the sails done, leaving their posts," says Monk of what they do on the BMW Oracle boats. "Now we have some nice take down package. We grind the chutes up but we also grind them down. It is a lot quicker, a lot safer and it means that no one has to run around the boat and leave their post. Before they had people going everywhere and people were getting caught out everywhere. Now grinders don’t move from their pedestal because we can do everything from there."

Who does what

Typically the forward two pedestals operate the primary winches, while the aft two deal with the main, but this is becoming more and more flexible. On Alinghi's boats Karcher says the middle pedestal is for the mainsail, the aft one for the runners, but the moment the runners have been cranked on that pedestal moves to driving the main. Downwind when it is windy the front three pedestals are on the spinnaker with the back one on the main while the runners are tophandled because there's less load in them. However if you need to gybe all four pedestals will hook in to get the main across.

On BMW Oracle they are often using the new eight-man-driving-one-winch feature for hauling in the main during a gybe, a big jib trim and gybing the A sails and spinnakers. While in the past the trimmers used to operate the winch gears, today the grinders do this themselves via buttons in the cockpit sole, the whole process of what is happening orchestrated by the main grinder, usually Joe Spooner on BMW Oracle's race boat.

While the primary grinders on BMW Oracle Racing focus on grinding and raw power, the main grinder's job has become more managerial. They are closer to the afterguard and being further aft have a better view of the sails and so make the grinding calls. And yet their role is ever more fiendishly complex too. Karcher, who has this role, gives an example: "Usually I am no9 in the middle of the boat, and in one manoeuvre - a gybe in medium wind - I connect myself to five different winches during a 30 second manoeuvre: Help on the main, help on the spinnaker, back on the main and finishing the spinnaker and squaring the spinnaker pole the other side - five connections in 30 seconds. But if you practise that every day it is not that impressive."

The main grinder's job has been further complicated in recent years as while the pedestals are cranking in rope at the same time they will be driving rotary pumps for around eight hydraulic systems. These are operated by the main grinder on BMW Oracle and include the cunningham, vang, outhaul as well as hydraulic systems up the mast such as pushers and jumpers. "They are pretty sophisticated systems now. Even the hydraulic system is all controlled by your feet, so our main grinder would have seven or eight buttons and maybe 20 different combinations. So that has changed a lot," says Craig Monk. "All that can be happening in the pre-start as well, particularly these new mainsails with the big heads and big battens they need a lot of Cunningham on just to gybe them."

Obviously working as a cohesive unit is essential for those on the pumps. As Karcher puts it: "How do you tell a grinder? He's the one with good friends as big as him. 200sqm mainsail in 20 knots, 5 tonnes load - alone? No sir. When we gybe downwind in 20 knots, all the pedestals are connected to the mainsail to gybe the mainsail. If anyone is not pushing we cock up the manoeuvre. So a good grinder is part of a good grinder team."


Burn out and rotation

The power house of a Cup boat, grinders, like batteries, must be recharged and so their positions will get rotated between races more regularly than any other position on the boat. At BMW Oracle they have eight grinders in their sailing team and on a two race day 70% of the grinders will swap, says Monk, "just because you want to stay at a really high shape level. Testing we have done on grinders, it is always your first test where you have the most power. Over the course of a day you can probably halve your output. So we repower the boat. If we are just doing one race a day and you have the night to recover, then I’d do 90% of the races barring injury."

When it comes to fitness, cardiovascular staying power is vital. As Karcher puts it - a shot putter would be very good for the first five minutes but would be hard pressed in a pre-start or a 20 tack duel up a beat. This is why several teams employ ex-rowers in their grinding team. "You can compare it with rugby players. In rugby you have the backs and the forwards and the big guys, the forwards have to push very hard in the scrum. Today those guys are real athletes, running as fast as the backs and becoming good with their hands. And we are seeing the same evolution with grinders."

But Craig Monk feels they still have some way to go in their fitness regimes. "Our fitness routines have come on a long way but we are probably five years behind a Super 12 or an All Black rugby team. We have only been doing it five years really really professionally like having our own gym on the base and our own physios. Whereas rugby went pro in 1995 and you look at pro soccer and they have been doing it for 50 years probably. So we have a lot to learn."

At BMW Oracle the grinders do a lot of pilates due to the odd position they assume for so much of the day - upwind for example very often they are grinding while on their knees... "We spend an hour a day trying to unwind everything we’ve wound up. There is no better training for grinding than grinding. Genetically we are all pretty big and strong, so we don’t spend a lot of time pushing heavy weights at the moment. Two years ago we would have. Especially not now with six weeks to go."

Expending so much energy each day, grinders also tend to be the most susceptible to injury, although avoiding this comes with experience. As Monk says he no longer gets injured very often: "I’m pretty good, year in year out knowing your body and knowing when you are tired and keeping your fluids up and we have a pretty good massage routine here daily and good physios and rehab. There is more chance of getting injured walking out our front gate here than on the boat."

In fact it has been identified that more injuries occur post race than during it. According to Karcher most often injuries occur as the crew muck in carrying sails ashore. "You are tried, you sail every day and then you get towed back and during half an hour you get some sleep for 15 minutes inside the boat and then you wake up and you carry sails with your muscles being cold again." To avoid this BMW Oracle have developed special sail carts that are used once the boat returns to the dock.

Obviously a lot of injury can be avoided on the boat if the correct techniques are used. "You have to be careful," says Monk. "It is like riding a bike, pushing and pulling at the same time with the handles. It is about keeping your back straight and your body aligned. And because the boat is normally at a 30deg heel going upwind you can over rotate your shoulders. A lot of grinding is done on your knees because the helmsman has to see through your back and the windage to stay low - so that throws a different training technique too. Core strength comes into it. And if you grip too hard you end up blowing out your elbows and wrists. Then grinding backwards is a whole different technique to grinding forward with leg positioning. So you can go out there and throw your body at it, but you won’t last, the next day you won’t be walking too well. Key for us is to go out there and give it our best, refuel and go out there and do it again the next day, day in day out. Last year we did nine months of it."

On BMW Oracle Racing the physique of the grinders also differs slightly from other teams in that none are more than 6ft tall. "That is considered short compared to most of the other teams where they have rowers or some other codes of sport. All our grinders are ex-Olympic sailors. The shorter stockier build like I am is pretty suited for grinding because your spine is a bit lower or shorter and you don’t get the back injuries," says Monk.

So, in short, a little more than just looking like a nightclub bouncer.