Trying that little bit harder

Terry Hutchinson talks to thedailysail about winning this year's Audi MedCup circuit

While Peter de Ridder’s Mean Machine team won the first regatta of the season and Dean Barker and the crew on Bribon the second, it was Terry Hutchinson and the crew of the Doug de Vos/Fred and Steve Howe-owned Quantum Racing that subsequently proved the class act of this year’s Audi MedCup circuit, their TP52 finishing the season on 252 points ahead of second placed Bribon on 306.2.

With de Ridder and last year newcomer Torbjorn Tornqvist dominating the last two seasons, Quantum Racing was unusual in winning the Audi MedCup with a professional behind the wheel in the form of Hutchinson. Also, at a time when Judel-Vrolijk have to become the design house of choice in the class, the Quantum Racing steed for 2008 was the only new boat this season from designers Botin & Carkeek.

Hutchinson has previous experience of the TP52 fleet. Before he became fully occupied at the back end of Emirates Team New Zealand's Cup boat, in 2006 he had sailed with some of the Kiwi Cup team crew on Fred and Steve Howe’s Warpath. After the Cup was done and dusted last year he returned to the boat when Doug de Vos was campaigning her under the name Windquest.



For this year de Vos and the Howes joined forces to back a new fully-pro campaign through Quantum Sails with Hutchinson behind the wheel. “This is a Quantum-sponsored boat,” explains Hutchinson. “So Doug and Fred are sponsoring the team. In the absence of the America’s Cup this is a great avenue for Quantum to show the abilities of their product. So hopefully we have done a good job of representing them and continue to do so. The sails are really nice and have gotten a lot better. Quantum wanted to show that their product is equal to North. Potentially what we are showing right now is that our competitive advantage is our sails.”

While all the other new boats for 2008 came from Judel-Vrolijk or Reichel-Pugh, going to Botin & Carkeek was an obvious choice for Hutchinson since the talented Marcellino Botin had been one of the main designers at Emirates Team New Zealand. “It was a risky decision,” admits Hutchinson. “Some people thought we were crazy, maybe we were, but the nice thing about the boat is that it always has good speed. We might not always be the fastest boat but we are always in the top three boat speed-wise. At the end of the day that’s all you can ask for.”

Hutchinson agrees that now at the end of its fourth season in the Med, the TP52s are becoming increasingly one-design. Fortunately this is another area of sailing where he has previously excelled, helping Barking Mad owner Jim Richardson to his Farr 40 World Championship wins. “What you see is that some boats have little strengths and weaknesses here and there. We have some vulnerabilities as well, but it is becoming very much a one design type of sailing - which is awesome. It is really really good. So it means we can come in next year with this boat and hopefully be as competitive.”

While he skippered Quantum Racing throughout the Audi MedCup this year, Hutchinson steered the Judel-Vrolijk designed Desafio TP52 at Copa del Rey providing a rare opportunity to experience the differences between the two designs. He says the Vrolijk boat felt much smaller, compared to their B&C design which has more volume forward. “We targeted having a lot of hull form stability which you pay a penalty for. The Vrolijk boat is a much more pinched boat.”

But this hurts in the light? “The idea is that it doesn’t hit you as bad. It is a bigger gain when the boat hits a certain speed it is a good gain for you. It feels like as soon as we have people hiking it is really good. At 25deg of heel all the boats have the same stability, but at 18-19deg of heel we have a lot more just from hull form. Another thing was that having not helmed one of these for a while, I asked for a boat that was very easy to drive. One of the things that continued to be Mean Machine’s strengths was that they had a very easy sailing boat, something that might not be always really fast but was always sailing at 98%.” Hutchinson says that this meant not a bigger rudder but a bigger, “more grippy fin which we could sail well in lanes with.”

The class is now all about refinement rather than dramatic change and Hutchinson reckons that there were around 15-18 key areas where he feels they made a gain. One for example was working with Hall Spar and their structural engineers at SP to ensure they could really crank on the runner. “When we highlighted that as one of the things we wanted to be able to do - to sail around with a lot of runner and have a boat that could take it. And touch wood - so good,” says Hutchinson.

While they were certainly one of the fastest TP52s this year in moderate conditions, the fastest in light conditions was Alberto Roemmers’ Matador, a J-V design and impressively of 2007 vintage. “The advantage of having your boat for a year is that you start the game a lot further ahead," says Hutchinson. "If we continue to race this boat next season one of our strengths has got to be that we need to start the season out strong because at some point the guys with the new boats are going to grind you in. This season has been as much about continual improve and making sure that we take the necessary steps to get better at every single regatta which we have been doing.”

However it was not just the boat that won for them. They had a consistent crew all season, with a mix of Americans, Aussies and Kiwis, mostly Cup sailors and many from Team New Zealand. This comprised: Jeremy Lomas - bow, Greg Gendell - mid-bow, Jim Cannon - sewer, Chris Kam - mast, Tom Burnham - pit, Morgan Trubovich - upwind trimmer, Brett Jones - downwind trimmer, Andrew Scott - grinder, Andrew Lewis - Grinder, Gerardo Siciliano - main caddy, Skip Baxter - main trimmer, Morgan Larson - tactics, Mark Mendelblatt - strategy, Ian Moore - navigator, Sean Clarkson - runner.

They also trained more than the other teams. “We applied the theory that every hour that we cross the time zone [from the US] we need to be that number of days ahead. So on average we’d show up on the Wednesday before the regatta started and our first day of sailing was Thursday. So everybody was into their sleep patterns and it allows you to ease into it a little bit.”

Hutchinson reckons that mounting a European TP52 campaign costs around 3 million Euros including the boat. But for them getting 18 sailors and shore support in from the four corners of the earth, cost his team roughly $100,000 per regatta, along with the extra training days, hotels, etc. But budgets also went up this year because there were six events on the Audi MedCup rather than five (next year the plan is to return to five regattas on the MedCup circuit) .

As to the future of the class, Hutchinson says it is still healthy. While we have become used to 20+ strong fleets on the Audi MedCup, this had dwindled to 15 by the final regatta of the season but while numbers are slowly dropping, the quality of the fleet has never been stronger. “I suspect that for next season we’ll see 16-17 boats on average at the regattas. For as big as the boat is and the amount of cost, it is a really great turn-out. As long as the owners are happy and the sailors do the right work to keep the owners happy, then the class will survive. If you look at the strength of the Farr 40 class there is a mix of amateurs and pros and the campaign costs are equally as high given the size of the boat, but the class survives because of the owners. So I think we all have a massive responsibility to look after our owners and do a good job there and keep it in perspective. It is not the America’s Cup, but it a high level of racing and it is fun but we must keep it in perspective and that will keep the class strong.”

Saying this neither Doug de Vos nor the Howe have been on board their boat in the MedCup this year. But Hutchinson says this was part of the plan. “They wanted it to be a full Quantum Racing program. The cool thing to me about what Quantum have done, is that as in Formula 1, or Grand Prix motor racing, you see manufacturers sponsoring teams - Ferrari, McLaren, BMW, so for Quantum to have the foresight to take it on and sponsor a team and use it as a promotional tool, shows a lot of vision on their part. There are certainly other companies in the marine industry that could afford it, but they don’t need to because their market share is a lot bigger. But how cool would it be to have a professional North Sails team, a professional Quantum team, a professional Cookson Boat team, etc.”

At present plans are afoot to turbo the TP52 or change to a new boat entirely in the future. One option mooted has been to remove the spinnaker pole and add a bowsprit. This would certainly reduce cost and enable a couple of the crew to be removed and would make the boats more competitive outside of the MedCup when racing under IRC. However Hutchinson points out that there is a cost implication to making the modifications and takes the view – ‘why fix it, when it ain’t broke?’

We look forward to seeing if Hutchinson returns to defend his title on the Audi MedCup circuit in 2009. Given Quantum’s long term association with the TP52 class, dating back to the first season when they backed the Russell Coutts-driven Lexus, we suspect they might.

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