Team Nokia Academy update

Knut Frostad updates us on his new trimaran and campaign for this year's Nokia Oops Cup

The season has started and we have already logged more than 4.000 nautical miles with our new racing trimaran, Nokia Academy (ex Biscuits la Trinitaine). After picking up the boat in Lorient in France, we made an unofficial speed record from Netherlands to Norway, averaging almost 20 knots. Our days have been filled from early morning to late nights with training, boat work as well as lots of activities with our partners. We have also been in Stockholm a couple of days, sailing with our main partners Nokia and Simrad Yachting. Lots of guests has experienced the speed and thrill of steering a formula 60 trimaran. Our 'Official Speed Record' with our partners is so far 33,5 knots!

There's an incredible amount of small technical details demanding constant attention on a racing trimaran. Such a racing machine is never really 100% ready and finished. The load on the gear is incredible, and we need to have a full on-going maintenance program. After each sailing session, small parts have to be replaced, serviced and optimised. Quite a few times we also have to make repairs as we push the boat to and beyond the limits. We start every day with a morning meeting involving everyone in the team, at 8am and after that sailing and working to at least 8pm. Time off is not something that happens. However, the summer is here now, and we can leave gloves and warm hats ashore. The wind conditions have been great this last week, and we have done 30+ knot boat speed several days.

The 2006 Nokia Oops Cup will start next week with it’s first event in Oslo. The format of the Cup is different this year. First of all the course races will be longer and they will be in open waters, providing better sailing conditions as well as being more optimised for TV coverage. In Oslo the course races will be at Lysakerfjorden from 11:00-16:00 hrs. The big event for the public will be the speed races. Instead of having one boat sailing the speed course at a time, two boats will race against each other starting in opposite direction and making at least three mark roundings in each heat. The winner is the boat crossing the finish line in the middle of the course first.



This year the speed races will also count in the overall score of a city race. The course races will count for 75% and the speed races for 25% of the overall score in one city race. I am sure the speed races will be a lot more exiting both for us and the public. Having two racing Formula 60 trimarans sailing towards each other in 30 knots can only be a thrill!

The Færder Race which is one of the world’s biggest offshore races, counting more than 1,100 participating boats, has always been a part of the Nokia Oops Cup. However, this year the trimarans will have a much longer course, starting outside Aker Brygge at 12:00 on Friday 9 June and the sailing straight to Skagen in Denmark, rounding a buoy outside Skagen and returning to Horten in Norway. This also opens up an opportunity to beat the official record between Norway and Denmark. We already own this record (3 hrs 32 min 20 sec), so if the conditions are good, we will work hard to keep this prestigious record in our pocket.

Nokia Oops Cup

When Nokia Oops Cup started, the idea was to establish a north European circuit for the Formula 1 within professional sailing. We have experienced an exceptional development in the Cup, and last year six professional teams where racing with new generation trimarans. The Cup has based it’s growth on chartering and buying second hand boats from the French ORMA circuit. A big challenge has been that the French have their shorthanded races in the winter time and often that means that several boats bas been damaged or even lost due to capsizes in the Atlantic. This year this has been painful experience for the whole Cup as several teams either lost the boats they had chartered for the Nokia Oops Cup, or it became impossible to find used boats in France, and we are therefore only three teams racing the Cup this season. However, it’s by far the three most competitive teams and it will not be easy to win the Nokia Oops Cup 2006.

Even last years winner, Stena Sovcomflot was lost this winter after it was capsized in the Transat Jacques Vabre. The fact that the Formula 60 trimarans can capsize is just the nature of the beast. We want to have extreme racing machines. We want to beat records and be faster than anyone on the planet. Off course we could have made them safer, but then again, who wants to watch Formula 1 racing which is slow? We have a serious goal this season to break the 40 knot boat speed barrier with Nokia Academy. It’s an amazing challenge, and of course it involves some risk.

The Nokia Oops Cup will this year be a championship between Sweden, Norway and Finland. It will also focus on the different course records in the offshore events we are participating. The future is bright for the Cup. Next year several boats will be available for new and existing teams, and we have started serious talks with the French circuit about a potential merger between the two series.
 
Even if there are less boats in the Cup this year, one should remember that the most prestigious race in sailing, the America’s Cup, is a race only between two boats. So when we know that the teams participating in this years event are the best, it has never been harder to win Nokia Oops Cup.

Our competition this year is the Swedish Team HiQ is now in it’s third year and has a great advantage knowing their boat well. On paper, this is the fastest boat in the fleet, at least if you look at the results the boat achieved in the French circuit when she as Groupama 1. In 2004 this boat won the French circuit overall. Team HiQ has optimised the boat further this year with new sails as well as saving even more weight in the hulls. They have also optimed their rudder systems. The Finish team, Team TietoEnator Audi has also new sails this year. On their crew list we also find the skipper who won the Cup last year, Steve Ravussin (Switzerland). With his experience on board, this boat will without doubt be sailed to it’s potential the whole season.

Nokia Oops Cup, Schedule 2006

9 June              Offshore Race, Færder Race
11 June Offshore Race, Horten-Gothenburg
14 June Gothenburg City Race
27-28 June        Stockholm City Race
2-3 July Offshore Race, Gotland Runt
5-6 Aug Helsinki City Race
6 Aug               Offshore Race, Helsinki-Copenhagen
13 Aug             Malmø City Race
15 Aug             Offshore Race, Malmø-Kiel
19-20 Aug Kiel City Race



Nokia Academy

We mounted new curved foils on the boat this winter. As these where bought from another team, they where not optimised for our boat. To increase the efficiency we have now added new wingtips to the foils. Our boatbuilders, Jo, Henrik and Per with assistance from Eker Design, managed to construct moulds and laminated the latest in foil technology last weekend. The purpose of these wing tips is to increase the lift generated by the foils even further as well as help the direction of the water flow on the outer part of the foil. It’s not clear how much the efficiency will be increased, but experts suggest a 30% lift increase if we manage to find the optimal shape on the wing tips. You will see such wing tips on airplane wings and they have exactly the same purpose. The only downside is a slight increase in drag in light wind, and we therefore try to make them as small as possible but still maximising the effect. Bård Eker at Eker Design helped us modelling the wing tips, so we could build plugs and laminate the new ones in carbon. Eker Design who now is a new supplier to Team Nokia Academy, is well known for his Spirit of Norway/Hydrolift racing team in the Offshore 1 powerboat circuit.  
 
We have a great team this year. Especially onshore, we are a lot stronger on the technical side. We took over a boat that was far from racing ready, and in many ways it has been like starting from zero. For example we realised that the daggerboard was 60 cm shore of maximum length as the previous team running the boat had grounded her several times. We had to reconstruct the board completely.

With the help of our partner Simrad Yachting and B&G we have also replaced all the electronics on the boat. On our old trimaran, Academy, we had three speed sensors, one in each hull, depending on which was in the water. This year we have mounted a B&G speed sensor in the bottom of the daggerboard. This is the optimal place for it, but you have to work carefully on the exact positioning as the water flow at the bottom of the daggerboard is complicated. As well the daggerboard is lifted up and down during racing and therefore the signal cables have to be adjusted during racing as well.

Best Regards
Knut and Team Nokia Academy’