Newest and fastest

We look at Alex Jackson's new Juan K designed 100 footer Superboat

And so it is that over the last decade, starting with Mari Cha III, Mari Cha IV, ABN AMRO One and Two and then Pindar, we once again find ourselves again on one of the world’s fastest race boats with TeamOrigin boss Mike Sanderson. While he may now be running an America’s Cup campaign and comes with a thick background as an accomplished sailmaker and sailor, Sanderson is also gaining a reputation as a specialist in the creation of ultimate, large, high performance ocean racing monohulls. It is with the above genealogy in mind (as well of course as his time with Team New Zealand and winning the last Volvo Ocean Race) that Sanderson has steered owner Alex Jackson into the all-new Speedboat supermaxi campaign.

One of the few benefits of the America’s Cup being in hiatus, is that Speedboat over the last months has become very much a TeamOrigin affair, a situation that has benefitted the British team as well as Alex Jackson. Juan Kouyoumdjian and his co-workers in Valencia may have conceived and designed the all-new 100 footer prior to this, but with the Cup going to the dogs it has given TeamOrigin an opportunity to try their hand working together as team, both on the design and systems and sailing sides. Therefore come today’s start of the Newport-Bermuda Race, so among the roster of 28 crew on board, in addition to Sanderson, will be TeamOrigin’s Stan Honey (navigator), Robbie Naismith (jib trimmer), Neal MacDonald (mainsheet trimmer), Julian Cressant (mast), Robert Greenhalgh (traveller), Mike Mottl (trim assistance), Chris Brittle (pit assistance), Justin Slattery (bowman), Nick Bice (pit) and Pawel Bielecki (mid-bow).


Alex Jackson (on wheel) with Mike Sanderson

While Speedboat was created by TeamOrigin’s designer, the British Cup team’s structural engineer Andrea Ivaldi and his team as well as sail designers Mickey Ikert and Gautier Sargent have also worked their magic on the Speedboat.

In addition, Bill Erkelens has managed the program, as he did for Larry Ellison’s Sayonara maxi campaign and then for BMW Oracle Racing, while Tom Faire project managed the build down at Cookson.

As to owner Alex Jackson himself - he is keen to maintain a low profile but unlike many owners of boats like this, he is just 42 years old and is very much more a contemporary of the crew, although being one of the co-founders of Polygon Investment Partners, a hedge fund with around $6 billion in assets (according to Bloomberg), he comes with a slightly better credit reference. Having stepped away from day to day involvement with his professional life, Jackson intends to embark on an intensive program of racing and record breaking in his new vessel. He has sailed extensively: his previous boat, Amelia, is a Swan 42, in which he won the fledging class’ US Nationals last year. But he is under no illusion: Speedboat is in a different league altogether, a giant one-off state of the art race boat with a large almost entirely pro crew.

Prior to commissioning Speedboat, Jackson had sailed on board both ABN AMRO One and Mari Cha IV. Juan K outlines the 100 footer he was asked to come up with: “The owner was very clear that he wanted a boat in this kind of length which was a racing, fun, fast boat - a boat that we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel again. He said grab everything that you know and that we have learned from other projects and just make sure we put it into a 100 footer. It is just a bigger version of what we know, mostly like a big Volvo boat.”

While Mari Cha IV, at 140ft, is obviously bigger and a schooner, the most significant difference between her and Speedboat is that Jackson’s new weapon has followed the trend of the other 100ft supermaxis such as ICAP Leopard, Alfa Romeo and Wild Oats, in having powered winches. This type of boat, designed for ultimate speed rather than a handy rating under IRC, is now consolidating internationally as a class, able to race for line honours in most of the classic 500 milers such as the Rolex Fastnet Race, Sydney-Hobart, Middle Sea and of course today’s Newport-Bermuda.

Juan K (left) believes that in fact 100ft is about at the limit of technology at present. “After doing this boat, I cannot see anything bigger than this being any faster unless you get into bigger draft and even then I’m not sure. If you go for a 120 footer you have to go for an 8 or 9m draft, which doesn’t make sense.”

However compared to the slender CBTF Reichel-Pugh penned Alfa Romeo and Wild Oats, Speedboat has been designed with more oceanic and record breaking capability. And so, like the previous Juan K-Sanderson creation, the IMOCA Open 60 Pindar, Speedboat, despite its tremendous size, has a deck-stepped mast that can be raked aft by five degrees, thanks to a substantial hydraulic ram on her forestay. This is not new technology - rakeable rigs have been used for almost a decade on the ORMA 60 tris and Sanderson points out that two thirds of the V5 Cup boats featured similar technology - but it is still new for offshore monohulls and to date its track record has not been good with the Pindar 60 having twice dismasted (her adjustable rake system has since been removed).

Sanderson is adamant that it was not the rake system responsible for Pindar’s dismasting. “If it had fallen down when we were moving the mast then you could have pinned it on it,” he says (and having been on board the first time it came down we can confirm this). “Still we have no idea why the Pindar rig fell down. It is either design or construction. We have got to believe that Southerns did a nice job designing it, so personally I believe there was some manufacturing error which was inherent.” Or as Southern Spars’ mast designer Steve Wilson told us when we put it to him if raking the mast created unusual loads: “it is just a different set of loads for each rake. It doesn’t do anything to the rig. It is basically like fitting it to two slightly different boats.”

So Speedboat’s mast is tall but essentially straightforward with five spreaders, deck-stepped, but sits on an aluminium shoe with a slight camber in it around which the mast foot moves. The spar is made from high modulus (385GPa) carbon fibre and held up by Element C6 carbon fibre rigging. “It goes backwards and forwards by easing the headstay and taking up on the runners,” Sanderson describes the rake mechanism. “There is no adjusting the caps, the shrouds and the mast base are in line, so it just pivots around an axis. It is very simple - ease a runner and push a button and push another button to let it back.. To start with we were a little bit timid about the concept, but the performance gains from doing it in the ocean were pretty big.”

The mast can move between 1 and 5 degrees of rake - upwind it is forward, downwind it is released aft. “It is also back when you have the masthead jib or code zero upwind,” continues Sanderson. “Anything to keep the bow up and keep the aero centre of effort in the same place when you go to masthead sails. It worked a treat from day dot. It is nice because some of the masthead sails, you can pull them up and put them on the lock and ease the forestay and now the new masthead sail is the dominant forestay. The problem on a fractional boat when you go to masthead sails is that you have all this pressure on the forestay and then you try and get the luff of the other sail tight, you end up with this huge compression on the rig.”

Sadly for the Speedboat crew this rake feature is not allowed under IRC and they will only be able to use it when they go hunting for records. This should not take long as immediately after the Newport-Bermuda they head for New York to make an attempt on ICAP Leopard’s record for the west to east transatlantic passage, hoping of course that at the same time they break Mari Cha IV’s outright record time (ie for boats without powered winches) in the process.

Obviously Sanderson has some objections to adjustable rake being prohibited under IRC. “There are a lot of boats around that can adjust their rake, or their headstay - just not as obviously as ours, but it doesn’t make it any more legal. So they will have to tighten up on that or let it in in some shape or form.”

As a result of this they will have to lock the mast off at 1deg rake and play around with their sail inventory. In fact Sanderson says only two sails come off when they are in IRC mode with the rig locked.

Good looker?

So how does Speedboat look compared to the other supermaxis? Given that the Reichel-Pugh boats are narrow CBTF affairs, with less displacement, the closest boat to her is ICAP Leopard, only Speedboat has no pretentions of being a charter boat and thus is very much lighter (while Leopard is more than 40 tonnes, Speedboat is just over 32 laden while the Reichel Pugh maxis are around 28).

Compared to Leopard her beam looks to be around the same or a little wider (around 7.5m we would guess ) but unlike Leopard, she is fitted with twin rudders. Significantly, compared to the Reichel-Pughs, Speedboat may be a little heavier but has almost twice the righting moment. While the R-Ps have a maximum of around 70 tonne metres, Speedboat has 100 with just the keel canted and over 130 with her eight tonnes of water ballast added too. “Obviously you pay a price for that,” says Sanderson. “There is a difference in weight because the boat is bigger but also we carry a weight penalty because we have to deal with the horsepower in rigging size, mast weight, etc. So nothing is for free. But we saw what a more powerful Volvo 70 did to a less powerful Volvo 70 once we had wind and there you are talking about tiny percentages, the difference between perhaps 43 tonne metres and 45 tonne metres or something.”

Moveable ballast

While both Leopard and Speedboat have a canting keel with twin rams (the Reichel Pughs only have a single ram), the newer weapon comes with three tanks per side able to draw up to 8 tonnes of water ballast up to the high side ( Leopard has water ballast for trim too, but considerably less). These tanks are all located at the aft extremity of the boat for fore and aft trim, but are still used upwind to add stability.

“It keeps the boat very light when you don’t need it,” explains Juan K. “Whenever you are sailing in the light we are not going to use the ballast and we skip that weight. If you said you don’t need the water ballast then you have to build the boat heavier to compensate for that and then you end up being too heavy in the light. And also it has a nice effect on the trim of the boat. These boats are so powerful - the same happens with the Open 60s - they have an extremely bow-down trim. So you are always fighting with bow down and having this water ballast aft not only gives you that much more stability but keeps the bow out of the water which is very important.”

To give some idea: while the static heel of Open 60s - usually considered to be the most extreme boats out there when it comes to movable ballast - is limited to 10 degrees, with her movable ballast fully deployed Speedboat heels by 21degrees. Obviously this is partly a function of having less form stability, but even so…

Compared to VO70s, Speedboat's keel cants to 45deg rather than 40, although Sanderson points out that more than this and the keel starts to break the surface.

The water ballast is also why the stern shape of Speedboat differs slightly from her otherwise very ABN AMROesque hull shape. It is worth pointing out that side on with her grey antifouling, gives the illusion that she has two sets of chines. In fact she has only one but this slopes down towards the stern. Juan K explains: “We developed the aft part of the hull around the water ballast, which is what we can’t do in the VO70s and the IMOCA 60s, because it is not allowed. So the back end of the boat is a bit shaped around the ballast, but it doesn’t change it that much.”



Boards

While Speedboat is fitted with twin rudder, like Leopard, she has twin assymetric daggerboards but doesn’t feature the supremely cool (but heavy) hydraulic push button lifting mechanism for them as found on Mike Slade’s boat. Compared to ABN AMRO her boards are further forward and more inboard and have a lower aspect ratio, with a cord of around 1.2m. Also for reasons of their sheer size, the top of each boards disappears down into its case rather than staying flush with the deck. Once down, a hinged covered folds down over the hole at the top of the case.

Aside from their position, another novel feature of Speedboat’s daggerboards is that they have an adjustable angle of attack that is driven hydraulically. “One of the big problems you have with boards, is that as soon as you start pulling them up they lose their aspect ratio - that is a constant battle with these boats,” says Sanderson. “That’s why the boards have got longer and a narrower cord length, because you can keep a reasonable aspect ratio for longer. The beauty of this is we can keep the full aspect ratio and play with the load.”

The boards can be rotated by 5 degrees. Upwind they are given maximum angle of attack, downwind the minimum.

Up at the pointy end, Speedboat, like Leopard has a giant bowsprit of considerable girth. While supermaxis are 30m long that is to the stem while the bowsprits extend considerably beyond this. On Leopard the bowsprit is 4.5m long and on Speedboat it is a little shorter at around 4.3m, partly because her sail plan is slightly smaller than that of Slade’s Farr-designed supermaxi. Given that bowsprit length appears to be unregulated (other than getting hit under IRC) presumably you could just go longer and longer? Sanderson warns this is not the case: “With these boats you have to be pretty careful with your balance. Fundamentally we are flying big jibs off the end of the bowsprit. So you need to be pretty careful and with the loads so high here, if you start going too far that way, the weight goes through the roof. So we’ve gone for quite a big section to try and keep the weight down.”




Sails

Sanderson says a VO70 wardrobe works well scaled up for a 100 footer, only that a boat as fast as Speedboat will spend very little time on flying sails. In addition to the main, there is a series of jibs: working back down the bowsprit and foredeck there is the masthead code zero (A0), attached to the end of the bowsprit and also used upwind as a jib, a J2, another masthead sail hanked on to the forestay, and a J4 that goes up to the fourth spreader. “That is very much what we took from the Open 60s into the 70s and now seems to be spreading further and wider,” says Sanderson of this last sail. Inside of this is the genoa staysail. In addition they have a jib top, a fractional sail tacked to the stem.

Downwind Sanderson says they use the A0 (Code Zero) a lot, and going down the size range they also have a VO70-style Cuben A3, their biggest triangular masthead sail. Their only flying sail is the A2, with an area of 980sqm - despite its size this is no gossamer affair and is also made of bulletproof Cuben fibre. Going smaller still there is an A7, a 75% mid-girth storm jib AP reacher and a fractional Code Zero, again as they had on ABN AMRO.

Of course scaling up the sails from a VO70 wardrobe, on Speedboat they are exponentially bigger. On ABN AMRO One for example the mainsail was 175sqm while on Speedboat it is a whopping 420sqm, that is over 100sqm more area than the mainsails on Mari Cha IV (bear in mind this was the largest area the MCIV design team felt could be handled manually, without powered winches). Obviously sails this big are extremely heavy which is why (as shown in our video) that they have to be hauled out of the giant foredeck hatch on a halyard and strop and have to be manhandled around the deck by a small army. There may be no grinding involved on board, but moving the stack around is going to require considerable horsepower.

To remove compression loads on the mast all the sails are on Southern Spars locks with the exception of the genoa staysail. On this Sanderson says they can use it as a halyard for the storm jib or no5 by reversing it and turning it into a 2:1. Luffs are therefore cranking down by hydraulic rams with for example the rams for the genoa staysail and J4 hidden in a trench running up the middle of the foredeck (as they were on ABN AMRO One).



The powered revolution

In terms of sail handling having powered winches is a godsend, even though Sanderson admits that this is his first ‘powered’ boat and it required a little bit of philosophical wrestling after the manually powered ABN AMRO and Mari Cha IV. “I have been for a sail on Leopard and it is incredibly impressive the boats you can come up with if you are happy to use hydraulic power - not only build and sail, but race.

“What it has done is that its opened doors for boats that are this cool. With the line speed - you can now gybe nicely and tack nicely. We raced Mari Cha around some short courses and it is an absolute handful, gybing a genniker was so painful. Even if you had eight or 10 guys spinning the handles, you could never get the line speed for a hoist or a drop. It is really hard to look like you know what you are doing because it takes so long to get sails up and down and to gybe, etc. What is impressive now with the line speed is that you can start racing the boat. So it makes it fun… and a little bit scary because of the loads.”

Sailing boats with powered winches one always imagines makes for slow manoeuvres compared to boats with grinders. However on Speedboat it is not the powered winches but having to furl the larger headsails and unfurl them on the new tack that takes time (as shown in our video), although it is a necessary evil and a technique Sanderson used on ABN AMRO One that won him the Volvo Ocean Race.

In fact the line speeds of the latest hydraulic winches is stunning. Speedboat is fitted with a Harken winch package but with hydraulic motors and an automatic gearbox with overdrive fitted by Central Coast Hydraulics, who’s Greg Waters says allow them to spin at 300rpm if required… “At the moment they are spinning at around 120m/min which is pretty fast. They only way you could go faster is to self-tail but that is quite dangerous, especially at those speeds,” says Waters. The primaries on board are fitted with self-tailers and even at less than half their maximum speed it is very impressive to see how much sheet they can spit out.

The problem of course is the load on everything. When we went sailing and were going upwind in just seven knots of breeze and flat water the giant Code Zero required eight turns on the winch and even then was making alarming noises… What happens if the hydraulics pack up or something significant breaks doesn’t bare thinking about.

Cockpit

In the cockpit the only unusual feature is the lack of pedestals but this has freed up an area for guests by the companionway. “One of the requirements the owner wanted was a space up forward that was a relatively low danger zone. To be honest now that you haven’t got pedestals there you have got room for Africa. It was not that big a compromise,” says Sanderson.

Aft of the twin wheels is the mainsheet track running the full width of the cockpit along the sole. This is a Harken PCRX which articulates around carbon fibre loops in the cockpit sole to save weight. When we sailed on board, the crew were generally feeling a bit nervy due to Speedboat’s impressively loud grunts and groans but as we spent the afternoon tip-toeing around the boat, the only part which broke was a pin in the traveller car – still an almighty bang, but a breakage that was quickly fixed by the crew.



Below deck

Down below Speedboat is much more of a rabbit warren than the other supermaxis, with two substantial fore and aft bulkheads and athwartships bulkheads dividing up the accommodation. According to Juan K it is this primarily (in addition to the added size of the sail plan) that accounts for the difference in displacement between Speedboat and the Reichel Pugh supermaxis.

Working forward from the back of the boat, you can climb down a small navigator’s hatch by the wheels to find the nav station in front of you. Stan Honey’s lair (below) is forward facing and fairly conventional with two Recaro seats, twin PCes and a wide plethora of electronics. In fact Honey says he prefers the athwartships arrangement on ABN AMRO where the instruments rotated and he could sit up to weather looking down to leeward.



Immediately forward of the chart table is a fully fledged engine compartment complete with full fire retardant soundproof lining (it should be remembered that on powered winch boats the engine has to be kept running all the time to drive the hydraulics). Speedboat only has a main engine and this is used to drive her extensive hydraulic set-up (as is the case on the other maxis - the majority of VO70s use their gensets, ABN AMRO being an exception) the heart of which is also based in this compartment. A narrow corridor runs up either side of the engine compartment where the pipe-cots are situated. Forward of the engine compartment and up a half level is the saloon area, featuring the galley and a seating area around the main companionway. With its sides enclosed by the fore and aft bulkheads, this area is substantially smaller than it is on Leopard - in fact the largest open area down below is the sail locker forward.

The big canter

Ahead of the saloon are the two full bulkheads enclosing the box for the canting keel and the giant athwartships-mounted rams that crank it up to weather. The keel operation is another masterpiece from Greg Waters and the same team, including Olectric Systems and crewmen Jon Hildebrand and Andrew Henderson’s company, Dark Horse Yachting, who have fitted the hydraulic and control set-ups on all the supermaxis and many of the VO70s and Open 60s (Central Coast hydraulic set-ups are to be found on half of the new generation VO70s, including Telefonica, Green Team and Team Russia and also on the Paprec Virbac 2, Gitana 80 and BT 60s).

The twin rams on Speedboat have a 150m bore and 900mm travel and are each capable of pushing 90 tonnes with a maximum working load of 150. “You can sail on one ram if you had to – you wouldn’t achieve max cant on one ram,” says Greg Waters. In terms of the time it takes to cant the keel from side to side - Waters says it is around 12 seconds, the same as on the VO70s.

Compared to the stunningly complex hydraulic system on Leopard, the Speedboat arrangement is very much more pared down, Sanderson having attempted to make it simpler and lighter. “When it is blowing 25 knots in the middle of the night and you are about to do a gybe, there are two things - I like to be able to do it myself and I like there to just be three buttons!” says Sanderson, although some of the more complex functions (virtually anything is possible with Central Coast’s hydraulic package and its ‘PLC’, the brain that operates it) can still be operated from another panel inside the navigator’s hatch.

In practice Speedboat will have her keel fully canted in around 6 knots of breeze and upwind will be fully water ballasted too in around 10 knots. Given these numbers it is clear she will spend most of her time at sea fully powered up.

Forward of this is the massive open area for the sails and daggerboard cases. Given the rabbit warren interior only possibly the furler sails will be stacked aft below, the majority kept on deck. “The harangue factor of having to deal with the few sails versus the structural gain, it just made no sense,” says Sanderson over why they went the rabbit warren route rather than more open plan.

Performance

So the burning question is how fast will Speedboat go? “600 miles - she should be able to easily do that,” says Sanderson and Juan K agrees. “The problem is that when you are into that it is very hard to get the runway. That is why the 70s will keep pushing the boundaries. If Leopard goes around the world, that will be interesting because she could seriously get some runway down south.”

Fresh out of the box the numbers they are seeing are around 16.5 in 10 knots of breeze or 28 knots in 20, and it is this medium range where she will excel, but as Sanderson puts it: “I think the reality is that your Volvo 70s down south are going to see more 40s than these 100s will see. But these will see a LOT more 30s.”

Despite record breaking being a significant part of her program and looking like a reaching machine Speedboat has an all-round performance. As Sanderson describes it: “Everyone said before the start [of the Volvo Ocean Race] that ABN AMRO had gone for a reaching machine than an upwind-downwind machine. But then we were fastest boat upwind because we had more horsepower and the most grip.” However Sanderson acknowledges that below 7-9 knots the Reichel Pughs are likely to be faster whereas in bigger conditions, particularly downwind it will be a case of he who has the most stability (ie Speedboat).

After the Bermuda race, Speedboat goes on stand by awaiting a suitable weather window to set out on the transatlantic record attempt. The deadline is that she must have enough time to make it to the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup. From there she will compete in the Middle Sea Race. After this her program is up in the air. Going down to Australia to do the Sydney Hobart is a major operation but Sanderson thinks it will be more likely if some of the other 100 footers might head for the US West Coast next year to compete in the Transpac (we think this unlikely…) Otherwise she may head for the Caribbean.

Alex Jackson sounds like he might be up for an attempt on the still to be set non-stop round the world record for fully-crewed monohulls, however sadly with her powered winches Sanderson thinks Speedboat is not the vehicle for the job. “ Mari Cha IV is the boat someone should have done it in and probably still should. She is the 140ft schooner and she is manually powered. The rest of us would need a lot of diesel to get around the world.”

While she may be a step above her competitors on paper, the team have been keen to otherwise keep her in a similar box to the other supermaxis. Thus she is 100ft and has a 5.7m draft like Leopard. As Sanderson puts it: “It would be easy to go to 6.5m draft, but we were pretty keen to have a 30m boat with a 5.7m draft. There is no 30m rule but to be honest we thought it would be nice to have some of the same parameters. Our rig is about the same size as Leopard’s, the bowsprits are all about the same length, so the boats are going to have some cool racing.”

We look forward to seeing how she gets on, however it should be remembered that Speedboat is a massive piece of kit, and when we sailed her a week ago it was only the fourth time she’d left the dock. She may be big and fast, but she is also still very much at the teething stage.

See also - our similar report on Leopard and the video
And Mari Cha IV
Mark Christensen's video guided tour to ABN AMRO One - part one and two
And a video guided tour of Wild Oats

More photos on the following pages...