Yacht racing has become big business since the Australians won the America’s Cup back in 1983, the first victory against the US in 135 years. The Australian team, headed by Alan Bond, used advanced technology to design and build its revolutionary winged keel yacht, and brought worldwide media attention to the event. Today, competitive teams need to embark on a similar technological effort in order to have any chance of success. The UK’s Blue Arrow Challenge team, a UKP10m syndicate formed by Peter de Savary and employment agency Blue Arrow Plc, is now ready with its own radical yacht design, described as a mono-hulled yacht with sliding centre board or keel, due to be launched at Falmouth, Cornwall at the end of next month. The yacht is one of three designs worked on at the Blue Arrow design centre in Southampton with the aid of around UKP250,000 worth of CAD/CAM equipment contributed by Intergraph (UK) Ltd. Intergraph’s Clipper-based Interpro workstation runs the company’s engineering modelling system software at Southampton, and is connected up to similar systems at the two other Blue Arrow design offices. The Interpro system allows designers to define hull and keel forms, and automatically produces mass properties, surface areas and wetted surface areas of the forms in various positions of keel and pitch. The data can then be used for hydro-dynamics simulation and finite element analysis for structural integrity Blue Arrow is currently considering a link-up with the Cray machine at Harwell – which reduces the need for testing scale models in water tubs. The intention for future designs is to use design data for driving numerically-controlled machine tools for producing the keel. Peter de Savary said that the teams were now further advanced after one year than they were three years into the Victory design in 1980. However, the US Supreme Court is currently deciding which yacht types are eligible for the race, currently scheduled for September 19, and this could well disqualify the radical Blue Arrow design this time around. If it does, the team says cheerfully that it will be in a good position for the 1991 event, with various conventional 12 metre designs and a 90 foot yacht well advanced in their design stages.
