2013 Emirates Team New Zealand
The America’s Cup provides an outlet for innovative development in the world of sailing and is an opportunity to use some of the most sophisticated tools in the industry to advance the science. Steve was selected as a member of the 30-strong design team for New Zealand’s challenge for the 2013 America’s Cup. This particular event in 72 foot catamarans with wings has many parallels to the 25 foot C-Class catamarans that have been using wings for many years. Steve’s designs in this class have won the 2007 and 2010 International C-Class regattas and it was this expertise that he brought to the America’s Cup design team. His responsibilities at Emirates Team New Zealand included hull development and fairing, heat-shrink wing skin research, wing tab geometry and articulation, and aft crossbeam fairing.
Emirates Team New Zealand was the first team to launch an AC72 and the first to fly with both hulls clear of the water lifted by hydrofoils. Somewhat commonplace now, the fine tuning of the hydrofoil and rudder wing configurations was a key element in the development of the 72’s.
Team New Zealand won the Louis Vitton cup with relatively easy victories over Italy and Sweden. In a dramatic battle in San Francisco the American Oracle Team beat New Zealand 9 points to 8.
1996 IMD towing tank, Newfoundland
The Towing Tank at the National Research Council in St. John’s Newfoundland is one of the best in the world. They have tested boats for many countries challenging for the America’s Cup. In their continuing efforts to improve both the apparatus and software, they built a new dynamometer and Steve designed this IACC America’s Cup (the rule in force in 1996) hull, keel, rudder and sailplan to use as a ‘standard’ test and calibration model.
1988 and 1992 Team New Zealand
The 1988 Challenge by New Zealand was a ‘Deed of Gift’ challenge – a 90′ waterline boat representing New Zealand and a 60′ catamaran from the United States. In their detailed approach to the challenge, Team New Zealand hired Steve to model the design of the Stars and Stripes catamaran. Once modeled he did performance analysis on the US boat and went to the extent of tank testing the hull to prepare the New Zealand team for the race. Stars and Stripes was signficantly faster than the New Zealand boat, proven by Steve’s analysis and by their ultimate performance on the water.
For the 1992 Challenge in the new IACC class yachts, Steve was analyzing the hull shapes of the competitors’ yachts for New Zealand.
True North 1 & 2
Steve was the head desinger for the Canadian True North Syndicate challenging for the 1987 America’s Cup. It was decided that two boats would be designed – the first a conservative improvement on the then state-of-the-art winged keel Australia 2. The second boat, True North 2 was a bold move at the time – the largest 12M ever designed, to handle the rough seas and big winds off Fremantle, Australia. The two 64’ aluminum racing yachts were built in Nova Scotia, but before the launch of the second boat the synicate exhausted their finances. It turns out that True North 2may have indeed been on the right track as she is a very similar size to the eventual winner that year – Stars and Stripes ’87. True North 1 and 2 are now in St. Maarten where they sail daily for tourist adventure racing.
1983 Canada 1
Canadian America’s Cup yacht co-designed with Bruce Kirby.