New IRC boats

New high-performance racers are being designed after a tough period for boatbuilders. By Roger McMillan.

High performance racing yachts are one of the first casualties of any recession. It is hard to justify spending several million dollars on a “luxury” amid headlines about business collapses, falling profits and rising unemployment.

Hopefully, a sudden upsurge in new designs of around the 40ft size and around $500,000 in cost signals an end to what has been a tough period for Australian boatbuilders and importers.

Interestingly when reading comments by the various designers, the common theme is that new computer software has allowed them to depart from the traditional thinking on boats in this size-range. The results, they say, are fast, fun, downwind fliers that will also go to windward and will rate well under all handicap formulae.

We hope to bring you detailed boat tests on some of the following new releases. In the meantime, if you are considering a new boat, here are a few around the popular 40ft size range that are worth a closer look.

Stallion RP 42

Stallion Marine in Queensland has recently launched a new Reichel Pugh-designed 42 footer which is already enjoying success under IRC.

The first build was for well-known Queensland owner, Peter Harburg. Peter’s boat, named Black Jack Too, finished a close second in the Queensland IRC Championship in April, only one week after being launched.

Black Jack Too’s skipper, Mark Bradford, commented: “The great thing about IRC at the moment is that fast down-wind boats don’t attract a huge rating penalty. The rule, coupled with Reichel-Pugh knowledge how to design a boat that is fast down-wind, makes the sailing fun.”

Bradford said that the decision to build locally was made because Peter Harburg wanted to support the local industry. “Also, this factory is run by young guys and we are always keen to give the younger guys a chance to gain experience.

“We are not into taking massive risks, though, and that is why we used Reichel-Pugh, Southern Spars and 3DL. It’s still early days for the boat but initial signs are that it has huge potential.”

Construction of the boats is full epoxy E glass composite with a foam core and additional carbon reinforcements in high-load areas. The deck and cockpit includes teak finish.

The Stallion 42 comes with a Southern Spars carbon fibre mast with VHF antennas affixed, an aluminium box boom and rod rigging.

The deck layout has been optimized for IRC racing with flush-mounted Lewmar deck hatches and all halyards running internally.
All deck hardware including blocks, clutches, cleats and other running gear is from Harken.

The rudder is made from pre-preg carbon and the plate steel fin keel is fabricated with composite shell. The cable steering system runs from twin carbon racing wheels.

Stallion offer a choice of pure IRC racer or cruiser/racer, with the cruiser/racer being set up for short-handed sailing, including self-tacking headsail tracks and self-furling gear running to electric winches on the cabin top.

Website is www.stallionmarine.com.au.

Sydney GTS37

The new owners of Sydney Yachts have announced a brand new design which they hope will be at least as good as the legendary Sydney 38s for which the company is famous.

New CEO, Darren Williams, commissioned Spanish-based British designer, Jason Ker, to design what he described as “a boat for those who wish to do a bit of cruising, yet sail fast and competitively”. Ker says the design fulfills that brief, but also works well for those that want to race the fastest 40ft cruiser-racers for line as well as handicap honours.

“There is an easy formula for designing a small IRC yacht, long practiced in the UK in particular, and it goes like this: Maximise displacement to increase stability, minimise wetted area, and put just enough upwind sail area to survive in the lighter winds against the main competition…. You can even take it a stage further and pile in some extra go-slow features to reduce the hull factor, dispose of the bulb and make the sail area even smaller,” says Ker sardonically.

“The reason this all works quite well with smaller boats is to do with a distinct “hull speed” that occurs when a boat makes waves at bow and stern and sinks into the trough between. Smaller boats typically have a relatively high length-to-displacement ratio and they therefore have relatively greater difficulty in exceeding “hull speed”, so the philosophy outlined above is to reduce the rating relative to the boat’s length and therefore not need to exceed the hull speed in order to sail to the boat’s rating,” Ker adds.

“Combining with this was a centreline measurement of the transom overhang which led to flat IACC-Style transom sections as designers pushed up the middle of the transom but left the corners where they were, to maintain heeled length. Such was the conventional wisdom regarding IRC and almost anyone could join in the game without too much difficulty.

“So, given the above, then why are we now choosing to design properly “fast” IRC yachts under 45ft? The secret lies in the increasingly fast and accurate design tools which have been developed and validated for AC projects but clearly work equally well for IRC or other types of design projects.

“They allow us to explore and create shapes which have relatively greater power compared to their drag, or lower drag relative to their power, and after considerable exploration we have found slightly to our surprise that we are able to create both fast and competitive smaller IRC yachts, and this applies to racer and cruiser-racer alike, with the caveat that both need to be well-engineered and built to allow sufficient ballast.”

Ker says that when commissioned to produce the new Sydney 37 he first explored the “low-road”, sticking close to the original Sydney 36, in weight, but putting on a fin without bulb in order to reduce the required sail area and keep the rating down.

“But aside from being competitive, we couldn’t really get excited about the concept and couldn’t see why the end customers would either. So, not satisfied, we threw away what we’d done and went back around the design loop, much lighter with the overall displacement, bulb keel, taller rig.”

The result, according to Ker, is a 37ft cruiser-racer which “is able to match the faster 40ft cruiser-racers around the track in all conditions, plane away from them as the wind increases and give a very good chance of winning on handicap”.

Ker adds: “An important side-benefit of this development is that whereas the narrow canoe hull forms of the contemporary IRC cruiser-racers are disliked by the ORCI rule, the more voluminous hull form type we have used in our Sydney 37 is well favoured, as well as providing more living space below.”

Jason Rowed of Sydney Yachts says that the company has several promising sales leads, but that at time of going to print no sales had been finalised.

Website is www.sydneyyachts.com

Dibley 42 IRC

The Dibley 42 began as a collaboration between New Zealand-based American, Kevin Dibley, and well-known Kiwi yachtsman, Ray Haslar. Ray was looking to replace his Davidson 38, Jive Talkin’, which he has campaigned successfully in New Zealand and Australia in recent years. Jive was designed primarily as an ORC racer and Ray was now pursuing a specialist IRC boat.

However, after the preliminary design was completed, Ray decided to explore a different design route. Kevin decided that what he had was too good to throw away, so he continued to develop the design.

Kevin explains his thinking: “As soon as you see the word IRC and connect it with anything between 38ft and 43ft, you will be excused or thinking ‘heavy production-type lead mines’. It is this type form that seems to do well under this rule and not until you get into the 48ft plus lengths that lighter displacement hull forms can start performing to the (IRC) rating.

“The cost comparison of a TP 52 and a 42-footer both in build and campaign costs is far more than triple so we have a group of yachties out there that want their yacht to light up and fly but are either forced to go heavy and slow to have any chance under IRC, or go to a different rule/handicap system all together.

“We needed to find out where to draw the line in the sand without having to go heavy displacement, but not so light that we ended up with a great design that could never race to her rating. It had to perform well on the wind, as well as light up on reaching conditions which most of our coastal races are in Australia and New Zealand.”

Kevin then looked at all the top designs in the size range, selected a sail plan that he thought was right for the type of racing the boat would do and began computer modelling.

“Using our Maxsurf modeling software, we tried out different scenarios on weight, volume distribution, prismatic’s, measurement trim, and even looked outside the square with soft-chines and other configurations. We ended up going through 16 different models,” said Kevin. “We then put the designs through our Wins-VPP software to work out where the strengths and weaknesses were in each. It is important at this stage to keep the same sail plan on each as we were only checking hull shapes at this stage.

“We are able to race all the models in a section of the software called ‘Regatta’ and from this we can see which yachts were coming out ahead of the others in various courses such as Windward/Leeward, Olympic, Offshore, and Circular Random. Four stood out and from those, we started looking at appendage and sail plan changes and how the VPP’s changed accordingly.”

Kevin then selected the top two designs and submitted them for IRC trial certificates to see how they rated against each other, and from there he could see how each design was able to deal with the IRC rating given.

He believes the result of this work is a hull design and sail plan that will provide a very competitive boat for both windward/leeward and offshore racing. Like Sydney Yachts, Kevin is pursuing several sales leads but does not yet have a boat in the water.

Website is www.dibleymarine.com.

Soto 40

We ran a full boat test on the Soto 40 in the April/May issue of the magazine and the complete article is available on-line at www.mysailing.admin.yaffa.com.au/news/fast-fun-one-design.

This is the boat that Volvo Ocean Race winner, Torben Grael, chose for himself after sailing as tactician on one in Brazil. This year 10 of the one-design class raced at Ilhabela Race Week (the South American equivalent of Hamilton Island Race Week) as part of a thriving circuit on the east coast, and five new boats will be delivered to Chile by the end of the year. The first North American S40 was recently launched in Chicago and it is being touted as the new one-design class for Canada.

In late July, meetings were held in Singapore and Hong Kong to introduce the yacht to Asia and to discuss setting up a circuit and Asian Championship.

Key features of the S40 are its huge, crew-friendly cockpit, flat and uncluttered foredeck and its extreme speed in both directions. Conceived as a one-design class and not an IRC racer, nevertheless its sheer speed will see it racing competitively in IRC under the right conditions.

The Australian agent is Tim Long of Longitude Yachts. There are no S40s racing in Australia yet, but Tim is confident of having fleets racing in Sydney and Melbourne by the end of next season. Website is www.longitudeyachts.com.

McConaghy 36

The McConaghy 36 is a light displacement, owner/driver one-design class that features a removable fin keel and bulb for ease of transport, making it possible for owners to compete internationally as well as in club racing.

The boat was designed by America’s Cup yacht designer, Harry Dunning, who has held senior design positions with Farr Yacht Design and Reichel Pugh. His most recent America’s Cup work has been with the Mascalzone Latino Team.

Like Kevin Dibley and Jason Ker, Harry Dunning bemoans the trend towards heavy and uninspiring boats in this size range, and comments that so many features of a cruiser/racer, such as “galley, head, bunks, holding tank, fresh water tank, etc” are simply never used.

He says the McConaghy 36 is based on the successful owner/driver concept. “It has been designed to be raced at the very top level of our sport. It has plenty of sail, which is offset by plenty of stiffness and power, and is designed to go upwind solidly like a much larger boat and yet perform downwind like a high performance dinghy.

“It is simple and straight-forward with nothing that is not needed, yet there is no expense spared on materials and quality of construction. It’s just a great, high performance boat,” Dunning says.

North Sails in Sydney has performed a detailed analysis of the rig and sail plan using their “Flow and Membrane” software, which they say has resulted in significant gains being made. The result is a “uniquely powerful and highly efficient” rig and sail plan. Reducing the original rig by approximately 400mm has made the McConaghy 36 “more affordable without any significant loss in performance”.

McConaghys say that the building techniques they will use to build the boats at their factory in China are comparable to America’s Cup standards. The outer hull skin features uni-direction carbon fibre, utilising elevated post-cure schedule procedures. They say the uni-directional laminate optimises fibre/resin ratios, which reduces laminate overlaps and provides the best performance possible in stiffness, strength and weight.

According to Rob Brown, who is handling the development, sales and marketing roles for the design, the McConaghy 36 is “a top end race boat that will be enhanced by professional class management, ensuring the longevity of the fleet (and) providing many years of enjoyable, competitive racing”.

While no boats are yet in the water, McConaghys say that Neville Crichton (a long-time client of McConaghys) has put his name down for one, which will be raced on Sydney Harbour.

Stallion RP42Sydney GTS37Dibley 42Soto 40McConaghy 36

Designer

Reichel Pugh Jason Ker Kevin Dibley Javier Soto Acebal Harry Dunning

Builder

Stallion Marine Sydney Yachts Hakes Marine NZM Boats Argentina McConaghy China

LOA 12.6m 11.4m 12.8m 12.3m 11.28m

Beam 3.95m 3.52m 3.89m 3.75m 3.65m

Draft 2.9m 2.45m 2.9m 2.6m 2.8m

Displacement 5400kg 4950kg 5875kg 4200kg 2713kg

Main 61m 245.1m 265.4m 261m 263m2

Jib 45m 235.54m 242.83m 241m 235m2

Spinnaker 185m 2150m 2173.6m 2176m 2167m2

Spars Southern Spars Keel-stepped alum CarbonNZ Rigging carbon Carbon

Price excl GST$599,000 $289,000 $800,000 $400,000 $400,000

Websites

www.stallionmarine.com.au

www.sydneyyachts.com

www.dibleymarine.com

www.longitudeyachts.com

www.mconaghy.com.au