Winged Victory - the untold story of Australia II's keel design

by www.proboat.com on 30 Sep 2009 In the summer of 1983, in the months leading up to the 25th America’s Cup competition in Newport, Rhode Island, a storm of controversy gathered over the challenging Australian and defending New York Yacht Club syndicates.

At that time, the rules governing the Cup required that each yacht be designed by citizens of the country it represented. The principal designer of Australia II, the eventual winner, was indeed a 'national'—Ben Lexcen. Much of the development work on that boat, however, was performed at the Netherlands Ship Model Basin (now known by the acronym MARIN), in Wageningen, by Peter van Oossanen. On seeing Australia II perform in the challenge trials in Rhode Island Sound, the New York Yacht Club sought to disqualify her on the basis of the rule cited above.

But to do so, the NYYC had to establish that Van Oossanen, not Lexcen, had designed the boat, or had made a significant contribution. Though he didn’t know how to run a computer, Lexcen maintained an office at MARIN; all insisted he was the team leader. In the end, the issue was dropped. Australia II competed, and won in a stirring seventh and final race.

Prior to my visit with Van Oossanen in Wageningen, I’d been warned that he was tired of talking about the famous wing keel, and that his more recent work was overlooked. When we sat down to an interview in his conference room, it turned out that Van Oossanen very much wanted to set the record straight. Despite his long-standing affection for Australia, where he grew up, he wished to clarify the roles he and Lexcen played; in short, to give credit where credit is due.

Though many of the details of the 1983 parrying were reported in the book Upset, by Michael Levitt and Barbara Lloyd, and in a paper written by Van Oossanen published by the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (Jersey City, New Jersey) in 1985, Van Oossanen’s present take on those events is quite interesting.

After Alan Bond failed to win the 1977 Cup with Australia (Bond had also funded the 1974 challenge), Van Oossanen wrote a letter to Bond, enclosing an early copy of the paper he would later present to the Chesapeake Sailing Yacht Symposium, in Annapolis, Maryland. Here, we’ll let Van Oossanen pick up the story: 'Lo and behold, I got a letter back from Alan Bond quite quickly, asking whether I could come over and meet with him and Ben Lexcen. I happened to know Ben, a little, because when I lived in Sydney I was sailing Moths at the Balmoral Sailing Club. Ben was also a member of that club.

'I went to Perth and met up with Alan. He was particularly interested in organization and cost: what it would cost to enlist the services of the Netherlands Ship Model Basin. He asked me to work out of Sydney and meet up with Ben, which I did. We spent the whole weekend together. Ben came over to The Netherlands and two months later it was all canceled. Alan was in some financial difficulty. I kept on working at what was now called MARIN for the next two years. Did some studies and model testing. And then out of the blue, Ben visited me early in 1981. Ben said, ‘We’re on.’

'We spent the day together in Wageningen. Then I got a telex from Warren Jones [Bond’s project manager] asking me to meet him in Perth, Australia, which I did in March or April ’81. Contracts were signed and details discussed, such as confidentiality. We started work in April–May.

For the rest of this story http://www.proboat.com/winged-victory.html!click_here