Australia II - Winged Keels revisited

by Blue Robinson - www.seahorsemagazine.com on 16 Oct 2009 Claims that Ben Lexcen did not design the 12 metre Australia II have been cropping up for 26 years. Peter van Oossanen in the Sydney Morning Herald and Times Online claims' Ben 'had a flair for shapes, but he wasn't a scientist and he wasn't able to understand the full physics of what was going on', and later adds ' Ben did things by feel and intuition, but in the America's Cup, that will get you nowhere. It is a very scientific thing.'

Blue Robinson says 'Well, you are wrong Peter, on both counts.'

Here is Robinson's 2007 article titled 'Timely'first published in Seahorse magazine www.seahorsemagazine.com

Ben Lexcen — née Bob Miller — was the genius behind the design of Australia II, the boat that took the America’s Cup off the New York Yacht Club for the first time in 132 years and in so doing opened up a new world of competition and spectacle for the modern event.

As Alinghi and Emirates Team New Zealand battle for the spoils in Valencia we felt it was a good time to reflect on one of the many brilliant characters who have found their calling in competing for sailing’s biggest prize.

Ben Lexcen arrived at the Mexico Olympics as a reserve in 1968 with his passport in one pocket and a toothbrush in the other. He borrowed clothes from friends, and during one dinner at the sailing teams hotel marched in with a 20-piece brass band he found on a street corner, who had 'about six teeth between them'. When they started playing Ben (who was Bob Miller then) walked around the room with a tuba, calling for money to be thrown in for the band. Ben Lexcen was not a conventional man.

He grew up without a Father, and being bundled from one relative to another by his Mother, finally fetching up in Newcastle, north of Sydney.

There, living with a Grandfather, he attended school until he was 14, left to work at a metal foundry, then apprentice fitter and turner for the railways. Weekends were spent at the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie dinghy clubs, where he sailed dinghies and sixteen foots skiffs.

Transferring from Newcastle to Sydney, he decided to become an apprentice sail maker, working for Peter Cole in Inner Sydney, where he 'adopted' the Ryves family in 1956. Sleeping on the couch, he washed his trousers by wearing them in the shower, then ran around in them until they dried.

His other passion was the harmonica - which he played in the shower whilst scrubbing his trousers. Carl Ryves was 14 when Bob arrived and they became lifelong friends, 'My parents nourished him both physically and mentally. Mum of course fed him, and Dad had a library of technical books by Uffa Fox on yacht design and construction and Manfred Curry's incredible book with chapters on aircraft wings and yacht sails, the resistance of air and water, and nature as a guide to the construction of a sail.

Just as important my parents had friends who were the directors of art galleries, senior genetics researchers, scientists, and people like Archie Middleton, the surgeon that separated Siamese twins.' Ben devoured the yachting books and was fascinated with the intellectual and range around the dinner table. One thing is for sure, throughout his whole life Ben looked at things, and wondered.

In 1958 he fell 40 feet from the top of a mast and broke his back. A friend and boat builder Norm Wright took in a small drawing board and a set of cedar curves to use while still in hospital. The results were the 18 footer's Taipan & Venom.

When the existing skiffs were heavy and carried five crew, Taipan had three, two on trapeze. Miller was working of the problems of tip vortex so he fitted small wings on Taipan's centerboard and rudder (also on his 5.5 metre, Catamaran and Moth). He removed them from the centerboard after problems launching the boat in the river mud and jellyfish getting snagged, but kept them on the rudder that could be cleaned whist sailing.

When Taipan begun beating opposition 18 footers by 12 minutes on an 11-mile course, it caused howls of protest, and claims the boat was not legal and it should be banned - phrases he was going to hear again in 1983.

Bob teamed up with Craig Whitworth to form the sail making and design company Miller and Whitworth, both being named Yachtsmen of the year in 1964 for winning the State, National and inter-Dominion titles in the Flying Dutchman.

Bob skippered a Soling in the 1972 Olympics, designed the Contender single-handed dinghy, Admirals cup yachts Apollo II, Ginkgo, and Mercedes III (best individual boat in the 1967 series), plus Ballyhoo which beat Kialoa in the California Cup and San Francisco perpetual trophy races. During the business split with Craig Whitworth in 1974 Ben chose a new name, so Bob Miller became Ben Lexcen

The America's cup yachts began with Alan Bond's Southern Cross in 1974, then co - designed Australia in 1977, which also raced (modified) in 1980, Challenge 12 and Australia II in 1983, and Australia III & IV in 1987. Southern Cross was a long boat with too little sail area, and Australia had a problem with her hull shape at around nine knots.

Lexcen altered the bustle, and the boat improved. Crewmember John 'Chink' Longley who first sailed with Lexcen in 1971 remembers, 'Benny was very intuitive. He knew there was a problem with the bustle, he knew the shape was wrong, and knew the shape it had to be, so he just fixed it. When we sold it to the British team, they later told me it was the best twelve they had!'

The big story for 1980 was the mast. The British boat Lionheart sailed with a bendy rig, allowing a larger mainsail.

Lexcen saw this, and armed with a few photos but no plans he and a small team cut their spare mast off at the hounds and scarfed a long fiberglass section on top. John Bertrand remembers, ' When we sailed with it the first day, we sheeted the mainsheet on and the mast bent, and bent and bent, and the sectional shapes in the sail were almost perfect - an extraordinary feat when the mast stiffness had to be calculated relative to balance out the leech tension.

That one hit - and that’s all we had time for, was an extraordinary design solution by Ben in collaboration with Tom Schnakenberg.' John Longley, ' We sprayed it silver and got it measured and signed off, then had four days to put it in and make it work which we did - but it was mayhem.

After a long day of fitting it we wound the backstay on hard to test it overnight, then floodlit this great 'hockey stick' of a mast to show the Americans. The next day the New York yacht Club was onto us like a flash, saying, 'We can't use it, it’s not measured!'

So we waved the certificate at them and said, 'Yes we can...' ' This was Ben at his best, hands on, quick accurate sketches, whilst on the job, and we trusted him. We knew it would work'.

The model testing for Challenge 12 and Australia II were done in the Netherlands ship basin in Holland - normally used for testing ship models. John Bertrand, 'Ben saw the carriage system that was presented to him didn't give the refinement that was required in lift and drag, so surrounded by dozens of PHD engineers who had worked there for years, he re-designed the towing tank facility for his testing program so the towing point was the centre of effort on the sail plan.

This was typical of Ben. He was a living, breathing developer of technology. For instance the mast on Australia II made Liberty's rig look like a farmers plough, Dennis Conner made that comment - he couldn't believe the refinement of the Australia II rig, so in every aspect of the boat, Ben's development was quite superb, in terms of the reduction of aerodynamic drag from the spreaders, the shroud attachment to the mast, the design of the head crane - not without their problems, we blew that up twice because Ben was interested in the power to weight ratio, the more weight carried the slower the boat, and total perfec