Spithill explains BMW Oracle Racing's winning America's Cup moves

by Richard Gladwell. Sail-World.com on 12 Mar 2010
On Thursday, the opening day of the Auckland International Boat Show, Sail-World's America's Cup Editor, Richard Gladwell spoke with James Spithill on the Sail-World stand close to the Halsey Street entrance. In this second part of a two part interview, we cover the management of BMW Oracle Racing, Larry Ellison's leadership style, the gains from the technology used and more...

Sail-World: Who managed all the technology process? It seemed to me that, particularly after the session with technology team, that BMW Oracle was all about managed risk taking the whole. And maybe the reason BMW Oracle won was because you managed risk better, and were prepared to take more risk than Alinghi?

Spithill: I think the boat that Alinghi came up with was an awesome boat, and I reckon that was a really impressive boat. And they were obviously moded to the light air. I think what we did a good job of was seeing their boat. We had a boat that was really an all round boat, and probably more suited to the stronger breezes than we initially thought. But once we saw their boat I thought we did a fantastic job – the design team and that – of figuring out how to try and bridge that gap a bit. One was mast height, obviously the wing sail, but also some other changes in our appendages and really made a concerted effort to take a lot of weight off the boat. Originally it had a lot of netting for safety and we took all that stuff off, so it was a good exercise for the team, and I thought between the designers and the builders did a fantastic job to get ourselves down to a more light air performance.

Sail-World: How did you handle that process of development? Ernesto Bertarelli made the comment that you had four major boat changes and he thought he was up against a single yacht. Those who followed the campaign for the 31 months would realse that the yacht you raced was quite different from the one that was initially launched.

Spithill: I think that’s the beauty of the America’s Cup – is that it’s usually the team that can develop and get the most boat speed out of their boat usually wins. It’s not always when you first launch a boat, that isn’t usually the fastest boat at that point; it’s who can get the most out of it from then on, whether it be with sail changes, playing around with some modifications.

Alinghi did a lot of work on their foils and appendages like we did, and I reckon that’s the coolest thing about the Cup is that you get to really try so many different things and that’s the game. You look at guys like Russell, and those guys have been successful at it, is because they’ve been very good at knowing the technical side and can really work through with the design guys what you can get done.

Because the other thing with a boat of this size is it takes quite a long time to build anything. So when you make the decision, you’ve got to be sure you’re going down the right path because the production side is quite a lot of labour to produce components for these boats.

Sail-World: How did the technology evolve? Was it always there with the wireless boat, the displays on the sunglasses and the like, or did the technology like that really only kick in over the last six months?

Spithill: The technology thing was the coolest part about this last Cup. You look at what was out there – those two boats, us with the wing, and that was really cool. We certainly approached it, and we were pretty fortunate to have Larry who’s been a leader in technology with Oracle, his software company.

And, BMW's input – both those companies are no stranger to technology and being a leader in their field, so we were pretty fortunate in that regard and that sort of flowed through to the rest of the team. I sort of challenged myself to try the heads up display system that I use, and at the start I hated it, I thought there’s no way, but stuck with it and by the third day it was no problem.

It was that sort of approach throughout the team, to really try and push that little bit more I think was what made the end result.

Sail-World: How much was Larry pushing the technology side? Was he listening to your geeks come up with ideas and critiquing those, or was he pushing them hard pushing them the other way?

Spithill: I’ve got to know Larry over this campaign both with racing him and then sailing with him. The thing is that the guy is a real competitor, and he’s very switched on. He’s no stranger to technology. Russell really kept Larry up to speed of what was going on; obviously Larry’s got a lot of commitments with running his companies but he’s stayed in touch. Russ was always keeping him up to speed with the decisions. It was Larry’s call whether he did the wing or not, and he spoke to a few of us about it; we all thought it was a good idea.

Mike Drummond was the guy that really pushed for it; he was the guy that ultimately made us all say 'look, I think this is a serious option'. Then Larry made the call. I guess a guy like that, he’s just making key decisions like that in a lot of other stuff he does – in all of his other companies and work . At the time I thought it was a really big call to pull the trigger on a wing like that, but as it showed it was a real weapon.

Sail-World: In terms of the other technology used, we saw the wrist PDA's (square small screens like an oversized watch) strapped to the crew's wrist, did everyone have those?

Spithill: There was I think about five of us on the boat that had them (wrist band PDA's). I just think it’s the future, because we rely so much on instruments when we’re racing these boats, and usually that’s just a display mounted somewhere with a lot of cabling, etc. But you’re always after a weight gain, and so I think the future will be more of these PDA systems, probably heads up displays like the pilots use – it’s just cool to see that stuff coming through the sport.

Sail-World: How much weight did the use of those systems save?

Spithill: Just the sunglasses saved 20 kilos just on my side. If you think of every other guy who had his own personal thing, as opposed to gluing and laminating running cables for their own display it all adds up.

Sail-World: How much did your boat weigh?

Spithill: I don’t know by the end. Obviously we had a lot more – we’re definitely heavier than Alinghi. I think they were significantly lighter, it would be interesting to actually know - you'd have to ask Mike Drummond (BMW Oracle) and Grant Simmer (Alinghi), who led the design teams - to know the final race weights. I think Alinghi were significantly lighter - probably a couple of tonne at least.

Sail-World: When we saw you fly a hull, it looked to be a very quick action to get airborne - was that how it felt? Were you doing something specifically to lift the hull that quickly?

Spithill: That was exactly how it felt. And the reason for that is that we’ve got a 70 metre mast on a tiny boat. You look at multihulls and for that size of platform they haven’t even been close to the mast type we’ve got to. That’s for a good reason, because most of the big multihulls are around the world ocean going boats.

Where we built a couple of round the bouy dragsters. It did make it a bit of a handful as you started to get overpowered in the upper end. But that’s what we learnt in multihulls really: just try and get upwind with as much sail as you can, somehow get round the top mark and then hold on for the ride downwind.

Sail-World: Was that really how it was - sounds almost skiff like, where you lump the sail area up wind and then downwind just try to keep the boat under the rig?

Spithill: The biggest thing with the multihulls, I think, is bearing away, and when you’re really overpowered and downwind not pitch-poling. The beauty of these boats is that you get use of the foils, which give that amount of lift under the boat, which is as if the boat was a lot longer than it really is. That’s really how you get away with such a huge mast on a boat that’s for its mast size, relatively not that long on the waterline.

Sail-World: You mentioned at one of the briefings we had at BMW Oracle, that you could put reverse camber into the wingsail at the mast head to induce righting moment. Did you actually do that, or was it a feature that was possible but not used in racing?

Spithill: We were certainly using that, and any of the CFD windage guys will tell you that wingsails are perfect for drag; to reduce drag the best thing is to invert the top. What happens in a soft sail typically enough the top of the sail will be flapping and you’ll lower your centre of effort and keep the drive down low. The best part of the wing is you can do that without it flapping, so you don’t have any drag penalty and you almost get a bit of a righting moment gain up the top. It was just so low drag in any of its settings.

Sail-World: What happened with the wingsail as you went up the wind range - do you just progressively flatten and stream it from the top down?

Spithill: It was a fairly simple wing. If we were doing it again we’d do it a lot differently, but at the time it was just a big call to build something like that. Mike and the design team, made a good call in 'let’s just keep it simple': then it’s quicker to build, and Mark Turner and Tim Smyth will be able to get it to us early enough. It’s easy in those sort of projects like that wing to get too complicated. That decision was a key one.

The other thing is downwind, if you look at the C-class catamarans, they use three element wings. The reason for that is so they can get a much higher lift coefficient and more power. For us, because we have the front sail – the Genniker or the Genoa – we don’t need to create that much lift. People say ‘why don’t you go to the three element wing?’ We had the benefit of using a downwind sail.

Sail-World: If you had the opportunity to build the wingsail again, what would you do differently?

Spithill: There’d be a lot of things, we’d do differently. I think the guys learnt a lot in the construction of it. Certainly the way the control systems – you’d want to change a few things there. Ultimately like any mast, or combination, you’d try and do it as light as you could. There probably are ways where you could lighten it up. The other thing is the practicality of managing the boat when it’s not sailing. Putting it up and down, was a risky operation. So you’d probably design something where you could put it up and down in a lot of wind, and still be relatively safe.

We were always really monitoring what the wind speed, was if we were putting it up or down; once we got to a certain limit, it was staying up regardless. Really the thing can see a lot of wind. It’s really low drag so it’s not really the wind speed that worries it when it’s on the mooring as if it’s really shifty and the wind – because of its mast height it hits at different angles, and then it starts creating some thrust. But logistically, the wingsail is a lot of work.

Sail-World: There's a saying in the America's Cup, that the technology spins down into the rest of the sport. What do think is going to spin down in to the rest of the sport from the 33rd America's Cup? Particularly with the Olympic classes for instance?

Spithill: It’s a shame there’s no multihull in the Olympics, but I think we’ll see a real resurgence in the multihull sailing. It's s the same old story – you shouldn’t have an opinion until you try something. I was the same; I didn’t give enough credit to the multihull sailing, and once I tried it I did a lot of the A-Class, the Formula 18 and ended up in the trimaran. It’s just an awesome discipline of the sport, and the performance side is just unreal.

I think the multihulls will benefit out of this, but the wing – it will be interesting to see where that goes now in the sport.

The appendages, the foils, the way that whole system works and even the construction. It was a pretty awesome engineer feat of both those boats; Alinghi's boat was really cool, on the engineering side. When you give the designers and engineers freedom like that to come up with something both those teams would have learnt a lot and we’re going to see that flow down to the rest of the sport.

Sail-World: Looks like our time is up - many thanks.