Canting Ballast, Twin Foils …Winged keels

by The Sail-World Team on 5 Jan 2003 The revolutionary Reichel-Pugh designed 60 footer Wild Oats won the Big Boat series at Hamilton Islands Hahn Premium race week in August 2002 and now in its debut ocean race it’s pulverised a nineteen year old race record in the 2003 Strathfield Pittwater to Coffs race.

Sail-World interviewed an extremely happy owner Bob Oatley at Hamilton Island along with project manager Ian Smith and designer Jim Pugh from Reichel Pugh. Here the interviews again in case you missed them.

Bob Oatley ‘ People have likened this to the development of Ben Lexen's winged keel on Australia. We think that was for a purpose built boat, but this canting keel design is a much much bigger step.

Before I gave the go-ahead I went over to the states and sailed on a boat with similar attributes, 40 footers in California. We only went for a short sail but we were impressed.

We had our fingers crossed that it would really work, but its far exceeded our expectations.

It's an incredible breakthrough. When you trot on a horse for most people its pretty uncomfortable, but when you break into a canter its another world and that what this is like, you just lope along.

We've refined it..A great thing for sailing.'

Ian Smith Wild Oats project manager expanded 'Wild Oats started out a little bit of an unknown concept, but it's turned out to be a quantum leap for sailing, its really incredible.

The whole concept is about the canting ballast and the twin rudders. I call it 'The little big boat'.

The canting ballast produces a better riding moment, it allows the boat to sail very close to the wind and down wind the speed is superb.

The keel/ballast cants by the way of a hydraulic ram, powered by an electric motor and we can cant the keel in 14 seconds. That's really good on a short course. Many existing canting keels on Open 60's and the like take quite a while.

Round the racetrack, it's just an extra thing that happens during a sailing manoeuvre. One good thing, really nice boats in a seaway, you don't get the pendulum effect in a pounding sea.

And going to Hobart that is particularly important. Just lopes along… it, does not slam as much as a regular boat.

This is new direction and a change in sailing and we are proud to be a part of it.’

For all the stories on Wild Oats over the last six months, search on Sail-World.com news for Wild Oats and mark the search as Exact

Jim Pugh from Reichel-Pugh, the designers of Wild Oats and Shockwave, discusses the technology that puts Wild Oats ahead of the pack.

Click here for the complete interview

http://www.sail-world.com/multimedia/pugh.ram

Wild Oats features in the Sail-=World video of the 2002 Hahn Premium Hamilton Island Big Boats.

You can discover more about this video on the Sail-World home page (right hand side top)