Sailing News

Hull
Boat Type: Trimaran of carbon composite construction
Where Built: Core Builders, Anacortes, WA, USA
Hours to build: over 130,000 hours to date
Overall Length: 100-feet/30 meters
Waterline Length: 90-feet/27 meters
Beam: 90-feet/27 meters

Mast
Height: Up to 185-feet/55 meters
Where Built: Hall Spars, Bristol, RI, USA; Core Builders, Anacortes, WA, USA

Wing
Height: 187 ft / 57 m (compared to 102 ft / 31 m length of a Boeing 747 wing and 143 ft / 43.5 m length of an Airbus 380 wing)
Chord: 8 to 30 ft / 2.5 to 9 m
Width: 2 to 6 ft / 0.5 to 2.0 m
Surface area: 6725 sq. ft / 625 sq. m
Weight: 7,700 lbs / 3 500 kg (approx)

Design and R&D
BMW ORACLE Racing Design Team
Mike Drummond, Director; 30 designers and scientists
Principal Naval Architects: VPLP (Van Peteghem and Lauriot Prévost)

Sails
Mainsail: 6800 square feet; (630m2)
Genoa: 6700 square feet; (620m2)
Gennaker: 8400 square feet; (780m2)

Equivalent Size
• The infield of a professional baseball diamond
• Two basketball courts

Sailing Team
BMW ORACLE Racing Sailing Team (20 sailors on BOR 90 testing team)
• Skipper Russell Coutts (NZL)
• Helmsman James Spithill (AUS)

• Tactician John Kostecki (USA)

Notes on the wing
The wing sail consists of two main components: the main element and the flap element. The main element is one single piece that rotates around the mast step. Eight individual flaps rotate around the trailing edge of the main element. Both elements are separated by a small gap and linked together by nine main hinges.

The wing is primarily constructed from carbon fibre and kevlar with a light, shrinkable aeronautical film material used as an overall skin over the frame. Nearly 40,000 man-hours of construction went into building it.

According to Joseph Ozanne, an aeronautical specialist with the BMW ORACLE Racing design team, the ability to trim the wing easily is one of its big advantages over a soft sail.

With a soft sail, it’s so big, it’s difficult to shape as you only have control over three points (head, tack, clew). You need massive tension to trim the soft sail,” he says. “With a wing sail, you can get the shape you want much more easily.”

The main trim parameters are: master wing rotation (similar to mast rotation on a conventional rig); master camber control (general rotation of the flap element); flap twist control (each flap can have a specific angle of rotation).

“On paper, it’s a clear advantage over the soft sail,” Ozanne says. “It’s on such a different scale to what has been done before, it’s hard not to have some uncertainty. But we are more and more confident… I think it’s going to be a strong addition for us.”