A fault confessed is half redressed…
By ten days we have missed to commemorate the 24th
anniversary of Stars & Stripes US-1 Catamaran!
By Jacques Taglang and François Chevalier
Dennis Conner's 1988 catamaran Stars & Stripes
US-1: Launched on May 24th 1988, christened on June 4th 1988 in San
Diego... 24 years ago !
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| ©François Chevalier |
1988 STARS & STRIPES US-1 CATAMARAN
“The boats to be very big, very radical, and very controversial. The
contest will not be a sailboat race. It will be a design lottery in which the
sailors will have little or nothing to do with the outcome. In one word, the
1988 America’s Cup challenge will be bizarre.”
That was the assessment of Dennis Conner as published in an interview
for the Australian review The Bulletin on December 15th, 1987. The facts
would prove Conner right and the unsurprising victory of his small 18.30-metre
LOA catamaran, Stars & Stripes,
against the huge 27.43-metre LOA monohull New Zealand would remain forever the most incongruous
America’s Cup.
The long silence of the San Diego Yacht Club following Dennis Conner's
victory with the 12-metre Stars
& Stripes on February 4th, 1987 in Fremantle is often cited as
the reason behind the 1988 America’s Cup. Taking literally the words of the
Deed of Gift, the New Zealand banker Michael Fay, impatient with American
foot-dragging, sent a challenge contrary to all expectations on July 15th,
1987.
His challenger would be a 90-foot monohull, pushing aside the 12-metre
class that had been used in each Cup since 1958. Taken aback, the Americans
rejected the challenge but Fay asked to the Supreme Court of the State of New
York County to intervene. On November 25th, Justice Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick
confirmed the validity of the challenge.
 ©-- |
With just 10 months to prepare, the Defender decided upon a radical option. John Marshall, the chief of the Sail America Foundation design team, announced on January 22nd, 1988 that the defender would be a catamaran. The Americans had only eight months left to conceive, build and test a defender capable of repelling the assault of Fay's ‘Big Boat’.
The American decision was simple on one level, yet at the same time was complex. It was obvious that the multihull choice was likely to be interpreted as a provocation and would generate a new legal conflict. But from a sailing point of view it was simple – the Americans didn’t have the time to catch up in conceiving and constructing a big monohull. Instead, it was easier to opt for a catamaran, which was sure to be faster, more elusive, and with a LOA limited to 60 feet (18.29 metres) it would be able to be built quickly.
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| ©Dan Nerney 1988 |
On April 15th, 1988 (the immense monohull New Zealand had been sailing
in the waters off Auckland since March 27th) John Marshall confirmed that two
catamarans were in the process of being built. The first one would be fitted
with a soft rig, the second with a hard rig. Conceived in record time, Stars and Stripes, the Defender
catamaran was a successful marriage merging cutting-edge naval architecture
with aeronautics. For this, Marshall co-ordinated a team comprising exceptional
people like Gino Morrelli, who since his youth was fascinated by multihulls. He
very quickly became one of the best American specialists and accepted without
hesitation the challenge of the America’s Cup. With Bruce Nelson, Britton
Chance and Bernard Nivelt, he drew up the catamaran.
As expected, two 60-foot boats were built, one of them soft-rigged, following Morrelli’s design. The other one was hard-rigged with a winged-mast, a specialty of Dave Hubbard and Duncan MacLane (who had previously worked out this mode of propulsion on 25 feet-catamarans - 7.72 metre) belonging to the C-Class, as the famous Patient Lady.
As expected, two 60-foot boats were built, one of them soft-rigged, following Morrelli’s design. The other one was hard-rigged with a winged-mast, a specialty of Dave Hubbard and Duncan MacLane (who had previously worked out this mode of propulsion on 25 feet-catamarans - 7.72 metre) belonging to the C-Class, as the famous Patient Lady.
To scale up the concept of a mast-wing with articulated flaps from a
25-foot catamaran to a 60-foot machine, Marshall appealed to Burt Rutan's
talents, the designer of Voyager,
an ultra-light airplane that would make a round the world flight without stopping
in 1988. In ten weeks, Rutan, Hubbard and MacLane, supported by a team of 40
people, succeeded in extrapolating the concept. It was an achievement “more
difficult than with the airplane wing” Rutan would say later, because of the
absolute constraint to save weight.
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| ©Marshall Harrington |
On May 24th, the first boat was launched and in June, Dennis Conner
sailed with the hard-rigged cat. The team discovered that in light wind, the
traditional soft rigging of the sister ship was more effective. But in more
steady, stronger winds, the hard-rigged cat was faster but the risk of material
failure was bigger. So Rutan and his team built up a new winged mast and
delivered it at the beginning of August. This second structure was 40% bigger
and far more solid than the first one. The mast measured 32.61 metres, 5.80
metres more than the first one, and thus the performance was there: the
catamaran fitted with the hard rig was preferred to the classic soft-rigged
boat.
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| ©Marshall Harrington |
Meanwhile, on May 5th, 1988, as expected, Michael Fay again asked for
justice. He argued that the San Diego YC should defend the America’s Cup in
September 1988 but with a 90-foot monohull. He noted the Deed of Gift required
a match between “like and similar boats.”
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| ©Daniel Forster/Duomo |
The "bizarre" 1988 Challenge eventually was sailed on
September 7th and 9th off San Diego. It would be useless to hold forth on the
‘mismatch’ on the water. The Stripes
& Stripes crew won easily. One matter was certain, this dramatic
turn of events put an end to the 12-metre era and opened the way for the
present International America’s Cup Class boats.
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| ©-- |
The fate of its sister ship with the conventional
soft rig, Stars and Stripes
(S1 version) was more spectacular than the 1988 Defender (H3 version). Steve
Fossett, the man with dozens of speed records, acquired it in the 1990s.
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| ©Sail America Foundation |
Fossett demonstrated that Stars and Stripes still remained
among the fastest multihulls of its generation. To this day, it holds, among
others, the record for the Mackinac race, sailed on Lake Michigan between
Chicago and Mackinac. On the occasion of the 100th Mackinac Race raced on July
18th and 19th, 1998, Stars and
Stripes sailed the distance in 18 hours, 50 minutes, and 32 seconds.
Since the year 2000, this Stars
& Stripes is owned by a yachtsman from Naples, Florida, Mark
Reece.
STARS & STRIPES US-1
Catamaran defender
1988
Sail number: US-1
Code number of the winged catamaran: H3
USA
Yacht club: San Diego Yacht Club, San Diego, California, USA
Successful defender of the 27th 1988 America’s Cup Challenge
Owner: Sail America Foundation, Inc. President and chief executive
officer: Malin Burnham. Stars & Stripes Team, management/administration:
Dennis W. Conner
60 foot wing-sail catamaran
Design team: John K. Marshall (coordinator), Bruce Nelson, Dave W.
Hubbard, Duncan T. MacLane, Gino J. Morelli, Britton Chance, Jr., Bernard
Nivelt.
Wing designers: John Roncz and David Lednicer
Builders
- Hulls: RD Boatworks, at Capistrano Beach, California
- Wings: Scaled Composites, Inc., at Mojave, California
Christened: 4 June 1988 at San Diego
Year of building: 1988
Launched: May 1988
Homeport: San Diego.
Skipper: Dennis Conner
Crew: Louis B. Banks, John Barnitt, Carl Buchan, John Grant, Peter
Isler, Cam Lewis, Duncan MacLane, Randy Smith, Bill Trenkle, John Wake, Thomas
Whidden.
Data:
Construction –
- Hulls: Carbon fiber-Nomex sandwich
- Masts: Carbon fiber-Nomex sandwich
- Wing sail: Carbon fiber, covered by Mylar and Dacron
Dimensions –
L.O.A.: 18.28 m
L.W.L.: 16.76 m
Beam: 9.14 m
WL beam: 8.90 m
Draft: 3.04 m (with dagger boards down)
Wing Area: 176.50 m2 (upwind)
Total sail and wing area downwind: 405 m2
Displacement: 2.950 tons
Main wing height (air draft): 32.61 m
Two wing-sails were built. The biggest one was fitted for racing the
Cup. The smallest one had one flap less (air draft: about 27 m).
Observations –
1988
Two catamarans were built. The first one with a soft sails
(conventional), code number S1, the second one with a winged rig. It was this
last one that race the 1988 America’s Cup.
The 1988 America’s Cup races: 7 to 9 September 1988 off San Diego,
California.
Best two out of three races.
Stars & Stripes raced against the huge 90 feet mono-hull challenger
New Zealand KZ-1
Races: two sailed.
Race Course:
Alternate courses
First race 40 nautical miles long, one windward leg (20 miles) and
return.
Second race 39 nautical miles, triangular course (13 miles by leg,
first windward, two and three reaching leg).
Results:
Stars & Stripes beat New Zealand KZ-1
by two wins to nil!
- 7 September 1988, 1st race. Wind speed: 7 to 9 knots. Stars
& Stripes beat New Zealand by 18 minutes and 15
sec.
- 9 September 1988, 2nd race. Wind speed: 6 to 15 knots. Stars
& Stripes beat New Zealand by 21 minutes and 10
sec.
As wrote Tom Coat, the 1988 America’s Cup was “a Cup of controversy”,
but it was also, in the spirit of the tradition of this event, a fantastic
technical challenge on both sides.
1989
Stars & Stripes was sold and moved to Mexico. Victor Tapia owned
it.
1992
Victor Tapia took Stars & Stripes to San Diego for
the 1992 America’s Cup Challenge, and used it as a charter boat. He also
raced the boat in California during that time.
2002
Stars & Stripes was an attraction for a deluxe
hotel in Mexico, the Menson del Viento. Its homeport is Valle de Bravo,
Mexico.
2005
Still in Mexico, Stars & Stripes appears to be for
sale…
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On August 2009, Stars & Stripes was still at anchor in Mexico…
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| ©François Chevalier 2012 |
