Improving the breed

Large canting-keel designs have attracted a lot more attention in the past 18 months, much of it for the wrong reasons.

Brian Jones, head of engineering at High Modulus New Zealand, explains how his team went about trying to improve on the previous status quo when engineering Greg Elliott's elegant and fast 100ft canting keel maxi ICAP Maximus

Structural design philosophy
What are the basic design philosophies behind today's racing maxis, and are they different from those behind smaller race yachts? This question isn't as easy to answer as you first might think. In many areas of the boats the design approach is the same, but obviously we have to take into account the much higher loads in the maxis.

Performance features in the maxis such as canting keels and water ballast greatly increase the yacht's power and need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, but aspects such as calculating the applied heeling loads and righting moments, and determining the rigging loads, can be treated in exactly the same way as in smaller boats.

At High Modulus we have been carefully monitoring the performance of one of our latest boats, Maximus. Shortly before going to print, this sleek 100ft design by Greg Elliott won line honours in the Rolex Fastnet. Using Maximus as a case study, we can illustrate the structural design process of a current state-of-the-art racing yacht.

To read the remainder of this and many other topical technical articles, please purchase your copy of the October 2005 edition of Seahorse International Sailing, available at selected newsstands or by calling: + 44 (0) 1590 671899 or by email at: info@seahorse.co.uk

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