No stone unturned — Part 1

As part of Fred Eaton’s successful Little America’s Cup campaign he also commissioned a second new design from Steve Killing... for a fully foiling C-Class

The logic

One of the more interesting experiments of our recent C-Class campaign was the ­creation of the hydrofoil-borne C-Class cat, Off Yer Rocker (an appropriate name on at least two levels), referred to in practice as Rocker. As newcomers to the class we were surprised to learn that the top speed of C-Class cats has been limited to around 22kt. Our helmsman and project leader Fred Eaton had previously focused on skiff racing, most of it in International 14s, with a couple of seasons racing 18-footers which frequently exceed the C-Class maximum speeds. It seemed odd to him that boats as fast around the course as C-Class cats had such a ‘low’ top speed, and with naive enthusiasm he thought it was an area for improvement. From the first days of the campaign Eaton was determined to try to achieve that.

Members of Steve Clark’s Team Cogito had emphasised to us that a C-Class race was really a downwind contest. With the limited sail area allowed by class rules, downwind was proving to be the hardest leg to achieve high VMG speeds.

Rocker was inspired by the dramatic advances being achieved in the Moth class, led by Brett Burvill, John Illett, Andrew McDougall and Rohan Veal. It seemed obvious that if we could just get our boat to fly, the reduced wetted area would produce a big jump in top speed. We also reread James Grogono’s book Icarus, the Boat that Flies to benefit from their experience. It interested us to discover that in an appendix to Icarus Grogono urged construction of a hydrofoil-borne C-Cat, with a plan for how it might be designed. This only encouraged us further...

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Below: A last render of Steve Killing’s design for the C-Class foiler cat Off Yer Rocker before starting construction. The coloured bands on the foils are put there to help with off-the-boat observation of ride height