Fireside tales – Part 2

Peter Harken concludes his brief history of (Harken) time... with some shoes, ships and sealing wax

Titanium

Around 1985 we first started to experiment with titanium, purchasing machinery that was able to handle this exotic material, then mainly used by the military and uncommon in the yachting world.

We started building custom titanium products only for high-end racing due to its great strength-to-weight ratio. It was a really difficult material to machine, but we hammered away at it – sometimes literally – with new processes and now it’s a walk in the park for us. For the next 10 years we focused on developing titanium Big Boat blocks and travellers for offshore racing and America’s Cup boats.

At the 1987 Cup in Fremantle we introduced titanium runner blocks for the first time. They were soon aboard over a dozen 12 Metres, including Stars&Stripes, America II, French Kiss, Heart of America and Kookaburra. It was a start.

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