10:18 AM Tue 30 Mar 2010 GMT
Sail-World's Richard Gladwell interviewed Noel (Nitro) Drennan, on the Sail-World stand at the Auckland International Boat Show.
For those who do not know Noel, he is a four time America's Cup campaigner (mostly with US based challengers) and is a Volvo Ocean race winner, as one of the crew aboard illbruck Challenge in the 2001/02 event.
A veteran of 25 Sydney Hobart races (the latest on Alfa Romeo), Drennan has just joined a very elite group who have won the Volvo Ocean Race and the America's Cup.
(He's called 'Nitro' after sailing on a Melbourne yacht, called Nitro, when he was young - and the name has stuck.)
We broke off the last interview before asking Nitro how many masts they had built in the program (three, plus a fourth which was under construction, plus the wingsail).
Sail-World: What was the process you went through with those first three masts - did you look at the power that was being generated and ask if more power was possible, or required? It was all original science, wasn't it?
Drennan: From Day 1 when the boat was first launched, we still at that stage we didn't know where the America's Cup was going to be and as it had a sure time of being a possibility of being at Rs al Khaimah and we had to optimise the boat for a much lighter condition. One of the reasons we went through so many masts was that we had to cover all conditions, and there was nothing really definite that the regatta's going to be on a certain place at a certain time. We had the boat well optimised for a variety of conditions and the boat went through many, many modifications in the period prior to the Cup. There were a lot of changes to optimise it for light air and then moderate as we saw in Valencia.
Sail-World:Did you have the design process split into two - being the platform and with the rig separate, or were the two always integrated?
Drennan: It was just all one package. There was no other way of doing it.
Sail-World:When the modifications were going on with the hull - what was happening with the rigs? Did you notice the difference between Mark 1 and Mark 4?
Drennan: Without doubt. We went through quite a step in rig heights from where we ended up at 68 metres we started a 50 metre rig height and all the other masts were in between. There werer massive changes with rig height alone and the float changes and the dagger foils were amazing changes - just as the angles of the foils. Therse were all new areas. You know your foils are important but until you see the boat lift on the curved foils and what a difference it makes to rotate them under the hull it is really quite staggering.
Sail-World: How did the 3DL sail design program cope with the big change in sheet tensions from the six tonnes on a 100ft supermaxi monohull the 26 tonnes on the soft sailed multihull?
Drennan: The sails were extremely heavy and there was an unbelievable amount of carbon in the sails. You could really see that once they reached a certain stage in their life that the load really shattered the sails. We only ever had one major structural break with a sail but it was amazing the loads that the sails had to cope with. I would have felt pretty confident with soft sail programs if we had to race in that configuration also. We'd developed the soft sails pretty far down the line before the wing.
Sail-World: When you knew you could replace the grinders with an engine - what difference did that make from a trimming perspective?
Drennan: All of a sudden it felt like the handcuffs are off and away because it used to take us between four and six minutes to hoist the mainsail. When you put the motor on, it was less than two minutes.
Sail-World: All of a sudden with the engine and all its hydraulic power you could sail a big boat like a small boat and you could trim the sails in and out and downwind it was a massive change being able to sheet the sail on and off quickly and keep the hull flying, and if you got a lull or gust or whatever. You felt like you were actually sailing the boat, instead of before where it was sailing you, and you were trying to keep up.
Sail-World: When you put the wingsail on USA, what happened with the jib - was it a new design process, or did you keep the old ones?
Drennan: It was a definite change; it wasn't just a conventional jib, because there was less overlap in what the previous sails were, and there was a minor change but a definite change.
Sail-World: What was the purpose of the jib?
Drennan: It's an easier way of getting more power to get the hull flying, which was a pretty big deal with the trimaran because we had much higher riding moments, so we needed everything we could to get the hull flying. In reality probably the fastest combination would be without the jib, or genoa, but you would have had to distort the wing too much to generate that power so it was a much easier, quicker solution with a genoa.
Sail-World: When we saw you pull alongside Alinghi 18 minutes into that first race, and you dropped the jib off, and then slid back on them - what was happening there?
Drennan: We had limited time testing with the wing, so once that wind speed came along, from the limited testing we had done we expected the wing alone to be faster, once we got above nine knots or whatever, but it was actually much higher as it turned out. If we'd had another second boat to test against or sail against we'd find that out pretty quickly. Consequently the next day we carried the genoa up much higher. Also Alinghi had made a change at the same given time, as when we changed genoa, so that amplified the change difference.
Sail-World:Then we noticed that you cranked the wing up and you were off again. Where does that information come from -off the computer or is there some intuition involved?
Drennan: Of course there's intuition and the helmsman has a good feel, but we had to put the bow down and go faster, so it's not going to happen with more sail area - so we had to have less to put the bow down and go faster forward which was going to be an important part of that race. And as it turned out that was going to be exactly right.
Sail-World:On the second race, we saw you and Alinghi go around the windward mark very close together, and then you just opened up - what happened there?
Drennan: We had the genoa up, but we had not done that much sailing at the 120 true (wind angle). We'd done a small amount with the wing, and I was expecting we would be relatively strong in that mode and I think it was simply the wing and we had a much higher righting moment. It was all put together and that was what the result was.
Sail-World: When you turned the corner at that mark and set off for the finish, what did you do on that final leg - you were still sailing at 22kts, in a fading breeze?
Drennan: At the mark we changed to our short footed genniker for the last run home, so we did have a bigger gennniker also, if needed, but it was in that wind range that the short foot genniker had proven itself better and that's what we used on that last leg into the finish. That had always been a good sail in our testing program, even in the limited time that we had, and that was the sail we used all the way down that last leg whereas Alinghi used a much larger overlap sail.
In testing the shorter foot sail was always better on our boat - it might have been something to do with the wing - I don't know, but we'd never know until we do more testing. We have to remember that we'd never sailed a boat against anything, before the Cup itself.
Sail-World: Did you try using a larger footed jib?
Drennan: We tried the larger sail- it's an overlap similar to Alinghi's that went all the way to the half beam. It was a huge sail but it never stood out as anything spectacular, and the shorter footed one on our particular boat was better. Obviously it was different for Alinghi.
Sail-World: What was governing what sail you hoisted in front of the wingsail - was it dictated by the amount of heeling moment that would be generated?
Drennan: In an ideal world you'd have a lot more sails than what we had on the boat, but the boat was very weight sensitive so you had the absolute bare minimum of sails on the boat - so we made a choice on that day of what the best all round genniker would be and it was our short footed genniker which only overlapped to the wing itself; it didn't overlap at all.
Sail-World:How many sails were you physically carrying on the boat that day?
Drennan: We only had two sails on the boat that day, but you have to remember that once it got windy we could even go downwind, or reach without a genoa, in any form.
Sail-World:What was the cutover for wingsail only?
Drennan: As it showed in the first race we thought it was around the nine - ten knot wind range for the genoa to come off but from the limited amount of time we raced you would say it was maybe 12 knots.
The highest windspeed we saw on that beat was one gust of 16 knots, but it wasn't a very powerful 16 knots, but still it was a lot of breeze for those boats.
Sail-World:So with the America's Cup over, what happens now for you?
Drennan: I'm not sure what will happen next. I'm enjoying doing the Louis Vuitton here with Artemis and I think it's a great event. I like the concept and it's really good doing the match racing, and I know that most people consider the old Version 5 boats a real dinosaur but for the racing they're great.
Sail-World: Do you find it much of a jump to go from the wingsail three weeks ago to a monohull with a full set of grinders?
Drennan: Not really. The Version 5 boats are quite familiar to all of us that are sailing on the boats here, so it's quite enjoyable sailing with something that you know. To be honest the trimaran was quite stressful; you're always worried about something breaking and both boats in our lead up went through a lot of breakdowns and it is concerning with those boats that you're going so fast and things break and it's nice to be able to relax and enjoy the racing.
Sail-World:When we spoke to Jimmy Spithill about the alarms going off all the time, he said you just got used to it - was it really like that?
Drennan: You get used to it for sure, but they're there for a reason and you don't always know what the alarm is for, so once you know it's the forestay or something you might relax a bit more, but there's so many alarms - I can't remember how many sensors that had alarms on them - but they're all there for a reason and it is disconcerting.
Sail-World: What was the process on the boat when an alarm went off - did someone's PDA start flashing, or what?
Drennan: On your PDA it would flash whether it was the forestay or the cap shroud or whatever, but if t was one of those outside of a few basic parameters, it would come up on Matteo's deck screen. Once you knew what it was you could sort the problem, and you could relax, but it might have been something simple like engine temperature or oil.
Sail-World:Who made the call on the boat with an alarm - was it the individual in the area, or was there someone who was the overall fireman?
Drennan: Matteo was the overall fireman and he had it all on his screen. There had to be somebody in charge of it all and Matteo did a pretty good job, of it all.
Sail-World:You've done 25 Sydney Hobarts, the last aboard Alfa Romeo, are you going to do a 26th?
Drennan: Probably, if they're like the last Hobart - where it was nice and easy. But it was really nice having an easy races because the last few races I've done have been easy races but I definitely haven't forgotten what it can be like and what it's going to be like at some stage over the next couple of years.
I was on a local Melbourne boat, in '98, a 38 foot boat, Chutzpah, and we were right in the middle of the storm. And you never want to go through that sort of stuff too often.
The last Sydney to Hobart, was on Alfa Romeo and we had a pretty good race; everything went clockwork for us from the time we started to going out the heads to all the sail changes and the tactical decisions, so it was really nice to have a good race that just all fitted into place.
Sail-World:What was that race like from a competitive point of view, because it is the first time we have seen five top maxis from three different countries all at the top of their game and going for it?
Drennan: It was definitely a different sort of feeling, because previously I've sailed in quite a few of the 100s over the years and it's usually just one or two boats and it was quite special to have so many 95 plus foot boats and just when we looked around at all the other boats, how well staffed they were with very good sailors and good sail programs. It was a real eye opener. We knew we were going to have to do a pretty good job to beat those guys.
Sail-World: Many thanks, Noel.
by RG
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