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Design no. 169 Very exciting for our design office has been the follow up order from Ludde Ingvall to design his new "Nicorette III". The current 80' (design no:123) has seen a succesful racing career since 2000 with the highlight being her double win in the Sydney Hobart of that year where she took line honours as well as handicap in the IRC class. Time has gone by though and despite continuous updates to the Nicorette II, she reached the end of her competitive racing career at the end of 2003 where the power of the new breed of supermaxi's, especially those with the added stability through canting keel , could no longer be challenged with a fair chance of winning.
Six months of R&D has resulted in the conceptualization "NICORETTE II" a highly optimized IRC SuperMaxi making use of our inhouse developed TMF (Triple Moving Foil) system to create an effective underwater balance while going upwind with the keel canted to rather extreme angles (50 to 60 degrees of cant if possible depending on the sailing configuration).
 With the aim of competing in the 2004 Sydney Hobart, and building only starting in the middle of July the timeline for the project is tight if not near impossible. To make this happen resources from around Australia and New Zealand have been pulled in. Currently BOATSPEED in Sydney is laying up the hull, while the Nicorrette Big Boat Team, is preparing the deck of the old boat for a "transplant" onto the new hull structure in order to save time.
Overall design and engineering is under our management, but all composite work is undertaken by Panalam of NZ and SP Engineering in Australia.
One of the most challenging engineering riddles to solve is the canting keel structure and mechanism. With loads up to 200 Tons to deal with the stucture is a challange in itself just to make it work, to do this with minimal space and weight is pushing it truly to the very edge of current materials and technology available.
Together with the South African Company FEAS we have embarked on a detailed Finite Element Analyses in order to ensure a stable and highly optimized structure where weight has been saved to the max.
For the keel, Ultra High Strength Alloys are going to be specially forged in order to produce a safe and durable fin to the smallest possible size, as its one and only function is going to be to push the lead bulb out as far as possible, with the least possible resistance.
If all goes according to plan, the racer will be launched towards the middle of October. For the Building Team we have set the challenge at "90 FOOT IN 90 DAYS".
To follow the building of the boat see:
www.bigboatracing.com
| New hull
| | Deck seperated from hull
| | FEA model of keel
| | FEA model of keelhinge
| | Plug building July 2004
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