Nothing Like a Dame?

Designing a faster twelve-meter America's Cup yacht is a little like trying to improve on a perfect circle. The twelve-meter formula is so old and so restrictive that reports of "major breakthroughs" in design usually turn out to involve a new shape for the transom, say, or a mast that is stepped an inch fore or aft of usual. But Warwick Hood, the Down Under architect who designed Australia's new America's Cup challenger Dame Pattie, insists that he actually has hit on something new. And maybe he has. So far in the shakedown trials off Sydney, Dame Pattie has trounced Gretel, the 1962 Aussie challenger--and the only foreign twelve-meter ever to beat a U.S. defender in an America's Cup race--so badly that onlookers have been wondering where Hood hid the engine.

Their first formal encounter came three weeks ago over a 24-mile Olympic-style course, in seas so heavy that spectator boats turned back. An old hand at match racing (he was Gretel's helmsman in 1962), Dame Pattie's Skipper Jock Sturrock caught Gretel going the wrong way at the start and gradually widened the gap to 1 min. 54 sec.--mostly during the beats to windward, in which Gretel hobbyhorsed badly while Dame Pattie slid smoothly through the crashing swells. It was the second race, in smooth seas and light winds, that certified Dame Pattie as a "flyer." Once again, Sturrock beat Gretel's skipper, Archie Robertson, to the start. By the first mark, Dame Pattie was 2 min. 22 sec. in the lead; at the end, her margin was a staggering 8 min. 40 sec.

When the first reports and photos came in from Down Under, U.S. naval architects-discounted the idea of anything radical in Dame Pattie--except for a rudder that is wider at the head than at the heel. "Her deck plan is almost an exact reproduction of the Constellation's"--the U.S. boat that won the America's Cup in 1964--said Olin Stephens, who designed Constellation and the newest U.S. twelve-meter, Intrepid. But Stephens had second thoughts. "I wish I could see," he said, "what makes Pattie so fast."

Hood, of course, wasn't telling--although he was already talking about building still another boat that would "carry my design theories to the ultimate, and be minutes faster than Dame Pattie." But that would probably have to wait until after next summer's America's Cup races off Rhode Island. In the meantime, Hood is concentrating on more current projects--like trying to figure out why Dame Pattie's mast keeps snapping off. In a race against Gretel two weeks ago, Dame Pattie was leading by 5 min., only 250 yds. from the finish line, when her mast collapsed. Maybe she is just too fast for her own good.

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