AMERICA'S CUP 2003

GIOVANNI CECCARELLI & MASCALZONE LATINO

Image gallery

Giovanni Ceccarelli , Vincenzo Onorato
and Paolo Cian after the winning match against Le Defi Areva.
Photo by Martino

DESIGNING MASCALZONE LATINO FOR THE AMERICA'S CUP
by Giovanni Ceccarelli

Ravenna, April 24, 2002 - Shortly after America's Cup 2001 came to an end, Vincenzo Onorato contacted me, presenting his idea for the new challenge of America's Cup 2003 and asking me if I wanted to become the designer or better yet the principal designer of Mascalzone Latino.

A few days later I was at his home in Elba Island with his closest collaborators among which Paolo Scutellaro, Pietro Manunta, Marco Savelli and Lara Ciribì to assess the feasibility of the challenger project. Basically Vincenzo Onorato wanted to put together a syndicate made up only of Italians, following the old spirit of the America's Cup, which was a challenge among nations. And so it was, his idea didn't change in the following months, and the Mascalzone Latino team became a reality.

           Mascalzone vs LaDefi

 I was put in charge of creating a team of faithful technicians with my other staff members to organize this fascinating and new design theme.

I wasn't completely impressed with this task seeing that my cultural background in these years has brought me to work mostly in the field of sailboat designing, and in particular in the world of sailing competition, carrying out other challenges and obtaining good results among which eight world titles IMS and IOR, several Italian championships in different classes, a record in the "Centomiglia del Garda" and other winnings like "Roma per due", and the "Rimini Corfù Rimini", designing according to different class regulations.

I also designed in the past years two boats which are usually used in match race regattas: the Tom 28 for the Trombini Trophy in Marina di Ravenna defined by many international helmsman the best in match racing which is mass-produced and at the moment used as the training boat for many European syndicates taking part in the America's Cup, and then there is also "Tuttatrieste" used for the Nation Cup held in Trieste Italy, such experiences have been fundamental in entering the world of Match Race designing and to come into contact with the needs and specifications in the field of match race regattas.

Planning with a design philosophy knowing before hand of having only one boat to build, against the possible two according to the regulations, and even the time frame for researching was set, the design and the construction which were to be ready according to the boat's launch in the month of May. The team had also chosen the boatyard Tencara in Venice the builders of the Moro di Venezia boats, which in record time following the directions of the construction manager Berardo Cittadini, had respected the deadlines, working for long periods of time double and triple shifts.

This is the first IACC that I have designed in my career, in the years I've always thought of or better yet asked myself the question to how I would have answered with a design of course to a similar task, I had nurtured some unrealized ideas and answers to such a design. Penetrating at the core of the actual design I methodically studied the classes and different yachts which had been designed from the Moro di Venezia challenge in San Diego all the way to the Cup held in Auckland.

A study which was limited and now put in writing because as you all know the America's Cup means secrecy and the absolute silence on the outflow of information. After such lengthy work of research and data base I prepared the guidelines of the project, which for every commission must be clear and integral during its execution, these concepts have always been discussed with the team and in particular with Vincenzo Onorato keeping him informed and involved in all the important choices.

The limited time period at our disposition, about a year, didn't give us the possibility to move our research on a 360° angle in all the various sections so just a few areas of development and research were chosen: the boat's architecture and its bottom appendixes, structural researching in the field of compound materials, the mast as geometry and structure.

 

Other fields of analysis like the deck plane were carried out together with the crew on the basis of their ergonomic requests and with the shore team according to their maintenance needs. To organize the research on the boat and on the bottom appendix, we utilized extensively numeric fluid dynamic research with the help of different programs, from potential models to the Navier Stokes codes using workstations adjusted to the calculation needed.

 

 

For the appendixes, numeric optimization procedures were examined and utilized entirely in the designing office and 92 different crafts and about two hundred boats were tested. In order to validate the experimental statistical data together with the use of the VVP, research was also done in the naval test tank at the Marine Institute in Wageningen Holland since the test tank in Rome was not open, three boats were tested, synthesis of the research done at the beginning and only after that validation was the final boat chosen and handed over to the shipyard in mid-December so that the construction could begin of the tenon.

Parallely construction was already under way with the deck, making it possible to shorten work on construction and have more time for research .

The boat at the end of the research and analysis study, conceptually respected and confirmed the guidelines of the initial design, meaning a long and relatively narrow boat with a high degree of displacement, with volumetric masses capable of creating a balanced boat even under strong veering angles.

The boat presents various novelties followed by the interpretation linked to the class regulations on the waterline entrance and the distribution of volume of the hull and the topside and others which cannot be revealed at this time.

Whoever has seen the boat, has said it to be architecturally beautiful, and only if it were true the sentence of a famous ship designer "a beautiful boat is also a fast one", it would be a good omen. For the bottom appendixes two interchangeable options have been chosen which in the months to come will be tested until finding the definitive one which will be used for the Louis Vuitton Cup, so even in this area we were able to find an answer according to the topic, answer which I cannot reveal at this time.

The mast has been studied using a wing type section improved in order to have less resistance brought upon the mainmast and at the same time a highly longitudinal and transversal rigidity, we always thought from the beginning that a rigid mast would give great advantages if blended together with a boat also rigid in a longitudinal way, and on the contrary of most trends we picked for the rigging a four spreader configuration with jumper.

For this reason, research work and designing were carried out so as to have a boat with a high longitudinal rigidity which means a rigid boat and less catenary on the backstay, and that choice was taken even with a slight disadvantage of some extra weight brought upon the structure. To confront our calculations and to improve lightening of the boat, calculations on finite elements were studied on various components of the boat and on the deck riggings. Now the project in its guidelines is finished, and the development of the project will continue in the sea and this according to me will be the best way to confront any kind of research.