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The Class of 2003

Le Défi

The French syndicate Le Défi, with their bright orange boat in 2000, had the narrowest boat in the fleet, a down-wind rocket ship. For the 2003 Cup they built and raced another brightly colored boat, FRA-69. This time Le Défi fielded the widest hull in the fleet.

The stem of this new boat led down to a diamond-shaped transition. The YAKA design group, led by Coordinator of Design Philippe Pallu de la Barriere, produced a very unusual variation of knuckled bow. Unlike a triangle or tear-drop, the diamond shape allowed the knuckle itself to remain narrow -- the outer points of the diamond expanding to embrace the full shape forward.

Despite the efforts of their design team and crew the boat seemed to have fore-and-aft balance problems. Perhaps this kept the boat from maintaining full drawn sailing length, so the results of this shape are inconclusive. Areva narrowly avoided elimination in the Round Robins but was knocked out by Victory Challenge in the Quarter-Finals.

Team Dennis Conner

The deep blue Stars & Stripes boats, USA-66 & USA-77, were drawn by experienced America's Cup design team Reichel/Pugh. Both boats probed the narrow end of the design spectrum, proving fast in some conditions, but somewhat tender. With their stems canted backwards, the Stars & Stripes boats sported an unusual bow shape, sometimes referred to as a ‘canoe bow’. The transition from out-thrust stem is a surprisingly wide rounded triangle adjoining the knuckle below, accentuated by the otherwise narrow hull.

Where Prada's radical surgery was elective, USA-77’s new nose was the result of misfortune. Shortly before departure for Auckland she sank in the shallows off the California coast. Conner described the mishap as “…a swamping & grounding” since the mast tip had remained above water, but the damage done was not trivial. Reichel/Pugh had the opportunity during replacement of the bow section to refine their design, but as the resemblance shows, they did not stray far from stable-mate USA-66.

USA-66 & USA-77 / Team Dennis Conner / 2002

USA-77 Transition / 2002

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