Sea beast
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday November 5, 2009
Thomas Hahn, one of the creators of the BMW Oracle's America's Cup trimaran, describes the power their design had to harness as "about the equivalent of five big trucks standing on a little cup". The crew of BOR 90 have been testing the boat off San Diego and, despite continuing legal wrangling between BMW Oracle and Cup holders Alinghi, racing for the Auld Mug is due to take place in February next year off the coast of Ras al-Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates.The German Hahn, with a background in aviation and space travel engineering, was working with BMW in 2004 when he was approached to be part of the design team."As I am a keen sailor myself, I was happy to be able to join," Hahn, 41, says. With an open design brief compared to the more traditional America's Cup boats, Hahn and his fellow designers were able to pursue radical plans to build the multihull."This boat, when you had it on your screen and you looked at the numbers, it didn't seem real," he says.Australian James Spithill is the helmsman who will have the task of controlling the awesome power of the boat. And what was Hahn's reaction the first time he saw BOR 90 on the water? "Breathtaking!"Bigger, better, longer, wider:how BOR 90 stacks up.HEIGHT55 metres. Taller than an 18-storey building.SAIL SIZEGennaker sail is 780m. The equivalent of two basketball courts.LENGTH30 metres. Longer than a blue whale.WIDTH27 metres. Wider than an Olympic swimming pool.HIGH TECH26,000 data points for information collection.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
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