Professional BoatBuilder - December-January 2018

DECEMBER/JANUARY 2018 51

DESIGN: Hybrid Wing

organizers delayed the start by a day

and moved the starting line and all

boats about 70 miles (113 km) south to

more sheltered waters.

Smyth: “ e forecast for the next

day wasn’t any better, so I decided to

sail the entire course. It was no cake-

walk for any of us—there were lots of

dropouts—but it made for a better test

for this wing than I could have found

otherwise.

“It was crazy windy. And on the sec-

ond day there was a big thunderhead

approaching, you know, boiling up, and

it had three funnel clouds hanging

down from it. I didn’t know whether

they were going to be tornadoes or just

waterspouts, but the whole thing was

coming right at me. So I got the so sails

down.  ere wouldn’t have been time to

much more balance area than that.  e

books say you can go as high as 20%,

even 21%, but with that much, the wing

would go crazy in strong winds,  utter

like a  ag. At 16%, we know this par-

ticular wing is rock stable when it’s

weathervaned in at least 50 knots of

wind. But what’s really cool is when sail-

ing it puts much less strain on the boat.

You know, compared to my regular rig

for Sizzor, the wing has only a fraction

of the sheet load.  at’s why I was able

to trim it so quickly in those gusts.”

 e 2017 Everglades Challenge had

been a true challenge, even to Smyth,

a veteran and frequent winner of

numerous ocean and adventure races.

(See the sidebar above.) With small-

cra warnings at the start of what is

specifically a race for small craft,

I would soon learn that the wing

is phase one of a monumental three-

phase endeavor in progress at Gonza-

lez’s huge shop in Bristol, Rhode

Island, and PBB will eventually report

on all three. But before we get to the

shop, let’s explore the particulars of

the hybrid wing from a better-rested

Smyth the day a er he won the Ever-

glades Challenge.

The Morning After

“How much of the wing area goes

forward of the rotation axis?” I ask

over breakfast in the sterncastle of

Scrimshaw, my 45-year-old Searunner

trimaran, now owned by windsur ng

pioneer Bruce Matlack.

“About 16%,” says Smyth with a

mouthful of pancakes. “You don’t want

Randy Smyth

R

andy Smyth came from a Southern California sailing

family and started racing in dinghies as a kid. He

soon prevailed in several small-boat classes locally and

beyond. Before leaving high school, he landed his  rst

job as a sailmaker, and today he makes his living as a

multihull sail designer. Smyth Sails has contributed to

many outstanding performances worldwide, including

on the 110' (33.5m) catamaran Team Adventure, in

which Smyth circumnavigated as part of a 2001 race.

Sixty-three years old with three growing children,

Smyth is disarmingly modest and personable ashore, but

on the race course he is rigidly focused on winning.

Over the years he has consistently earned many racing

titles in marathon “adventure” races, in national and

world championships, and in the Olympic games, the

America’s Cup, and open ocean events. Private at times,

he is far from shy. He was Kevin Costner’s skipper in the

movie Waterworld, he has been a commentator for ESPN

and NBC during the Olympics, and he once performed

a spectacular capsize as a stunt.

A career like this contains innumerable swashbuckling

sea stories. A favorite occurred during the Worrell 1000,

a grueling marathon for beach cats, up the Atlantic sea-

board from Florida to Virginia. Besides contending with

the open sea in trampoline boats for a thousand miles,

all contestants were obliged to shoot the ocean surf get-

ting on and o the beach 12 times to ful ll obligatory

check-ins. During one of these contests, Smyth’s weather

hull struck something solid at night. Fearing damage, he

asked his crew to  y that hull so he could look over the

side with a  ashlight. Seeing water pouring out, they

simply kept that hull  ying for the balance of the leg.

 ey won the race, just one of six consecutive victories

for Smyth, a er which the event was never run again.

He is arguably the most winning sailor in boats of the

most disparate sizes and types on the widest variety of

courses, ever. But Smyth doesn’t seem to know or care, for

despite the above accolades, his own personal pro le, as

provided for this article, makes no mention of his 2017

induction into the U.S. National Sailing Hall of Fame.

—Jim Brown

As a meticulous and highly competitive sailmaker and

sailor, Randy Smyth is a perfect collaborator and test driver

as the research team scales up the hybrid wing concept

from Sizzor to Caliente.

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