Muscle from the wind: a fine science

By JULIE ASH

Watching his team unleash a sail is a proud moment for Oracle BMW Racing sail designer Mickey Ickert.

But, come October 1, he will be prouder still if the sail thrusts his team towards victory in the challenger series.

As part of Oracle's 33-strong design team, which includes veteran cup designer Bruce Farr, Ickert helped developed the sails for USA71 and USA76 - the yachts which helmsman Peter Holmberg describes as "weapons".

Oracle's leading sail designer and the head of the aerodynamics team has had the daunting task of devising 60 sails - 45 for the challenger series and an extra 15 for if they make the cup final.

The team usually has 10 sails on board at any given time.

"Auckland is a very limited environment," Ickert said.

"Anything too radical gets flushed off very quickly by the change in breezes and so on. So even if you have a very good idea to get it around the course and to the start line is difficult.

"San Diego, for example, would have been easier, as you have steadier wind conditions. If you wanted to be extreme you could."

Not that he altogether rejects the idea that someone could come up with something revolutionary in the sail department.

"You will see different things in terms of sails in this cup. Someone will always come up with something to make their boats go that little bit faster.

"But the build-up to this cup has been very short. You could look up this road and say all the boats look similar, but two years is not very long. If it was five years, people would approach it quite differently."

Born in Germany, Ickert's sailmaking career began at North Sails Germany.

"I did a lot of sailing when I went to school in Germany. I applied for a sailmaking job in Munich and got the opportunity to do sail design very quickly."

Ten years later, in 1989, he decided to move to New Zealand, where he landed a job with North Sails in Auckland.

"For everyone who's interested in sailing, New Zealand is the place to go. That is the reason why I ended up here."

At North Sails, he was a key figure in developing sails for round-the-world teams and international offshore racing boats, among other things.

There he met Tom Schnackenberg and Burns Fallow, who encouraged him to join Team New Zealand in 1995.

"It was a really small team back then. We went to San Diego, we had a low profile and we just tried to do our job."

Ickert stayed with Team New Zealand for the 2000 campaign, where he helped develop the "code zero" sail - a prestart sail which gives the team another option in light air.

After that campaign, he opted to leave Team New Zealand and join Oracle - the team backed by software billionaire Larry Ellison.

"I decided towards the end of the 2000 campaign that it would be good for me to step outside the Team New Zealand arena and expose myself to something wider," Ickert said.

"It was hard to leave Team New Zealand because I very much enjoyed being part of a small country's effort. It gave me a lot of satisfaction."

He says Team New Zealand have a good chance of defending the cup and will benefit from having another two or three months up their sleeves while the challengers are out racing.

But he believes Russell Coutts and Brad Butterworth, now with Alinghi, will be missed.

"They were on par with Schnackenberg; they know how to win the America's Cup," he said.

"Also, a lot of those guys came out of the frustrating 1992 campaign [where they lost 5-4 in the challenger series final and ran into trouble with their controversial bowsprit], which made them very strong in 1995 and 2000.

"That is something the young guys in Team New Zealand don't have."

Gearing up for his third cup, Ickert says the sails have changed quite dramatically since 1995.

Gone are the days of piecing sails together like a puzzle.

These day a mould is made, then a film is placed over the top before carbon fibre and kevlar yarns are laid and glued down. Another film is placed over top and the air sucked out.

The sail designers are responsible for everything from the shape of the moulds to where carbon fibre and kevlar threads are laid.

Ickert says that, even to the untrained eye, there are a number of things which set sails apart.

"There will be quite dramatic dimensions of the mainsails and genoas which are easy to pick up.

"You can see by the coloration of the material how high or low the carbon content is. The more black, the more carbon, but some people use different coloured films, which makes it more difficult to pick up the carbon content.

"There will be different batten spacings and different depths of sail, which all reflect certain choices of boat design."

Come the start of the challenger series, don't expect Ickert to be sitting back with his feet up.

"I am a strong believer that the development doesn't stop on October 1. You need to keep developing and making improvements."

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