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Under the 12 metre class rule, the allowed sail area is an inverse function of the boat length and weight. Her stability advantage allowed Australia II to carry more sail although the boat was lighter. Along with Australia II ' s efficient sail design, this winged keel was one of the factors contributing to Australia II ' s success. Total ...
Benjamin Lexcen AM (born Robert Clyde Miller, 19 March 1936 – 1 May 1988) was an Australian yachtsman and marine architect.He is famous for the winged keel design applied to Australia II which, in 1983, became the first non-American yacht to win the prestigious America's Cup in 132 years.
Australia II was designed by Ben Lexcen, built by Steve Ward, owned by Alan Bond and skippered by John Bertrand. [2] Lexcen's Australia II design featured a reduced waterline length and a short chord winged keel which gave the boat a significant advantage in manoeuvrability and heeling moment (lower ballast centre of gravity) but it was a significant disadvantage in choppy seas.
Australia (KA–5) is an Australian 12-metre-class America's Cup racing yacht that twice challenged unsuccessfully for the America's Cup in 1977 and 1980. Designed by Ben Lexcen in association with the Dutch designer Johan Valentijn for Alan Bond, Australia failed to win a single race against the 1977 defender, Courageous (US-26), but won one race against the 1980 defender, Freedom (US-30).
The revolutionary "winged keel" of the Australian yacht was a subject of controversy from the outset of the challenger series, with the New York Yacht club alleging that the winged keel boat was not a legal 12 Meter, and that the keel design itself was the result of Dutch engineers, and not by Lexcen.
"Skip" Etchells, a boat designer, builder and sailor, was interested in the competition, but refrained from producing a design until the trials were announced. However, once the details became available, he built the wooden Shillalah, taking her to Kiel , Germany , where the trials were to be held in the fall of 1966.
Kookaburra III (KA 15) was the Australian 12 Metre yacht sailed by Iain Murray in the 1987 America's Cup held off of Fremantle, Western Australia.Murray won the Defender Selection and Kookaburra III represented Australia in the America's Cup, where she lost to American challenger Dennis Conner sailing Stars & Stripes 87.
The term keel was associated in Great Britain with three particular working boat types. The Norfolk Keel ancestor of the Norfolk Wherry, the Humber Keel and the Tyne Keel and their Keelmen. In Ireland the Howth 17 was designed by Sir Walter Boyd in 1897, and is the oldest one-design racing keelboat in the world.