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Core Builders employees work on a mast for an America’s Cup yacht, adding a thin resin coating by hand to create a strengthened core for the carbon fibre mold. The company is producing the mast and wing-sail for three America’s Cup teams. The room pictured is actually a giant oven, where the mast will be baked at about 85 degrees to cure it.
When the America’s Cup World Series kicks off this month, all of the competing boats sailing will have been built in Warkworth.Warkworth-based company Core Builders Composites (CBC) built all of the AC45 Class 45-foot catamarans in collaboration with the NZ marine industry. Six teams are competing in the series, including Team New Zealand. All of the teams race identical yachts, putting the emphasis on sailing skill rather than technical innovation.
The World Series races are the preliminary rounds for the America’s Cup in Bermuda in 2017, when teams will race 50-foot wing-sailed catamarans – the AC-50s.
The first World Series event kicks off in Portsmouth in England on July 23, with at least 10 events scheduled over the next two years.
Core Builders development manager Susan Lake says it’s a busy time.
“We are keeping our fingers crossed nothing breaks. We don’t have much time for repairs or to produce spares right now.”
The company is a fully owned subsidiary of Oracle Team USA. It started creating the molds for the next America’s Cup yacht in January, but in May the Cup rules changed the size of the yachts from 62-foot to 50-foot and the company had to start again from scratch.
“We had already completed the tooling for parts of the wing-sail,” Ms Lake says. “We’ve worked really hard and now we are almost back to where we were in March.
“All of the teams agreed on the 50-foot size to reduce the cost to encourage more competitors.”
Almost the entire Oracle Team USA boat will be produced in Warkworth. The regulations require a small portion of the hull to be built in the team’s country of origin.
Core Builders can also produce parts and molding for the AC-50s for other Cup competitors as new regulations have standardised many components of the boats. This includes the wing-sail, hulls and cross-structures between the two hulls.
So far they have gained contracts to produce the wing-sails for the Swedish team (Artemis), and Team Japan and are in discussion with other teams.
The main areas teams will be competing on will be the design of the foils, which allow the yachts to rise out of the ocean and hydroplane, and the control systems for the foils and wing-sails. The rudders and steering systems are also not standardised.
CBC plans to start shipping the AC50 wing-sails before the end of this year and expects to ship the components to Bermuda in October 2016 for launch in January 2017.
