Success of U.S. Cup Entry Leads to Feud Over Design
Squabble Centers on Extent of Collaboration

By Angus Phillips
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, May 13, 2007

VALENCIA, Spain -- BMW Oracle must have something really sweet under the hood. With almost two months of America's Cup racing still to go, the designers already are squabbling over who gets credit.

The lone U.S. entry in the America's Cup had a fine run in challenger round robins, losing only three of 20 races to finish one point off the top of the standings. Billionaire Larry Ellison's San Francisco-based team now faces Italy's Luna Rossa in best-of-nine semifinals starting Monday. BMW Oracle won both prior meetings. An Oracle win would be no surprise; it might even be easy. Then it would be on to challenger finals, and with a little luck the Cup match after that.

With all that silver lining, a cloud has to be lurking somewhere. It popped up last week when Bruce Farr, the Annapolis-based yacht designer who is taking his seventh crack at winning yachting's premier trophy, took umbrage at suggestions he may have had more than a little help in drawing the lines of the high-flying race boat.

The respected British sailing magazine Sea Horse, in its pre-regatta issue listing pros and cons for all 12 teams, said USA 98, the second BMW Oracle built for this Cup and the one that's been burning up the course, had more of Argentine designer Juan Kouyoumdjian's "signature" on it than its predecessor, USA 87. Sea Horse also said USA 87 had problems with straight line speed and credited Farr largely with that design.

The allegations infuriated Farr, who has been in Valencia for the last week vehemently refuting them to anyone who will listen. Bad enough the article suggests he needed help to design a potential America's Cup winner; worse that Kouyoumdjian is getting the credit.

The two have some history. Despite not yet designing an America's Cup winner, Farr has been unquestionably the world's top racing sailboat designer for the last quarter-century. He has a particularly strong record in the Whitbread 'Round-the-World Race, now called the Volvo Ocean Race, where he designed winner after winner until last year, when Kouyoumdjian's radical, beamy design ABN Amro beat out four Farr designs to win easily.

The fact that these international rivals were collaborating in the 38-person BMW Oracle design team while butting heads in the round-the-world race led to some speculation about potential problems, but by all accounts the work went smoothly. Farr himself says the pair did well together devising hull shapes for the two boats, although he says the input from his company, Farr Yacht Design, far overshadowed Kouyoumdjian's. "I'd say it was about five to one," he said.

Juan K, as the Argentine is widely known, had good things to say about working with Farr, too. "He's an excellent designer. I learned a lot from him, I respect him and I liked working with him.

"He can say whatever he wants" about who contributed what, said Kouyoumdjian. "I don't want to play the same game as Bruce Farr plays. But this is not a Farr Yacht Design boat. It is a BMW Oracle design team boat."

Ian "Fresh" Burns, a veteran Australian Cup sailor who is BMW Oracle's design coordinator, making him figurative headmaster for the squabbling designers, shakes his head in bewilderment when asked about the dust-up. "We don't know what to do about it," he says. "To be honest, it doesn't really affect us because the hull work is basically finished. They're here now to contribute to discussions about small changes we're considering making between rounds."

Those changes could have a big effect on performance, said Burns, but they mostly involve rudders, keels, ballast bulbs and winglets, sail selection, mast and rig combinations. The hull shape is established and it looks like everyone is pleased.

USA 98 was launched at the start of 2007, nine months after USA 87 hit the water. The first boat, by both designers' description, was primarily a test platform for a number of ideas. Farr and Kouyoumdjian say the design was tilted toward maneuverability and acceleration, and as a result the boat wound up short on straight line speed in some conditions.

As USA 87 struggled from time to time, Cup observers wondered if BMW Oracle was headed down a bad track. But Farr says it was always meant to be a test platform and its performance provided exactly the sort of input the design team needed to cast off bad ideas and pursue good ones.

He contends that some of the ideas that didn't pan out were Kouyoumdjian's, but also concedes that some concepts the Argentine promoted for USA 98 proved productive.

But overall, Farr says, it was his team that did most of the dirty work of analyzing data to see what would work and what wouldn't before it went into the hull shape. "Juan threw out ideas, and some of them were good," he said. "But it was up to us to sort through it."

The product of it all is USA 98, launched last winter, which has proved formidable in almost all conditions. The sailors love the boat. "I've never seen anything come together this well," said tactician Gavin Brady. "Chris [skipper Chris Dickson] is really happy with the boat -- and he sails it very well."

Ellison himself gives Farr most of the credit for USA 98, calling "talk that it's a Juan K boat" simply untrue.

For his part, Kouyoumdjian seems content to be part of a successful team and to take pride in the way he and Farr worked together. "It could have been a disaster," he says. "Bruce Farr is someone that with his success and brilliance, he comes in with a lot of certainties, and that can present obstacles.

"To think we wouldn't have differences, that's utopic. But differences of opinion are the strength of a good team. How we worked through those differences is the key, and we did very well. He was very open and professional."

Burns agrees. "It couldn't have been smoother," he said. "That's why we can't understand why it's falling apart now."

With a possibility of victory in the America's Cup looming, with a fast boat, a solid team, plenty of resources, all the bits and pieces for success in place, a happy skipper, a committed owner, a solid commercial sponsor, what's to be gained from a pie fight now?

It's a question no one here seems able to answer.