Sun, Surf and Software

THE SCENE LOOKS AS TIMELESS as one from the Odyssey: billowing sails, hulls slicing through salt spray, sunburned crewmen pulling at ropes and squinting into wind. But if the image is classic, the men competing in the America's Cup final this week know victory will owe more to expensive high-tech wizardry than to the art of ancient mariners. "National technology is at the heart of the competition," says John Marshall, boatbuilder and head of the Partnership for America's Cup Technology. "It's been a technology contest since 1851." That year a newly designed schooner called America launched the quadrennial challenge by trouncing an entire fleet of 16 British racing yachts in a course around the Isle of Wight.

But when the International America's Cup Class Technical Committee approved a completely new set of specifications for contending vessels in 1989, technology became more important than ever as teams scrambled to build a qualifying boat that would respect the rules and still win races. New technology doesn't come cheap. The two boats competing in the finals -- America 3 from the U.S. and Il Moro di Venezia from Italy -- have together devoured $160 million in development costs. The millionaires funding these efforts, American energy entrepreneur William Koch and Italian businessman Raul Gardini, are hoping their largesse will pay off in the best-of-seven finals that began last weekend.

Under the new guidelines, boats must be 30% lighter and have 40% more sail ) area and hulls 20% longer than the former 12-m (13.1-yd.) boats. The boats may mix sail size, hull size and weight in any way they choose so long as, according to a complicated mathematical formula, the numbers add up to 42,000 m (45,900 yds.). From an infinite number of combinations, the boat designers try to find the best mix -- with the help of computers, water tanks and wind tunnels. Their efforts focus on three key areas:

SAILS

Special computer programs can identify stress points in the sail. "We can actually fly a sail in the computer in a scenario comparable to the winds off San Diego," says Tom Whidden, a longtime Stars & Stripes crew member who runs North Sail, one of the world's largest sailmaking firms. Space-age materials developed in the 1980s have replaced canvas because they are much lighter and allow the sail to stretch less with the wind. The latest sails include laminated polymers and woven fibers that offer greater strength and can maintain sail shape better in all directions, making the sail more able to adjust to wind changes. America 3's technical director, Heiner Meldner, a physicist who once designed nuclear weapons, says his sails are a composite of fibers, including carbon and liquid-crystal polymers. The Italians use a woven carbon-and-Kevlar fiber glued to a Mylar backing.

HULLS

Much of the research on hull design is done with model boats in water tanks. Computers can monitor the various ways in which the boat interacts with the water and help designers build prototypes based on the results. The Italians ran scores of tests in a 400-m (437-yd.) tank to fashion the Venezia's hull. America 3's designers did their research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University to come up with a longer, narrow-bowed hull, meant to slice through the choppy seas expected at San Diego.

APPENDAGES