The 'lie' that captured the America's Cup

BY RICK FENELEY

A boat designer has blown the whistle on a "lie" that allowed Australia to seize glory in the 1983 America's Cup – the claim that Ben Lexcen invented the famous winged keel that propelled Alan Bond's yacht to victory.

Peter van Oossanen, the Dutch naval architect who worked with Lexcen on Australia II, has told the Sydney Morning Herald he can confirm what the Americans alleged – but could not prove – 26 years ago. The true designers of the peculiar upside-down keel, with its critical winglets, were himself, his Dutch team and the Dutch aerodynamicist Joop Slooff. Lexcen, he says, played only a "minor" role, contributing perhaps 5 or 10 percent. Strictly speaking, there is an argument that Australia II should have been disqualified because the rules stipulated that competing yachts be designed by residents or citizens of the country they represented.

Lexcen was not even in the Netherlands during "the Eureka moment" in the development of the keel, van Oossanen told the SMH from his home in Wageningen, the Netherlands.

Van Oossanen says he remained Lexcen's close friend until his death of a heart attack in 1988 and still regards him as a "true Australian hero". But at 65 – and having become a "proud" Australian citizen in 1990 – van Oossanen has grown tired of what he sees as the airbrushing from history of the Dutch contribution, particularly attempts in recent years to perpetuate the Lexcen legend.

"Ben was a nice guy," he said. "He had a flair for things, a flair for shapes. But he wasn't a scientist and he wasn't able to understand the full physics of what was going on. He left to go back to Australia on 20th June 1981, before the vital tank tests. The role he played was a minor one ... Ben did things by feel and intuition, but in the America's Cup that will get you nowhere. It is a very scientific thing."

For keeping the secret, van Oossanen claims, Alan Bond had told him words to the effect: "We'll look after you." After the victory, $25,000 appeared in his bank account – a gift from Bond, which he now regards as hush money.

But he appreciated it then. As chief scientist at the Netherlands Ship Model Basin in Wageningen, where much of the development work on Australia II was done, he had worked only for his salary since contacting Bond, offering his help, in 1978. And he had been paid nothing for his three months in Newport for the America's Cup. He was there because he wanted Australia to win. The story questioning Lexcen's input has been written many times since the Americans raised their unsuccessful protest in 1983, and van Oossanen has, in recent years, added to those doubts with more cautious remarks. But now he is explicitly setting the record straight. Why?

Van Oossanen lived in Australia from the age of seven until he was 21, when he returned to the Netherlands, met his future wife and raised a family. Critically, he was neither an Australian resident nor citizen when he worked on Australia II. But he said in his Dutch-Australian accent: "I love Australia and I wouldn't want to do anything to upset Australians. That is why I haven't discussed this in any detail for so many years."

Van Oossanen has never wavered from his belief that Australia II deserved its victory, when weighed against the America's Cup's history of skulduggery, espionage and cheating.

But didn't the Australia II syndicate cheat, at least technically? "Yes," he says. "If everything had stayed the same, I would have taken this to my grave. But they are writing us out of history."

Lexcen, van Oossanen says, did not design the boat's key elements: the small hull over an upside-down keel with its famed winglets. They weren't even Lexcen's ideas.

"We are talking about the underwater hull, the part of the design that made the boat go faster and win the America's Cup. When we conducted the first vital tank tests with the upside-down keel, and we saw we had 25 percent less resistance and tonnes of extra speed – that was the Eureka moment. Ben wasn't there."

All this casts a pall over one of Australia's most historic sporting triumphs. The defeat of the Dennis Conner-skippered Liberty on September 25, 1983, ended the New York Yacht Club's 132-year grip on the America's Cup trophy.

Bleary-eyed Australians, who had stayed up to watch the event, danced in the streets. The then prime minister, Bob Hawke, declared that any boss would be a "bum" to sack a worker for taking the day off. Hawke was out of the country and unavailable for comment yesterday.

Bondy – as Hawke called him – would later be exposed as a corporate crook, jailed and stripped of his Order of Australia. The cup is about the only achievement for which Australians retain a fondness for Bond. Now, it is claimed, he cheated at that, too.

But Bond told the SMH last night: "Ben was living with me at the time. I saw his drawings, long before were even talking about doing tank tests."

They were for the upside-down keel and winglets? "Correct." When was that? "I'm not going to be cross-examined ... Of course we did tests, and modified things. I met Ben in Holland myself. It was his idea. The idea is sacrosanct, and to suggest otherwise is mischievous and an insult to his memory."

Lexcen was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia. A car was named after him. In 2006, after years of resentment against the Australians they suspected of cheating, the New York Yacht Club inducted him into the America's Cup Hall of Fame.

Lexcen was already heroic before 1983, in van Oossanen's mind. He had left school at 14, built his first boat at 16 and – with no formal training – designed Bond boats for the America's Cup in 1974, 1977 and 1980. "He was a charismatic, likeable guy with a lot of time for anyone down and out."

But he did not deserve the accolade for the event that made him famous, says van Oossanen. "People are raising him up to be a much greater hero than he was," he told the SMH.

Had Lexcen acknowledged who really deserved the laurels? "Yes. He would chuckle, because he knew credit lay elsewhere."

So Lexcen was embarrassed? "Towards me? Yes, certainly." Asked if he had been under pressure to keep the secret, van Oossanen said: "Yes."

Warren Jones, the managing director of the Australia II syndicate, had said: "You know where your loyalty is, don't you?"

Jones died in 2002. Van Oossanen said his caution had hardly been necessary. "They were assured of my sympathy ... I was part of the team. I wanted Australia to win."

In about August 1983, during the semifinals of the Challenger Races, a US lawyer visited van Oossanen in the Netherlands while he was back for a short holiday. He wanted him to sign a statement that he and Slooff were the critical designers. "He had done his homework well," van Oossanen said. "But there was no way I could sign that. It would basically have allowed the Americans to protest the Australians and win."

He says there is nothing in the rules to allow Australia to be stripped of the cup. But he fears Australians will detest him for speaking out, particularly as Lexcen and Jones cannot defend themselves. So why expose himself to loathing now?

A letter from Australia's James Hardy to Seahorse magazine in 2004 helps explain van Oossanen's motivation. It was among reports that angered him. Hardy was an America's Cup skipper three times and a director and reserve helmsman for Australia II.

Hardy's letter said the keel was "a 100 percent Benny creation" and that he "smiled" when detractors suggested the Dutch had designed it.

"I spent some three months with Jim at Newport," van Oossanen said. He believes Hardy was well aware of the Dutch contribution. Had such articles not appeared, he would have let sleeping dogs lie.

Hardy, who became a highly respected businessman and winemaker, told the SMH: "There is no doubt that Peter did a lot of work. I can understand where he's coming from."

But others always contributed. He said Lexcen had adopted aerodynamic elements on his revolutionary 18-foot skiff in the late 1950s.

Australia II's skipper, John Bertrand, said he had no doubt Lexcen was the principal designer but said "success has many fathers".

"Without Ben, there is no way the total design solution of the winged keel could have come together," he said, adding, "it was not only the winged keel, but also the hull shape and the aerodynamic package above deck".

"When eventually it all came together, we had a world-class boat. Only then did we have the technology that was competitive against the Americans."

Lexcen, like all designers, used consultants, Bertrand said."Ben was brilliant. I regard him as the Leonardo da Vinci of this country."

But van Oossanen says Lexcen was not, initially, taken by the radical keel design. The Herald approached him last Friday to follow up an interview he gave to an American trade magazine, Professional Boatbuilder, in which he had gone further than previously.

In early 1978, van Oossanen travelled in Australia to meet Bond and Lexcen. He had known Lexcen from his days in Sydney when they sailed Moths at Balmoral Sailing Club. Lexcen was still Bob Miller then. He changed his name later to avoid confusion with a sail-making firm in which he was a partner.

He went to Perth to meet Warren Jones and sign a contract in March 1981. He and Lexcen built a model. Van Oossanen says he believed this boat's keel was lacking, so he suggested tests on different keels.

He then visited the National Aerospace Laboratory in Amsterdam and met its chief aerodynamicist, Joop Slooff. Together they identified four very different types of keels.

"All four were defined and sketched by Slooff and I," he said. These included an inverse taper, upside-down keel.

Slooff suggested they could modify a computer program, used for aircraft, to calculate approximate values for wave resistance. His results showed the upside-down keel was clearly superior. But he identified a problem – the long length at the bottom created a major tip vortex. The energy caused in forming this vortex caused extra resistance to the hull's forward movement – and loss of speed.

Then Slooff had mentioned "winglets" for the first time. The winglet proved to be an efficient way to get rid of the tip vortex, or for decreasing it substantially.

Lexcen visited the Netherlands again. Now seeing the value of the radical design, van Oossanen says, Lexcen drew sketches of what the winglets might look like. Van Oossanen does not believe these were ever used in the keel design but it is for these that he grants Lexcen his 5 or 10 per cent contribution.

Van Oossanen said he came up with the original design for the winglets. His team made all the drawings for the keel. "Ben had nothing to do with it," he told Professional Boatbuilder.

Lexcen had returned to Australia before the Eureka tank test. Bond, Jones and Bertrand arrived by private jet in the Netherlands in August 1981. Van Oossanen said Bertrand was sceptical but Jones and Bond were utterly convinced.

But there was another challenge. In very light wind, the wetted surface area of the boat was still more than they wanted. The winglets were adding wetted surface. Van Oossanen said he suggested cutting down the waterline length to the minimum. His team then drew up the final set of full-scale loftings, hull design and keel design. "It was all done by us."

Lexcen made the construction drawings. "Ben was, in name, responsible for the design process and he in fact did a lot of work – construction, mast, rig, deck equipment, etcetera – but the actual design of the underwater hull, keel and winglets were all done by us here," he told the Herald.

"Ben was good enough, however, to see where the design process of integrating the winglets into the design of the keel was possibly heading although he had very little to do with that, to be able to make one of a number of sketches showing how this integration process could come out."

Was it too crude to divide the credit into percentages? "No. I would say Ben's contribution was 5 to 10 per cent of the underwater configuration. He did most other things by himself . . . Joop's was perhaps 20 to 25 per cent. The remainder was down to my team."

Pressed for his contribution, personally, van Oossanen said: "Considerably more than half."

Van Oossanen told all this to representatives of the New York Yacht Club in 2005, when they were investigating whether Lexcen should be inducted into the hall of fame. Lexcen was finally granted that honour in 2006. Van Oossanen believes it was a diplomatic gesture and the club "did not want to be seen as the bad guys".

The big surprise is that the Australian media did not pursue this story years ago. In 1984, Slooff told an American journalist, Barbara Lloyd: "There's not the slightest doubt in my mind that Ben Lexcen had full design responsibility. But it doesn't necessarily mean that he conceived the concept."

In 2006, the US magazine Sailing World ran a report by a member of the America's Cup Hall of Fame selection committee, John Rousmaniere, who said the Dutch were the principal designers. Van Oossanen revealed then that he had not signed a statement from the Americans' lawyer in 1983 because "the whole of Australia would have hated me for this forever and ever".

Was there a reluctance to cast doubt on a national hero? "I think you've hit the nail on the head," said van Oossanen.

So, should Australia II have been ruled ineligible? "That is a very fair question but one that is very hard for me to answer."

The cup had been plagued by accusations of cheating and espionage. "There has always been deviousness and political manipulation. Therefore, when you see it in that light, I would say, no, Australia won it – although perhaps not entirely – 'fair and square'."

 

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