We didn't cheat says America's Cup skipper

Reuters

THE YACHT: America's Cup winner Australia II.

The Age

AUSSIE, AUSSIE, AUSSIE: Australian PM Bob Hawke celebrates the country's America's Cup win with businessman Alan Bond.

SMH

IN THE MIDDLE: The late Ben Lexcen who has ended up in the middle of a design row over the famed winged keel on Australia II that won the America's Cup in 1983.

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Ben Lexcen experimented with winged keels decades before his invention guided Australia II to victory in the America's Cup, the famous yacht's skipper John Bertrand says.

Lexcen's input was questioned when Dutch naval architect Peter van Oossanen broke his silence on the revolutionary design after 26 years.

Mr van Oossanen says he and his Dutch team, and Dutch aerodynamics expert Joop Slooff, were the main designers of the famous winged keel, and that Lexcen played only a minor role - perhaps 10 per cent.

"(Ben) was a very nice guy, I had a lot of time for him, he was a very likeable person, but after 25 years, I must say that he had very little to do with the design," Mr van Oossanen told ABC Radio.

Mr Bertrand jumped to the defence of his late friend, who died of a heart attack in 1988, saying he had been "mucking around with ... wings on rudders on 18 foot skiffs" long before Australia II.

"There is only one person that I knew who had the brilliance, he was like the Leonardo da Vinci of this country in so many ways," he told the Seven Network.

"Benny pulled the whole design package together, he was the spark of genius that was required of that part of the design process."

Yachting great and Australia II reserve helmsman Sir James Hardy confirmed Lexcen had been experimenting in the 1950s.

"I think Peter is no doubt saying what he believed happened but I can tell you Benny's hull shape and everything, and his ability to make sails, you wouldn't know which piece of coal made the whistle blow," he told ABC Radio.

"Ben, it was his third or fourth go at a 12 metre and I think he really knew what he was on about, but the upside down keel, as Peter van Oossanen has said, no doubt they did do work on that.

"All I can say is I remember when Ben got back from Holland ... under secrecy, he showed me two designs, and the hull forms were the same but the keel on one of them was upside down and Ben said, 'Look I saw them testing wing tips for aeroplanes'."

According to the Australian National Maritime Museum, Lexcen designed an 18-foot yacht, Taipan, which he sailed from 1959, which had small wings on its rudder, while his next 18-footer, Venom, sometimes used a winged centreboard.

Mr van Oossanen hit back at Sir James' comments, saying the former director was a senior part of the team who "was fully aware of the situation".

"In 1983 Jim was partly my roommate ... we spent many occasions together when we discussed this and that ... and to blatantly say what he said and actually wrote is very upsetting," he told Fairfax Radio Network.

Asked why he chose to reveal his secret only now, Mr van Oossanen said he was reacting to a number of magazine articles, including one in which Sir James wrote that the Dutch had no involvement in the design of the keel whatsoever.

Australia II might have been disqualified from the America's Cup in 1983 under rules at the time which said competing yachts had to be designed by citizens or residents of the competing country.