Mandrake

Mark, who the hell are you and why do we care?

MM:
I am the principal of Mills Design, a performance yacht design consultancy based in Ireland. We are steadily growing in the custom raceboat field, with designs to a number of different rules under our belts - IRC and IRM, IMS, Open Rules - its been a great start for us. We are now moving into a growth phase to start challenging larger offices in the big boat and production markets. Almost everything we have drawn is at www.mills-design.com.

You are living in England, but are a native Californian. Explain the horrible mistake that led you to the land of bad teeth.

MM:
The UK and Europe represents the most active market for custom boats in the world. There is no question that the UK and Europe is at the hub of the Grand Prix racing scene and supports a more adventurous clientele for custom racing designs, even at club level, partially as a result of having a better rule to design to in IRC compared to the subjective elements of PHRF. I am originally from San Francisco, but grew up Ireland and went back to the US for University. I arrived in the UK in 1991 to start my Naval Architecture degree and immediately found myself sailing at a higher level than San Francisco had offered. By diving in at the deep end I learned a great deal and made industry contacts very quickly - and ended up sailing in events like the Commodores' and Admirals' Cup. I actually live in Ireland however which is more relaxed and allows me to commute to England for business.

Tell the readers what your latest designs are all about

Quokka

MM:
Every design is an attempt to balance the competing objectives: performance, cost, rating, so while I come originally from a California ULDB background my design style has evolved considerably. Basically our work splits into two types - Open Class work like our 21' Mini Transat boats or Open 40, and rating rule work which promotes a more all-around type of boat such as Mandrake, Quokka, and Aztec which have all been star performers to the IRC rule in the UK. Compared to the light displacement offwind bias of the swing keel Open boats, our rating-oriented designs have laid far more emphasis on improving stability in a medium-displacement low-drag package that rates well - which has led us into a major new design avenue - more IACC than ULDB!

The IRM 50' "Mandrake" is a bit of a success for you. Tell us first, what is IRM rule, and second tell us about "Mandrake".

MM:
IRM is a new rule developed by the Royal Ocean Racing Club to offer a new International rating rule to take the pressure off rules like their club level IRC and its US equivalent PHRF. There is a description of it on our site at http://www.mills-design.com/ir01.htm. It's fabulous in some areas - mainly the fact that it is an excel spreadsheet anyone can run on their home computer, and that the typeform it is promoting is very supportive of the stiff, light and low-drag design type that I mentioned earlier. It hasn't been promoted as strongly as it could however and the numbers may need a little tweaking to take it out from the shadow of IRC, an extremely popular rule here in Europe but not entirely objective. I sit on the RORC Technical Committee and we have thought a lot about how to position the two rules for maximum effect.

Mandrake was a great project for us. Peter Morton, a British Admirals Cup stalwart and head of Farr Intl. in the UK got the 10 yr old IOR 50 Mandrake as a trade in. While his Grand Prix IMS 50 Venture 99 was being built for the 1999 Admirals Cup, he came to us looking for a low budget design using the best parts of Mandrake which would show up how unhealthy the IMS rule had gotten "make it fast Millsy" was the basic design brief, while fitting it around the IRM draft then available. We also had to fit the project into a 10 week window and do it on a shoestring, so with a week of design work and a neat new build system using cedar strip for the curved underbody and foam panels for the flatter topsides we cut up the old boat and started putting the new one together. We used the deck and a number of bulkheads, the engine, rudder and bearings, deck gear, and rig all grafted onto a new hull and keel which was 50% lighter for a 12% longer LWL - big Disp/L change! She went straight out and won races at Cowes Week - her performance in a breeze is out of this world. She went on to win the big Winter Series and Easter Challenge events in the UK in 2000, as well breaking the old Maxi record on her way to winning the Gold Roman Bowl for the Around the Island Race this June, a 50 mile, 1700 boat race around the Isle of Wight. All for a fraction of the cost of a new 50!

Mandrake at CORK

Is "Mandrake" now for sale? Why and for how much, US $?

MM:
Almost every raceboat is always for sale, but Mandrake will continue to be campaigned by Peter until the right offer is made when we might get to do something even more interesting. The lesson of Mandrake isnt necessarily "shes quick, I'll buy her" but "shes quick, perhaps I can do something similar for 1/3 the cost of new" as long as the donor boat has some good gear. It's a method of recycling value from older and less competitive designs.

Needless to say, the world of handicap big boat racing, at least in regards to IMS, is in terrible shape. Is there hope on the horizon?

MM:
This is a huge question. The world of handicap racing, along with quite a few other areas of sailing is really in disarray. IMS is really holding up progress by not dying gracefully, as long as it remains big in Spain it will remain high profile enough to stall development elsewhere. IMS has headed down a development path very reminiscent of IOR - low stability very expensive boats with only middling performance constantly outdated by the next years formulation. These were all the results of policy decisions intended to keep the rule in a state of flux so people would design for the long term and thus promote a more even long lasting rule. As it happens people (and rules) don't work that way, but those who have developed such a complex system are very reluctant to stand back and see that users haven't embraced it. Throw in some heated politics between ISAF, USSA, the ORC and the RORC and its easy to see why we are struggling!

The problem is that the current One Design boom will run its course, and then we will need to have a stable rule in order to race all these boats together! Americap, like its counterpart ORC Club, is IMS based and will always suffer from the technical and institutional drawbacks associated with it.

As a designer, what can you bring to the table that somebody else cannot?

Aztec

MM:
Our strength is in practical development and integration. My first priority is to give the client a tool equal to or better than the current best to allow them to win. Any big advance on that evolutionary development has to be something the client is happy with: we can guarantee a competitive boat, anything which deviates from that has to be something they approve of. Modern rating rule raceboats are very refined and the steps forward are usually incremental developments using a lot of good solutions already around, so we are concentrating on a lot of research and VPP modelling for those advances. Open design work is a bit different - it's a free for all where you try and implement new things but you know they have to work - poor implementation loses races. As a racing sailor I know a lot of the fabulous ideas I have require careful implementation, so you need to balance development with reliability.

The integration side comes from our alliances with other industry professionals. Our engineer John Fox of FCS in Massachusetts is a prime example: to concentrate on design issues I decided early on to leave the composite engineering to a specialist. John has a long track record in building and engineering with such firms as Eric Goetz and Carroll Marine so he brings a similarly practical view of development allied with a comprehensive knowledge of the field and a willingness to innovate. One example is his work on our cedar-cored designs which has moved that technology as a budget option into competitive raceboats. That philosophy is continued in our relationships with research organizations like the Wolfson Unit, rig designers, materials suppliers, and especially builders. We try to work with the best builders as that is the best guarantee the client will end up happy and almost always offers the best long term value. Basically if you go with us you are getting the best the industry has to offer.

We're curious, what would you charge to design us a 35' light sprit-type PHRF racer?

MM:
This is a great example of something I keep saying: clients need to shop around more! Here is a quick preliminary for the sort of design you are asking about. I can sketch up preliminary ideas quickly to give a client a first iteration look at what we would do. For a design like this why not try twin rudders? It certainly needs the inverted vang solution we used on our 1999 Minis. The I-14 style forestay and pole, and big simple rig with no traveller would be a blast, combined with advanced construction for light weight and a larger bulb to give it more upwind pace - and pull the keel fin through the hatch as a single point lift for trailering. Now the client may come back and say actually they want reverse sheer and a wing rig like our Open 40 - great, that's what the preliminaries are for! That level of work involves a minimal preliminary fee starting around $500 which allows a client to get a feel for what's on offer. The full design with complete composite engineering in epoxy/carbon and builder support would be about $10,000 including the prelims. So please initial below ________ and provide a deposit if you would like to proceed with this project. Only kidding!!

You've got some boats in production. What types of boats are they?

MM:
There are about 3 proposals about to turn into custom projects for this winter, all in the 50-60 range. One of those is a project we hope to be announcing shortly for a production racing big boat, watch this space. On the series production side we are currently upgrading production of our 21' 'Blue' Mini Transat design to a Mk II version biased towards the lighter airs expected in the next Mini Transat race. Another big avenue is the 'Wally' styled high performance racer/cruiser for which we are doing a number of drawings, one being the production 40' Lake Tahoe prelim - simple, sleek, high tech but easy to take out shorthanded.

Mandrake under construction

We think it is safe to say that the look and performance of today's boat is markedly advanced over just a few years ago. Do you see the all boats eventually being light, sprit, runnerless non-overlapping jib configured?

MM:
That style of design really hits the target perfectly for the current One Design and Owner-Driver market. But design is always a matter of making the owner or a rating rule happy so there are as many different solutions as there are people and rules. I actually think your description above takes in two separate design elements: the light sprit type boats are great sportsboats, but the non-overlapping rig has a wider application - its something we will be using in an upcoming 54' medium displacement IRC design building this winter. The discussion is back to the low drag medium displacement (IACC) design type compared to the lighter Open design type - two different approaches.

Look at the Open 60 vs. IACC match in the last Farallones race in the Bay Area - in a windward leeward race the IACC will usually prevail in light-medium conditions as was the case this spring. The Open boats are at their best in a lot of breeze and reaching, so offshore they are very quick, but since a lot of people are moving to a multiple windward/leeward races per day format, the narrow waterline beam and big bulb on a medium light displacement boat is a really fast combination - things like the Mumm 30 and the new RP sleds are at the light end of this equation and the IACC designs are at the heavier end, but it's the new development path for mainstream design, and we are pushing as hard as anyone from Mandrake through to our new boats.

If an owner came to you today for a custom 50' for handicap racing in the states, what would you suggest?

MM:
I'd say, "call us to look at drawings for our new production 50' design!" but unfortunately I cant make them public yet. Its easy to give people the right boat once they know what rule and in what area they want to race. In the US it's a bit harder with PHRF blurring the field a bit. Here are some prelims for a Transpac 52 we did last year while the rule was in draft form. A full on Transpac boat would be more aggressive again, but this was a good all-around design allowing an owner to go upwind as well as he goes downwind.

The basics would probably involve medium-light displacement, big bulb on a deep fin, large carbon swept rig with non-overlapping jibs and masthead kites - fantastic.

The landscape of big boat racing has changed with the advent of the Farr 40, Mumm 30 and 1D 35. Is one-design racing, at all sizes the inevitable outcome?

MM:
As with most design questions, Yes and No. I see a lot of these trends as cyclical, swings of the pendulum. The One Design field is very healthy at the moment and producing some great boats, as well as some also-rans but that momentum is already starting to wane, as people remember what fun some of the big handicap events were to do, or want to race their not-so-active One Design locally after the fleet has died. The situation would be immeasurably improved if the rating rule scene had a clear alternative to offer, but with so many disparate objectives between all the parties involved at the administrative level its hard to see how we will make progress. Can I suggest that the ORC and RORC share their respective strengths and put forward a new rule blending the transparency of IRM with some of the refinement of IMS? Or even that the RORC offer their IRC rule in an IRM format worldwide?

Are you involved in the America's Cup?

MM:
I was in discussions with an Italian group considering a challenge, but it is difficult to suspend a growing design office in order to concentrate on the IACC field. Exciting, but a tough call. As it turned out they are sitting this one out and that suited my plans for Mills Design, we will be in a stronger position to work for them next time.

TransPac 50 3D cad rendering

What do you think of the current state of the AC, with so much money being thrown around?

MM:
That's the fuel that drives the AC engine. I think it's a unique event that makes unique demands on everyone involved, as long as the challenge has the importance and historical resonance to attract the big players then it will continue to thrive.

As a designer of performance boats, you are competing in a tough arena against some established and successful designers. How tough is it to exist, let alone compete in that world?

MM:
It's a very tough field, especially amongst the start-ups. In many ways this is a maturing field technically, but an immature industry economically - there are so many people who want to to get into the business that a lot of inflated claims and underbidding goes on to actually get the work. That leaves a lot of less-than-satisfied clients and bruised designers as everyone beats each other up to get the limited amount of work available. If you can survive the first few projects and create some happy owners then you can start raising your sights towards competing with the established offices who generally are able to carry on business in a more professional manner.

Having done a string of successful IRC designs like Aztec, Quokka IV (also UK IMS winner in '97), and Thunder II, moved into the Open field with the Minis and now an Open 40, and done a lot of development work on IRM and the IRM inspired design Mandrake we are really happy to be gaining momentum in the larger boat arena. I think the next 2 years will see Mills Design arriving in the ranks of the top offices worldwide in rating rule work.

We abhor PHRF for so many reasons. Give us your opinion of PHRF in the USA.

MM:
PHRF has a number of issues to deal with. Local administration really leaves it open to claims of bias and favoritism which isn't healthy, even if it less common than claimed. Like IRC its European counterpart, the lack of transparency makes it tough to do nice boats to the rule removing the incentive to build a new PHRF design. Lastly I think Time-on-Time which the rest of the world uses makes more sense than Time-on-Distance which is unable to take account of the actual conditions on the day. The one thing we all know is that the same boat will never complete the same distance in the same time twice, and TOT offers a method of acknowledging that.

With IMS dead, PHRF sucking, is Americap a viable alternative? Why or why not?

MM:
As I mentioned above it has IMS at its core. How many owners will pay a grand to get their boat Americap (IMS) measured? I thought that was a flaw in the Transpac 52 rule as well - IMS has never flown on the West Coast. I cant see Americap being able to bridge the gap between the top and bottom of regional level sailing - the largest spread in sailing from Cal 40's to Farr 40's. Why pursue it when they can have a rule giving demonstrably similar results for a fraction of the cost and complexity?

You have just returned from Cowes Week, What did you sail on and how was the event? Anything notable either boats, rating, or otherwise?

MM:
I was racing on Yes! (Mandrake under charter) helping them get up to speed (tied with a new Farr 52 for 4th), but mainly chatting to potential owners and getting some projects organized. The real news is what's in town for the Americas Cup Jubilee regatta. Every significant boat from the past 150 years seems to be here - all three J Class yachts Endeavour, Shamrock and Velsheda, classics like Cambria, superyachts like Stealth and Timoneer, over 30 12 metres led by Australia II, a class of IACC boats, its madness! They haven't really got space to moor the tenders for these boats say nothing of the boats themselves. Its going to be the most spectacular event ever perhaps, I'll be racing on a Swan 60 and we are the small fry.

Planning on coming back to the states?

MM:
I am back and forth all the time, I try and do Big Boat every year, I travel around and talk to sailmakers and builders, see what's happening there and try and drum up business. I have a Moore 24 in Richmond, so I try and keep my hand in on the Bay. I do think that West Coast design progress has slowed since its pioneering ULDB days. I had to leave and go elsewhere to see the 'next big thing' coming down the track, and it's the synthesis of light displacement and higher stability. I would really like to see a neat inexpensive Bay Area One design class thrive with its bigger breezes and short chop, but there is also money there for a couple of exotic sleek daysailers in the 60-70' range: walk up, unfurl the sails and be doing 10 knots uphill singlehanded! In the long term I would like to go back to splitting my time between Ireland and the US West Coast as I did in the mid 1990's, a very productive time for me. With a Canadian Open 40 client, and a big project starting in Australia we are developing the international client base needed for long term growth.

Tell folks how they find you

MM:
Start with the website www.mills-design.com, but then call me on +353 404 48500, I enjoy discussing projects with owners no matter what they decide to do.

Thanks Mark.

Mark Mills
MILLS DESIGN
tel: +353 404 48500
fax: +353 404 48501
info@mills-design.com
millsdesign@compuserve.com
http://www.mills-design.com