area 123 | on the water

architect: Luca Brenta Yacht Design

A pure tribute to one of the finest, if not the best ever designed keel boat only 100 years young. The Star. This is how we would like to introduce our latest design. A voyage to fully understand and make full benefit of available technologies, in order to mix the design criteria of a boat conceived more than 100 years whom has seen over the years the best sailors in history to challenge each other in the various racing venues all over the world.
There are books written on epic regattas and still the fleet is very alive from Olimpic sailors down to Weekend racers. Fantastic boat in a range of sailing conditions.
Our challenge, in the third millennium has been to re-propose this concept in larger scale model, yet retaining one of the unique peculiarities of the star. The rig and the way the rig is managed. The Star Class rig bends and pivots across a large range of angle. It bends backwards to make the mainsail flatter via use of the runners (no backstays…) while downwind the mast pivots forward by 3 deg. We have designed a concept boat pushing the design in every detail of the boat. The boat is built in pre-preg carbon over a nomex core. Can not get any better than this. The keel is lifting and canting over 50 deg each side. There are 9 hydraulic piston on the boat managing the mainsheet, the vang, the mast step + 4 piston (2 each side) to manage the runners. One set is the long run for gibing set and one couple is for fine up-wind trimming. The last two piston propel the keel.
The blade is very thin high aspect ratio built in 17-PH, machined. The bulb is, lead, is CNC machined as well. All this has been produced by Cariboni in italy.
The mast is specifically design to meet as close as possible the bent shape of the star class mast. The spreaders pivots for and aft by 25 deg. while the mast step move backwards to accommodate the forward pivoting. It has been produced by King Spar (Valencia).
The rigging is made in Carbon by Carbo Link. The forestay and runners are in textile by Gottifredi Maffioli as well as all the running riggings. All the rigging is attached to the boat via loops and cable fittings opposed to metal fittings.
What else… We believe we have gone a long way down the road in order to implement a number of solutions and ideas to make a small boat a great project. Maybe she will not be the easiest boat to sail, but we have a great deal to learn yet and we strongly believe that most of these concepts could be used in future projects…particularly the rig to truly have a short handed crew considering that gennakers or spinnaker are not needed.