Stars & Stripes (yacht) - Catamaran-hull Yachts

Catamaran-hull Yachts

Due to the challenge being made outside a defined sailboat class, Conner enlisted the help of designers Morrelli, Chance & Hubbart & MacLane, and aircraft manufacturer Scaled Composites, to fabricate a revolutionary catamaran, Stars & Stripes (US-1), which dominated over KZ 1, the challenger from New Zealand. The New Zealand team sued and initially won the America's Cup trophy in a court case; however the decision was reversed on appeal, and the San Diego Yacht Club retained the Cup.

Gino J. Morelli, Britton Chance, Jr., Dave W. Hubbard, Duncan T. MacLane were the team of designers that worked with sailor Dennis Conner in the creation of the first ever Americas Cup catamaran, in the 1988 Americas cup challage - Stars & Stripes US-1 The team worked with Scaled Composites to create the wing design and built the 2 hulls in Capastrano Beach, California at RD Boatworks.

Following a complex legal battle, the designers were left with only 10 months to design build and test a boat that would later go on to win in a race that had started when challenge came from New Zeland using an immense monohull New Zealand had designed to make what the courts deemed a legal challenge upon the cup. After winning the races the same Judge ruled that the race was unfair, but an appeals court later overturned the ruling awarding the cup back to the San Diego Yacht Club.

Gino J. Morelli, the teams leader had a passion for catamaran and had been racing and building the large C & D class cats, designed for use in the Little America cup event, in Costa Mesa California. Today Morelli heads the design group Morelli & Melvin and continues to design racng catamarans, having designed Steve Fosset's 125' monster catamaran "Playstation" that went on In 2001 to travel across the Atlantic in four days and 17 hours, an average speed of nearly 30 miles per hour.

Britton Chance, Jr. was a young naval architect whose father Britton Chance was a former Olympic sailor and Gold Medal winner, whom had been designing racing monohulls and had authored "The Design and Performance of Twelve Meter Yachts", Published by: American Philosophical Society

Dave W. Hubbard, worked with the team from Scaled Composites in the development of the giant wing section designed for use by one of the 2 60 foot catamarans that were built to compete in the 1998 race. Hubbard designed the winged system for the Oracle Racing America's Cup defender, USA-17 that defended the cup in 2010.

Duncan MacLane, a key member of Dennis Connor's successful Stars and Stripes 1988 Catamaran design and sailing team, later went on to win the "Little Americas Cup" International Catamaran Challenge Trophy in 1996 at the McCrae Yacht Club in Australia in the final race of that series using the C Class catamarans. MacLane now builds wing sections for the current competitors in the 2012 Americas Cup event.

The surprise challenge by Sir Michael Fay caught the San Diego Yacht Club unprepared. They initially rejected the challenge, but were compelled to respond when Mr. Fay brought the matter before the New York courts. The court's decision was handed down in November 1987, leaving little time to prepare for the 1988 challenge race.

As the challenge used the original Deed of Gift as its basis, the design requirements specified only that she be a single masted yacht no more than 90 feet at the waterline. The San Diego Yacht Club and Dennis Conner's syndicate chose to respond with an assuredly faster multi-hull design. Two Stars & Stripes cats were built, one with a conventional soft sail (Stars & Stripes S1), and the second with a wing mast (Stars & Stripes H3) built by Scaled Composites. The wing masted boat proved to have superior performance so it was used in the defense.

After the 1988 America's Cup, the wing masted boat was bought by Mexican yachtsman Victor Tapia and sails in Mexico. The soft sail yacht was bought by Steve Fossett and used to set speed records in various yacht races.