CR 914 Designer

Interviewed in Japan
By Rick Martin

Rick Martin is our foreign correspondent in Japan. He lives in Tokyo representing The Boeing Company. Over the years he has supplied us with interesting articles on the 914 racing scene in Japan. He has his CR 914 with him. The "Japan Super Mini America's Cup" is sailed in CR 914's. The following was sent as an e-mail October 28, 1999. Ed.

Dear Chuck, I did get to the 15th Japan Super Mini America's Cup a day after returning from the US. After winning the opening six race series of the four-part, one-day event, the jet lag caught up with me and I wound up fourth overall out of 33. [That sounds like excellent performance, Ed.] The same format that I described in my report on the 1995 JSMAC was used again this year and Motoshi Munesuke the '95 champion prevailed for his 6th win. It turns out Munesuke-san is also a top competitor here in the IOM Class (International One- Meter).

I managed a couple brief discussions with Kazuo Takei, the designer of the CR 914. Although Mr. Takei speaks good English, Isamu Kawata, the son of AG's President, acted as interpreter for part of our conversation. The following is taken from memory and some scribbled notes and is not an exact transcript of our conversations.

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Rick Martin:	How did you get into model yacht design?
Kazuo Takei:	About 10 years ago I got involved in racing the 36/600 and Marblehead classes in Japan and thought I could come up with better designs. My designs were successful and that lead to design work for AG and currently in the IOM class.
RM:	AG commissioned you to do what is now the Cup Racer?
KT:	Yes, First we decided to do a half-meter version of an America's Cup 12 Meter. [This was probably ~1983, Ed.] It was important to AG to keep the yacht small because there isn't a lot of space to store things in Japanese homes and we wanted to be able to easily store and transport the boats fully rigged. That design proved to be too small to perform as well as we wanted so our efforts shifted to a model of the newly forming America's Cup Class.
RM:	Did you model the Cup Racer after any particular boat of the early AC class?
KT:	No. There wasn't a lot of knowledge in Japan about what AC boats would look like at the time so I did my best to anticipate what the shape might be. Generally speaking you can't take a full size design and simply shrink it down. Exact scale models usually do not perform well and need a lot of refinement. I started with what I knew about the 36/600 class and married that with what I thought the AC class rules would create to come up with the initial design.
RM:	So you actually started with a 36-inch boat, how did the CR 610 come into existence?
KT:	AG still believed that a smaller boat would be more readily accepted in the Japanese market so we developed both boats simultaneously however the CR610 was mass-produced first.
RM:	How did you arrive at the details such as sail area/displacement ratios, keel weight, draft etc.?
KT:	(Big Grin) Frankly, through a lot of trial and error. We modified the hull shape at least 30 times and tried maybe 20 different keel configurations. I wanted to get performance that would be satisfying to both the novice and the experienced sailor. At the same time the boat had to be suitable for mass production as well as easy to build so it couldn't get too sophisticated like the 36/600. It was a constant compromise. The rig and sail plan took a lot of time to finalize and we ended up testing as many as 80 variations.
RM:	Most everyone familiar with the Cup Racer would agree it came out extremely well. Would you change anything if you were doing the design today?
KT:	I would probably experiment with a narrower boat. The boat is really intended for the lighter winds we experience in Japan. Narrow and lighter are better in our conditions. But overall I am very pleased with how close my design parallels the early AC designs.
RM:	As a seven-time winner of the Super Mini America's Cup do you have any tips your can share on setting up or sailing the Cup Racer?
KT:	The boats should be sailed free and not pinched to get the best performance. Upwind I sail with the jib boom pointing towards the leeward chain-plates and the main boom pointing toward the leeward corner of the transom. The mainsail leech needs to be kept tight when it's windy and the mast raked forward to balance the helm.
RM:	That's all it took to win seven times?
KT:	Well, that plus get good starts, play the wind shifts correctly and don't get tangled in traffic.
RM:	Have you or are you working on any full sized boats?
KT:	No, I have only consulted informally on other Japanese yacht designs. There is not a lot of demand for full time yacht designers in Japan.
RM:	Is there anything else you would like to add about the 914
KT:	Well, I would to see more opportunities for international competitions like we had in San Diego in 1991 and I would like to see the class grow to be as popular as some of the other model yacht classes around the world.

Kasuo Takei is currently the General Manager of the Shin Nishinomiya Yacht Harbor, a modern, marina near Osaka Japan. It is home to about 300 large pleasure craft. In addition to his duties as head of the marina he acts as race chairman for many yacht racing activities in the Osaka-Kobe area.

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Rick proposed he work with Mr. Takei to examine the differences between the rules and practices governing the Japanese CR 914 Class and our class rules. I support Rick in this endeavor.

It would be interesting if in the future there could be international competition in our class.

Editor

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