America's Cup racing rivals have a common bond in Skagit County

Sunday, November 10, 2002
The Seattle Times
Ron C. Judd / Times staff columnist

As it turns out, all the big West Coast high-tech power centers have a stake in this week's high-profile OneWorld vs. Oracle sailboat race in New Zealand: Seattle. San Francisco. Silicon Valley. Sedro-Woolley. Sedro-Woolley?

Yup.

The hulls of OneWorld's USA-67 and Oracle's USA-76, scheduled to begin their Louis Vuitton Cup quarterfinal battle tomorrow (weather permitting), are at least partly children of a common father: Janicki Industries, the Skagit County company whose computerized, five-axis router gave birth to molds for both yachts last year. Since they rolled out the doors in a region known more for cow milk than carbon fiber, hulls of the blue OneWorld and jet-black Oracle boats have been transported across the globe, outfitted with different equipment and put through the paces by owners -- Oracle's Larry Ellison and OneWorld's Craig McCaw and Paul Allen -- with about as much in common as oat bran and creme brulee. The boats will be manned by crews from two well-financed syndicates that frankly don't like one another.

But for the boat hulls themselves, it's all little more than sibling rivalry -- a reunion, of sorts, with a shirt-sleeve relative from the Skagit flats. Not that they were pressed from the same mold -- or anything even close. Janicki Industries, which creates composite boat hulls, fighter-jet fuselages, train nose cones and other hard-to-build items, was following design directions with opposite philosophies.

OneWorld's USA-65 and USA-67 came from a traditional "male" mold, in which carbon-fiber materials are applied over a positive shape, says the company's John Janicki. Oracle's nearly identical twin hulls, later christened USA-71 and USA-76, were crafted from a "female" mold, in which the materials are placed inside a negative, boat-shaped cutout. Oracle's method is more difficult, presenting "major technical issues," Janicki said. But those conceivably could be offset by one perceived advantage: With a female mold, the smooth side of the fabric, when finished, is the outside, facing the water. It's also easier to produce two nearly identical hulls this way -- an advantage in later rig and sail-testing, according to Oracle. None of this, of course, could wind up as lunchtime conversation for Janicki and his brother, Peter, during the hush-hush design phase in the cloak-and-dagger world of America's Cup racing. "I told (OneWorld officials) this would be a perfect place to build their boat, because our guys wouldn't even know what they were building," Janicki says, chuckling. "It just looked kind of like a big whale to us."

Things got a little touchy when Oracle's people decided to use the same company. "There was some overlap," Janicki says, although each syndicate was informed the other was there, and the expected non-disclosure agreements were well in place -- nothing new at a company whose clients often are building something top-secret.

The two syndicates -- like Boeing and other Janicki clients -- left Sedro-Woolley with their secrets intact. And this week, they will be duking it out again on the water. The question: Did the construction make a difference in performance?

Time will tell -- maybe. An America's Cup yacht's other furnishings -- keel and bulb, rigging, rudder, sails, equipment and crew -- might have as much to do with on-water performance as the hull itself. The two syndicates' chosen hulls have fought to a draw so far, with each crew taking one race in early meetings on Hauraki Gulf. But the competition gets much fiercer tomorrow, when OneWorld and Oracle clash in a head-to-head, best-of-seven battle to continue on the fast track to the semifinals of the Louis Vuitton Cup. The winner remains in the regatta's "double-chance" bracket. It's a big advantage: Double-chance crews, in addition to having the luxury of redeeming a lost race series, get ample time off after to prepare for the semis.

Losers, by contrast, drop to the lower bracket to face the winners from the "single-chance" group in a quarterfinals repechage. In single-chance race series, the losers are out. And even if you win, it's another week or 10 days' worth of racing wear and tear on the boat and crew, while other boats rest. The bottom line: The loser of the OneWorld/Oracle series isn't done for, but faces a far rockier road for survival into the regatta's final rounds. That's incentive enough for both crews. But there's obviously a lot more at stake. The Seattle-vs.-Silicon Valley angle was juicy to start with. It got juicier with Ellison's recent rantings about OneWorld being part of the ongoing Microsoft conspiracy to rule the world.

Who will have bragging rights? Tomorrow's opening race will be telling. Oracle is on a long winning streak since adding Chris Dickson to the afterguard -- and subtracting Ellison. OneWorld acknowledges making some counterproductive boat tweaks after dominating the early racing. But team members say they have several new tricks at hand to get that boat speed -- and more -- back in time for the despised Oracle bunch.

They will need every ounce of it.

Because if the early rounds of this little contest have proved anything, it's this: No matter who they're working for, those boys in Sedro-Woolley can pop out an awfully fast boat.