Design Team

EN,FR,DE,NL 25.12.1946

Growing up Rolf Vrolijk raced small boats like Finns and Yoles, and it was this love of sailing that led him to pursue a career in naval architecture. "I started out doing the odd job here and there for local sail lofts, designing their sails and helping them to develop their models," says Alinghi's chief designer of his early days in the working world. He then studied mechanical engineering before going on to study naval architecture in Delft, providing him with the academic background that has taken him to becoming one of the most celebrated keelboat designers in the world.

Designing a multihull is not entirely new territory for Vrolijk, who through his company Judel Vrolijk and Co., has been involved in designing semi-custom cruising catamarans. Nevertheless Alinghi 5 represents a big departure not only for Vrolijk but everyone else on the design team. The very nature of drawing something from scratch, rather than the evolutionary process of previous Cup campaigns, was a problem in itself, as he explains: "The big challenge for us was that we actually stayed a team; together. And as a team we took on this task of developing a model of something which we hadn't done as a group before. "Our task was to come up with options of the different concepts and evaluate which direction would be the best one. I think within the group we had a lot of people with experience but also we asked for some people to look over our shoulder, experienced multihull designers like Nigel Irens and Benoit Cabaret. This helped quite a lot in the early stages but at a certain point we just had to develop our own tools to be able to predict speeds and then predict the end product."

As principal designer on the design team of the winning boat in the last two Cups, Vrolijk was already enjoying his time working with Alinghi. But for him this is the best yet. "What we're doing at the moment is the most challenging project we've had, and we are still learning everyday. The moment we put Alinghi 5 in the water, when you see it sailing for the first day and flying a hull, I think that was the most exciting time for me. But as soon as you see it sailing, you get very quickly used to the dimensions and the speed potentials. It's surprising how quickly you come to view it as just another machine where your job is to work really, really hard on continually improving it."

Alinghi 5 has been widely praised for her good looks, her sleek lines and beautiful streamlining. Are aesthetics important to a technician like Vrolijk? "Well, it's one part of it. I would say to look at Alinghi 5 it looks right as a logical concept and when you look at the whole boat as a unit. It looks like a very powerful machine, which it actually is, of course. Now the task is up to us - and the sailors - to get the full potential out of it."

Needless to say Vrolijk takes a lot of pride in Alinghi 5. "Yes, I am proud to have been involved, as is everyone here on the design team. We feel like we have made a big contribution to yacht design, not only in terms of our own careers, but in terms of the design world generally."