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SGS and Alinghi, A Strategic Partnership
Critical rudder testing saves the day

13/09/07

When SGS’ sponsorship of Alinghi was announced in 2003 it was destined to always be more than just a simple sponsorship. An Alinghi spokesperson at the time said, “We will defend our title by reviewing, testing and refining every aspect of our performance over the next four years [using] techniques that SGS uses every day for thousands of companies around the world.”  As the world leader in inspection, verification, testing and certification, SGS was ideally suited to partner with Alinghi in its journey to defend the 32nd America’s Cup in Valencia.

Over the past four years, SGS and Alinghi have partnered in numerous ways, going above and beyond the scope of a traditional sponsorship. From providing project management services around the construction of the Alinghi base in Valencia, to ensuring that all of the regulations governing occupational health and workplace safety were met, and finally to critical testing conducted on the Alinghi rudder just weeks before the finals of the America’s Cup in June 2007, SGS became a key strategic partner to Alinghi in its technical and logistical preparations for the defence of the Cup.

Clean Bill of Health
It was supposed to be a race between Alinghi’s SUI 91 and SUI 100 boats, under real America’s Cup conditions and rules, in preparation for the upcoming finals, a little more than three weeks away. Team New Zealand and the Italian syndicate Luna Rossa had yet to begin the final stage of the Louis Vuitton Cup, which would eventually propel New Zealand to challenge Alinghi for sailing’s most coveted prize. Under the watchful eyes of race officials and the media, everything seemed on course for a great duel between the two Swiss boats. Then disaster struck. One of the boats’ rudders snapped while they were getting ready for the start. The practice race was cancelled, the two Alinghi boats towed back into port, and news of the rudder failure circulated widely in the press.

Reliable Equipment
Thinking back to Alinghi’s victory over Team New Zealand in 2003, the importance of being able to rely on the equipment, was a key lesson taken away from the race. Team New Zealand’s boat suffered multiple equipment failures throughout the race, a snapped mast, a broken spinnaker pole, and technical problems with the rigging. In sailing, you can keep a lot of spare parts back at the dock, but there are no pit stops. Alinghi ended up defeating Team New Zealand 5-0, taking the cup to Europe for the first time in its 151-year history.

Flashback to January 2005. Alinghi was at SGS headquarters in Geneva to give a basic overview of the team and the sponsorship to SGS employees. The subject of SGS’ capabilities in non-destructive testing came up during the discussion and the representatives from Alinghi were extremely interested. SGS and Alinghi agreed to a more formal meeting in which SGS’ experts in this area would present its non-destructive testing capabilities to the Alinghi design team. After this meeting, Alinghi was intent on conducting non-destructive testing on various parts of the boat, and the relationship between the two deepened.

Alinghi sent SGS a piece of the deck from one of their boats, made of a carbon fibre honeycomb composite. SGS conducted a three-dimensional computed tomography scan of the section of deck. It sounds complicated, but it is the same type of scan that hospitals use when they refer to taking a CT or ‘Cat’ scan of a patient. The technology works by taking high power x-rays of an object section by section, as little as one millimetre apart, as the x-ray camera rotates around the object a full 360 degrees. The data from these x-rays are then processed by the machine’s software to create a three dimensional image of the object. Imagine being able to slice any object with exact precision, millimetre by millimetre, and then taking those slices to create a virtual model of it, which you can then look at from any perspective in three dimensions.  

The scans of the deck revealed some minor flaws in the carbon fibre honeycomb structure, but nothing to question the integrity of the construction. Alinghi was impressed by the capabilities of the CT scan and the ability it gave them to actually look inside the materials that made up their boats and to know with certainty their structural integrity.

By October 2006, Alinghi had just built a new rudder and wanted SGS to examine it. The rudder arrived in Germany for testing as two carbon cores, they had not yet been glued together to form the final rudder. SGS examined the cores using a medical CT scanner which uncovered two suspicious areas where the density of the carbon differed from the surrounding areas. While one of the areas of greater density was part of the design to strengthen the rudder, the second area, however, was not. Though not indicative of future problems with the rudder, Alinghi took it to heart as they departed for their Dubai training ground to begin practising for their defence of the America’s Cup in Valencia.

Fast-forward to late May 2007. What the public didn’t know was that Alinghi started their defence of the Cup with four rudders for their two boats. After the rudder broke in the warm up race between SUI 91 and SUI 100, Alinghi was now left with only two healthy rudders for the two boats, not exactly the position the defender wanted to be in with little more than three weeks before the start of the finals of the America’s Cup.

SGS received an emergency call from Alinghi. They wanted SGS to scan what remained of the broken rudder to figure out what happened, and to look at one of the remaining rudders to determine if it would suffer the same fate. Rudder Nine, the broken one, and Rudder Ten, one of the two remaining intact rudders were headed to Berlin for inspection accompanied by Alinghi’s chief engineer. Because the industrial CT scanner at the SGS laboratory in Dortmund was not big enough to scan a whole rudder, which measures three metres by sixty centimetres, the scan would have to take place at a local Berlin hospital, in a medical CT scanner usually meant for people.

SGS experts joined Alinghi’s chief engineer in Berlin to oversee the evaluation. The external damage to Rudder Nine was clearly visible to the human eye, but under the power of the CT scanner, its internal damage also became visible. A rudder typically undergoes the most stress and pressure in the section where it connects to the hull of the boat. For Rudder Nine, this is where the problems started. It appeared that the rudder failed where its two halves were joined together, with the cracks originating in the section of the rudder where it joined the hull. An SGS polymer expert was able to determine from the scans that the glue that held the two halves together showed signs of stress, and ultimately led to the rudder’s failure. Rudder Nine would later be taken to the SGS laboratory in Dortmund, where it would be examined with an industrial strength CT scanner, delivering one hundred times the resolution of the medical version. The scan at Dortmund confirmed the hypothesis about where the rudder failure originated.

The SGS experts now turned their eyes to Rudder Ten, one of the two remaining intact rudders in Alinghi’s possession, and did a thorough analysis in the medical scanner in the Berlin hospital. Patients and hospital staff alike were surprised to see a three metre long rudder being wheeled through the hospital hallways. While the rudder did not need any anaesthetic for the procedure, the SGS and Alinghi engineers eagerly awaiting the results could have probably used something to take the edge off.

The results were in, Rudder Ten was in perfect health. It showed none of the same telltale signs that Rudder Nine revealed under examination, and which eventually led to its failure. The Alinghi engineers could now return to Valencia with the good news, and Rudder Ten, in hand. The rest, as they say, is history.

And history it was indeed. Alinghi went on to beat Team New Zealand in the America’s Cup final winning five races against New Zealand’s two, the final race being decided by a one second margin in Alinghi’s favour. It not only marked two consecutive America’s Cup victories for Alinghi, but it was also the first successful defence of the Cup in Europe since the competition began in 1851.

Alinghi Managing Director and Design Coordinator Grant Simmer put it best when he told SGS that, “You’re owed part of this victory.” SGS’ testing and inspection of Rudders Nine and Ten and the resulting certification of Rudder Ten gave both the Alinghi engineers and crew the confidence and trust needed to push their boat to the edge of its performance capabilities and win the America’s Cup.

In sailing, there is a fine line between failure and victory, and often that it is determined by the skill of the crew and their ability to push the boat to its maximum performance levels. Knowing that Rudder Ten could be completely trusted gave the Alinghi crew the competitive advantage they needed to win, by being able to push SUI 100 to the edge of its capabilities.

With the recently announced new America’s Cup Class rule which calls for larger, faster boats, the importance of non-destructive testing will only increase. As these boats undergo more stress and strain then their predecessors, the likelihood of equipment failure will continue to be a threat to those competing.

As the use of lighter, stronger carbon materials becomes more and more prevalent in industry and every day life, SGS’ testing capabilities in this area are a real asset. Today, everything from sail boats to airplanes are using some form of carbon fibre material, and it is becoming more and more important to be able to examine these materials once they have been stressed during their everyday use, a need which non-destructive testing is ideally suited to fulfil.

Base Construction
The construction of Alinghi’s base in Valencia was a major undertaking in which the stakes were very high. This would be Team Alinghi’s home in the lead up to the final race in 2007 and would need to accommodate the entire team, their families, guests and the general public.

For starters, the base in Valencia would be much larger than their previous home in Auckland, roughly 70% larger, totalling close to 7,000 square metres of floor space. It would accommodate over one hundred Alinghi team members from over fifty-five different professions, all of whom would have to work together seamlessly for Alinghi to keep the America’s Cup in Europe. A lot of thought was put into how each separate unit would interact with the others, and a special focus on reducing fragmentation between the teams was top of mind for Alinghi. The real challenge was optimising communications within the team and the new base really allowed them to work together as one seamless unit.

Right from the start, SGS adopted a leading role in the areas of planning and project management for the base. SGS specialists and technicians carefully examined offers and submissions, and drew up comparative reports and technical studies on the various contractors involved in the project. SGS teams worked in such varied areas as budget control, inspection of the quality of building materials, supervision of construction work and monitoring of schedules. SGS also provided consulting services relating to economic and legal aspects of the base construction.

The Alinghi base in Valencia was officially opened on 15 October 2005, and served as an invaluable asset to the team as they made history in successfully defending the 32nd America’s Cup.

Occupational Health and Safety
Another major task adopted by SGS was to ensure that the respective Spanish and Swiss regulations governing occupational health and workplace safety at the base were duly complied with. SGS experts carried out a risk analysis for each task and prepared an accident prevention plan for all of the activities at the base. They also paid special attention to the potential dangers facing the crew and technical personnel both on land and at sea, especially when working at mast level on the boats.

Accident prevention also extended to machinery and equipment. SGS specialists closely examined the various cranes and platforms required for lifting and transferring the boats from the water to the maintenance area. Activities here included performing load tests, testing alarm and warning devices, supervising the use of equipment in line with applicable Spanish regulations, as well as preparing reports to certify the proper functioning of the machinery and the various installations.

According to Hamish Ross, Alinghi’s General Counsel, “The performance of SGS experts and technicians was remarkable. Thanks to their knowledge of regulations and of all our suppliers, we have been able to overcome countless problems, especially with respect to the preparation of the large volume of documentation relating to occupational health and safety that is required in Spain. Thanks to their motivation, efficiency and pleasant attitude, the experts and technicians at SGS have not only gained our respect and admiration, they have also become our friends,” and went on to point out that SGS personnel were always there to help solve any problems that arose, around the clock if necessary.

A Unique Relationship
Over the past four years, both Alinghi and SGS saw what began as a straightforward sponsorship evolve into something far more valuable, a strategic partnership, from which both SGS and Alinghi benefited greatly. From the services SGS provided around base construction and project management to the last minute testing performed on Alinghi’s rudders, SGS was able to lend its expertise in inspection, verification, testing and certification to help Alinghi make history and successfully defend its title as the world’s best sailing team.  At the same time, SGS took away many valuable lessons on teamwork, how to build trust, and how to deliver a true competitive advantage, lessons it carries over to its daily work serving clients all over the world