Koch Syndicate Debuts New Mainsail : America’s Cup: Material said to be lighter than Kevlar and twice as stiff.

SAN DIEGO —  The America 3 boat drew a crowd Friday when it showed up on the America’s Cup race course to test a new silver mainsail.

“As soon as we hoisted it we found all the other challengers and competitors around us taking pictures and looking at it,” syndicate chief Bill Koch said.

Italy’s Il Moro di Venezia last week unveiled two carbon-fiber headsails and a carbon-fiber main, distinctive for their geometric panels of shades of gray to black. America 3’s are similar but with a silvery sheen.

“We feel it is a better sail than what the Italians have put up, although I would say it’s still experimental,” Koch said. “We plan to use it in our Round 3 coming up with Dennis (Conner next Tuesday).”

Koch also said the sails are within America 3’s spiraling budget.

“We’ve got it capped now at $55 million,” he said.

Although America 3 showed only a mainsail, Koch said the team also had tested headsails and a spinnaker. The material is a mix of carbon-fiber, liquid crystals and, Koch said, “a high-density, high-molecular polymer,” combined in a secret process.

The advantages, Koch said, are reducing weight aloft that causes the boat to pitch fore and aft, slowing it down, and to increase stiffness so the sail will hold its aerodynamic shape.

“(The sails) are 50% the weight of Kevlar and twice as stiff,” Koch said.

Kevlar is the world standard primary material in ocean racing sails.

Heiner Meldner, the America 3 technical director who developed the material, said, “The average weight of a Kevlar main is around 200 pounds. We expect to save up to 40%.”

He estimated that could mean a gain of “up to half a minute around the race course.”

Koch said the idea was born of an article about liquid crystal structural applications he read in the magazine Science News and passed along to Meldner to see if it would be useful.

“We don’t have a name for it yet,” Koch said. “We’ll come up with a name that will have a cube in it.”

Vincent Moeyersoms of the America 3 design team said the sails probably wouldn’t be used in the first race Tuesday but would be used sometime later in the round.

America 3 has exclusive access to the process, Koch said, but will make it available to the U.S. Olympic sailors this summer, as much as Olympic rules will allow.