Ben Lexcen

Benjamin Lexcen AM (born Robert Clyde Miller, 19 March 1936 – 1 May 1988) was an Australian yachtsman and marine architect.

Born in the small town of Boggabri, New South Wales on 19 March 1936.

After his parents, labourer Edward William Miller and Ethel Doreen, née Green abandoned him as a child he stayed briefly at Boys' Town, Engadine, before going to his grandfather at Newcastle.

He left school at age 14 to pursue a locomotive mechanic's apprenticeship but soon found his attention turning to sailboats.

At 16, he designed his first sailboat The Comet with his friend William Bennett in Hamilton, NSW, and began to make a name for himself in local competition.

Miller did his sailmaking apprenticeship with Norman Wright in Queensland.

Miller's designs were highly innovative.

His entry, "Taipan" in the 1960 18Footer World Championship started the modern era of the class and Miller won the World Championship in 1961 with the successor, "Venom".

With friend Craig Whitworth, he founded a boatbuilding, sail-making and ship-chandlery firm (Miller and Whitworth) and designed boats part-time as well.

One of his lasting early successes was the design that became the International Contender.

It was selected in 1967, in multi boat trials, as a potential Olympic successor to the Finn dinghy.

The Contender was awarded International status in 1968 and now has fleets in more than twelve countries throughout the world.

His keelboat designs of the early 1970s featured clean, easily driven hulls and relatively small sail area.

He had great success with a series of these designs starting with the innovative "Ginkgo".

Miller competed in the Soling at the 1972 Munich Olympics representing Australia in sailing with Denis O'Neil and Ken Berkeley as fellow crew members.

Miller was commissioned by Alan Bond to build Apollo, an ocean racer.

This partnership continued when Bond first challenged for the America's Cup in 1974 with the Miller-designed 12-metre class yacht Southern Cross, named for the southern hemisphere constellation.

Their challenge for the Cup was unsuccessful but Miller was kept on as the designer for future yachts, all of them designed to the 12-metre class rules as used for America's Cup competition at the time.

During the first years of his partnership with Bond, Miller withdrew his partnership from his sail-making company but the company retained its name of Miller and Whitworth.

Soon after the 1974 Cup challenge, Miller changed his name to avoid confusion with his former company.

Keen to prevent the possibility of there being any confusion surrounding his name and business interests in the future, he asked a friend who worked for Reader's Digest to find out the least-used surname within their membership.

The result was Lexcen.

"Ben" was the name of his dog.

Bond challenged for the 1977 America's Cup using the Lexcen and Johan Valentijn designed 12M Australia against media mogul Ted Turner and again with a Lexcen modified Australia in 1980 against Dennis Conner, losing both times.

After the 1980 challenge Lexcen realised that to win against the defenders, with their 100+ years of America's Cup experience, they would need a superior boat.

His next design featured a host of advanced design features, not the least of which was a revolutionary winged keel, intended to lower the drag and to make the boat more stable and maneuverable in the water.

The keel design reduced tip vortex, a turbulence resulting in conventional keels from the pressure differential between the windward (low pressure) and leeward (high pressure) sides.

Australia II's design was to prove highly controversial, protested because some part of the design was done before and during the testing of the keel in a Dutch tank testing facility.

Australia II was a revolutionary design approach with her winged keel and hull design featuring the shortest waterline length ever measured on a 12-metre.

To yachtsmen accustomed to seeing racing yachts out of the water, Australia II is striking.

Its conventional long slim topsides flare down to a short waterline hinting at the dramatic, minimal, slippery underwater hull shape which was fast to turn as well as easily driven and quick to accelerate.

Ben often remarked that Australia II is a whole boat, not just a keel.

The New York Yacht Club, holders of the Cup, formally protested both that Australia II was not a legal 12 metre boat, and that the design itself was not of Australian origin.

The ruling arrived at on the boat confirmed that Australia II complied with both the 12-metre class and the America's Cup rules.

He is famous for the winged keel design applied to Australia II which, in 1983, became the first non-American yacht to win the prestigious America's Cup in 132 years.

The 1983 America's Cup saw Lexcen's Australia II, with John Bertrand at the helm, take on the NYYC skipper Dennis Conner and the defender yacht, Liberty.

The Australians were sure they had a fast boat.

Australia II had dominated the challenger eliminations just as Liberty had dominated the closer defender trials, honing her tuning and performance.

The questions on her design origin were not formally answered at the time, but the controversy re-emerged in 2009 (see Later claims of Dutch Design for details).

Claims that Peter van Oossanen was the designer of the Australia II keel rather than Ben have been strongly rejected by John Bertrand and by John Longley, an important member of the Australia II team using documentary evidence.