35th Americas Cup: Foiling Multihulls!

35th America's Cup on Foils-no AC 62!!!!!!

MAJOR CHANGE for 35th CUP


From Scutllebutt tonight: In a startling development the teams have all agreed to drop the AC 62!!!!
Whole article here: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/2...cas Cup Decision to sail smaller boat in 2017

America’s Cup: Decision to sail smaller boat in 2017

The competitors and organizers of the 2017 America’s Cup are planning to implement a series of rule changes to dramatically reduce team operational costs, primarily by racing in a smaller boat than the previously announced AC62.

“After reviewing prototypes of the new AC45 sports boats being tested on the water over the past several months, it is clear that if we raced smaller boats in 2017, we could dramatically reduce costs without sacrificing any of the spectacle or the design, engineering and athletic challenge fundamental to the America’s Cup,” said Commercial Commissioner Harvey Schiller.

“We have a responsibility to think of what is best for the long term health of the America’s Cup as well as improving the value equation for team principals and partners. Racing a smaller boat in 2017 and beyond is a big step in the right direction.

“The existing operational costs of teams is much too high with a boat like the AC62. We discussed making this change early last year at a Competitors meeting in London but at that stage only ORACLE TEAM USA and Emirates Team New Zealand were in favor of using a smaller boat.

“But now that the teams have seen these new boats in action there is a clear majority of competitors who support the idea. I’d like to be able to say we have unanimous support from all the teams but that is not the case.”

Boat speed in the new boat is expected to be similar to what was achieved in the last America’s Cup through increased time foiling and advances in design and engineering.

“This will be a big change, but it is a necessary one if we are to create a sustainable America’s Cup for the future,” said Sir Ben Ainslie, the skipper and team principal of Ben Ainslie Racing. “These boats will create a significant cost saving whilst still providing a real challenge for sailors and designers alike.”

 

Not good news for Bermuda. I wonder if they were even consulted?

 

35th America's Cup on Foils-AC 62 Out!

I'm not sure it will hurt Bermuda-they'll still have the Cup just in a smaller boat. I do find it amazing.

 

35th America's Cup on Foils-----62 out!

From Scuttlebutt tonight:

Coutts explains that Pete Melvin, who was involved in creating the design rule for the AC72 used in 2013, and the AC62 that had been planned for 2017, has been retained by the teams to propose revised specifications:
“A length somewhere between 45-50′ seems to be the consensus, enabling the boat parts to fit into a container, however, the beam and wing height are probably more important considerations than the length in terms of performance. It is a pity we didn’t get this over the line a while back when it was first proposed but better late than never.”

 

Well, they are really urinating about at this late stage when teams have been concentrating on the 62s ... but ... if you're gong to flying foilers, then you don't requre a monster platform to do the job; in fact, the smaller platform will, after the intense development which is occurring/ has occurred, be faster than the (very impressive and spectacular) AC72s.
The only downside is that the smaller boats will be .... smaller.
Next step is: introduce trimaran platform too?

 

35th Medium America's Cup

from SA-
72-48-45-CIt’s taken less than two years to go from the fantastic AC72 to the ghost of an AC62 to an AC48 – the smallest boat conceived to sail in an America’s Cup in the 165 year-history of the event. The 48 will clearly be cheaper in every way, but is it the America’s Cup?

One might well doubt it in view of AC48 Rule version 1.0 dated March 31st – this is a one-design rule, and one that the Defender – Oracle Racing – has been thinking about for some time. Master illustrator and yacht designer François Chevalier and partner/historian/analyst Jacques Taglang analyzed the rule this morning, and their drawings give us a good comparison view of the new AC48 – and surprisingly, it looks like it won’t even be as big visually as the AC45 (and the proportional drawing shows even more that the AC48 looks like a ‘special’ brother to the 45). Here’s a comment from the team.

What we have is a boat whose wing, sails, hulls, platform/crossbeams are standardised! Same engine, same body, all engineered by Oracle’s designer.

To reassure the world that the America’s Cup still means something, the Rule throws the engineers and computer scientists a bone; they have a small amount of freedom to design the daggerboard/lifting foils, the rudders, non-structural aero fairings, and some parts of the wing and board control systems.

In other words, history showed us what the America’s Cup is, and we all know of the Little America’s Cup, so then this new AC-1D-48 should probably be called the Medium America’s Cup. Looking at the design drawings, you will see that the new boat is no longer visually special, and will probably be overlooked amongst the already large and growing number of multihull racing events. Only the name of the trophy will maintain whatever legend remains. Hence the Medium Cup!

Little Is Bigger

As a result of AC organisers’ wholesale changes, the Little America’s Cup (now called the Little Cup thanks to trademark claims by the AC organizers) raced with C-Class cats becomes the sole remaining event in which the inventiveness of yacht designers is still free. The sole constraints in the C-Class: Length, width and sail area.

click-

 

35th Medium America's Cup

Here is a render of an AC 48 by Martin-editor of catsailingnews. http://www.catsailingnews.com/
click-

 

I can see the logic of the change.With displacement boats and traditional rule restraints there has usually been a trade off between waterline length and sail area and some freakish boats have resulted at times.Surely with a foiler the additional structures are just additional weight for the foils to lift and it makes sense,not to mention saving money,to eliminate the surplus parts.

I remember reading a section in the Francis Kinney reworking of "Skene's Elements of Yacht Design" that related to the manner in which aspects of the design varied with proportions and this topic really requires an extension of the subject to take into account foiling catamarans.I can't be the only one to remember the way in which the New Zealand "big boat" was soundly defeated by Dennis Connor's much shorter catamaran and it may be that we are a long way from determining the optimum size and crew weight for a foiler.

It may well be that had C class Cats had a larger and more active global fleet,the AC might have switched to cats years earlier.

 

35th Medium America's Cup

More Artemis practicing by John Navas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1WcxlYUJLs

 

35th Medium Americas Cup

The doyen of international sailing journalists, distinguished multihull sailor, and outstanding America's Cup historian, Bob Fisher takes the America's Cup Events Authority to task over its actions and stewardship in in the America's Cup - current and past edition. Bob Fisher has been covering the America's Cup since 1967:

(America's Cup Events Authority is the privately owned company to which Golden Gate Yacht Club have given the commercial and marketing organisation of the next America's Cup. Its CEO is Russell Coutts.)

13th April 2015

Gentlemen,

I cannot escape notice of what you are doing to the America’s Cup – it has been nothing short of a disgrace to the premier event in the sport of Sailing. You have abused it, misused it and reduced it to no more than an average regatta, losing on the way its prestige and at the same time driven away the most serious competitors.

In the last America’s Cup event, held on the waters of the Golden Gate Yacht Club, for whom you act in a management role, the two challengers that came up to the mark were those from the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron and the Circolo della Vela Sicilia – Emirates Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa. In the course of the past week you have made it virtually impossible for ETNZ to raise the necessary funds to continue by removing any chance of a major regatta in Auckland, and, by a huge change in the size of boat, caused the Italian team to withdraw. Is this what you really want?

Gone is all semblance of stability and adherence to rules unanimously agreed at the outset and in their place an undercurrent of commercial misunderstanding and constantly changing rules without the unanimity of the challengers as initially agreed. Both of these are a disgrace to the Cup and to yourselves.

It was brought to my notice by you (S-W: Russell Coutts), in Auckland, that it was important for a part of the Challenger Final Selection Series to be held in the City of Sails in order to generate publicity for the America’s Cup in Asia and the reason for that was a Japanese team would shortly emerge, and that this would encourage television networks to purchase the rights.

Subsequently ACEA has made it clear that ALL Challenger Selection races will be held in Bermuda, effectively slapping ETNZ in the face and reducing the Kiwis’ chances of Government sponsorship (which hung on a major AC regatta in Auckland), possibly even eliminating this team from AC35

It is unnecessary for the America’s Cup to have a television audience. For many years there was no television coverage, and later only inserts into News programmes. Televising the event began in 1983 and was carried to a new height by ESPN in 1987 in Fremantle. Even then it didn’t need catamarans on hydrofoils sailing at 40 knots to be attractive – just 12-Metre yachts in boisterous conditions with some live sound from the boats.

Now, thanks to the wizardry of Stan Honey and his colleagues, full details of the speed and direction of each of the competitors is overlaid on the live pictures of the racing. The technology of other sports has improved television for even the non-sailor, but this does not drive the America’s Cup. Money does. And there will certainly not be enough from television rights to pay for the somewhat unnecessary regattas that take place using the name of the event that has, over 164 years, taken place only 34 times.

The America’s Cup is a one-off event. It does not need promoting with pseudo regattas in the intervening years, which use its name. The Challenger Selection Trials, together with the long lost Defender Selection Trials, are adequate and the responsibility for their expense is down to the individual teams.

Now there is a state of affairs in which the Defender trials have been eliminated. In the Protocol, Item 17 clearly states:
“Defender means GGYC and the sailing team that represents GGYC in AC35;”

You have excluded any chance of another US Yacht Club from competing for the Cup, maybe even giving GGYC the type of competition it needs to retain the Cup. Not even the New York Yacht Club felt sufficiently confident to resort to that.

Neither did the NYYC resort to changing the boats at a late date – the move from the AC-62 to the AC-48 has been very last minute and particularly hard on the teams that had set up their design groups well in advance to produce the smaller AC-62, as announced soon after the last AC match. It is hardly surprising that you have put Patrizio Bertelli’s feelings in disarray to the extent he has withdrawn Luna Rossa from AC35. His team had been working since early January 2014 at its headquarters in Cagliari with a Design Office of 40, all working on the design of a 62-footer. I suppose you comment will be: “Silly him,” but you have lost one of the biggest commercial sponsors of the Cup – just look where the Prada advertisements for Luna Rossa appear.


To throw fat on the fire, you are offering to give design and financial support to the French team, which has made little progress, and what is worse attempting to justify this with the terms of the Deed of Gift, where it indicates that the event is to be: “a friendly competition between foreign nations.” But you may well counter this with the quote from the judge of the New York Court of Appeals in the case between the Mercury Bay Boating Club and San Diego Yacht Club, who queried: “Where in the Deed of Gift does it say the America’s Cup is supposed to be fair?”

The loss of Louis Vuitton, after 30 years, is another huge loss of commercial sponsorship, but the writing for that was on the wall in San Francisco.

Everything this time around has been late, and bringing in new entries at this stage is another breach of the Protocol. I implore you to get your act together, remember the event with which you are dealing, with its glorious past, and begin to act in a proper manner.

Bob Fisher.

 

Nice piece by the Fish. It's funny to remember the claims that were made a few years back, when we were told that the "new style AC" would bring commercial stability, increased participation, be 20% cheaper than IACC boats, yada yada.... So many promises have been broken that it's easy to forget some of them, such as the claim (reported by BYM years ago) that the ACWS would be in AC72s from March 2012.

The worst breach of promise, for me, is the promise that the "new AC" would help sailing overall by raising it to new levels of popularity. That has to be rejected now. Speeds in sailing have increased far more over the past 10 years than in any other period, and yet no one seems to be reporting an upsurge of overall interest in the sport or in any large segment of the sport.

If the promise that high speeds would bring higher numbers of sailors was true, we would be seeing floods of new blood in the sport - so where are they? Where are the clubs that are booming, the sailing schools that are filled up, the classes that have seen thousands of new members?

Even in multis it seems that numbers that lower than when the "new AC" was announced. In the UK (which is a good measure because it's a major nation with good stats available) the cats are LESS popular (measured by national title numbers) than they were in 2010, although they have lost a tiny bit less ground than dinghies. Cats were 8% as popular as monohull dinghies when the "new AC" was announced (measured by national title attendance). Five years later, the cats are 9% as popular as monohull dinghies. Foilers are about 0.02 of the national title fleet in off-the-beach boats as a whole, having increased by about 30 boats in five years. That's not exactly proof that the "new AC" would spark a massive shift in the sport, as some claimed.

Even the big multi segment doesn't seem to be booming. Sure, the GC32, M32 etc are great boats, but there have been plenty of boats of roughly that sort before - D35s, F40s, F28s and others. It's hard to see evidence of true growth in the segment.

Meanwhile, the sports that concentrated on attracting grass-roots participants and promoting accessible equipment that can be used by pros as well as beginners and amateurs (kayaking, cycling, SUPping) are often getting record numbers.

One even wonders whether the pros have been hit financially by the "new AC". After all, there is nowis now 1/4 of the teams and each boat only has 1/2 the sailors, so AC employment for sailors overall must be well down. And the influence of the sailing trade must be affected by the massive disconnect between the AC and the other popular big boat classes, which means that development no longer moves between the other big-budget big-boat classes and the AC. How can a sailmaker or sparmaker take AC ideas and apply them to TP52s, Farr 40s, or IRC boats, or vice versa?

The "new AC" may even be a dead-end for pros; traditionally winning in cats (or boards and to a lesser extent skiffs) has not created the same chance of a full-time well paid career in pro sailing because most of the cashed up owners are in conventional classes like TP52s and IRC boats. It's hard to see that changing when the AC sailors are learning how to use wings and foils rather than conventional masts and hulls, and one assumes that very few of the pros sailing conventional boats are keen to get their owners to move into the AC because that would probably mean sacking their current pros and getting new ones with different skills.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/luna-rossa-says-withdrawing-americas-cup-142808575.html

 

35th Medium America's Cup

First of all, I think AC 35 has been terribly mismanaged to the point that it has hurt the "America's Cup". But the facts from AC 34 are indisputable-TNZ invented a new type of "uptip" foil that is nothing short of a revolutionary advance in foil design. That has allowed many new companies to develop smaller boats using UptiP foils:
New boats/companies as a direct result of the development of uptip foils-(many of these boats/companies are taking orders now-others are still under development) :
1) GC32
2) Flying Phantom
3) NACRA 20 FCS
4) FP 28
5) G4 racer cruiser
6) California 45
7) Toro 34
8) Exocet 19 trimaran
9) Fire Arrow 20(test model so far)-uses both wand based altitude control AND UptiP ama foils for the first time on any size trimaran.
-New foilers using wand based altitude control:
1) Stunt S.9
2) Osprey 18
3) Whisper 18
4) WASP--the Peoples Foiler(probably)
=========
The GC32 foiler has a new racing circuit - mostly in Europe- with some of the top names in sailing involved. The Flying Phantom is being used in a "Foiling Generation" project by Red Bull.
The excitement generated by the spectacular racing in AC 34 has directly resulted in new boatbuilding businesses and new types of foilers thought to be impossible just a short while ago, the latest of which-the G4- has just successfully flown-and there will be more as people realize that speed is not the only advantage of foiling.
Well designed foilers can be super high performance or just a bit faster than other boats the same length but with superior ride comfort.The door is wide open to see new foilers that are not only fast but really take comfort to new levels for high performance boats. Foils intelligently applied to trimarans under 20' can smash the popular myths regarding beach cats vs beach trimarans. Foils can make square or oversquare trimaran platforms practical while allowing much smaller high performance tri's.
The surface has barely been scratched in the development of new foilers both multihull and monohull and regardless of the 35th Medium AC, the cat is out of the bag--new foilers are being announced regularly-like the homebuilt(by experts) Stealth and NZ 20. Kite Foiling has shown how hydrofoils improve light air kite performance.
We're at the very beginning of a new age of sailboat design and development that will benefit almost everybody interested in sailing. It's an exciting time!

 

Foiling Multihulls

From Alan Block on SA regarding a quote of CT's piece above:
Your writer needs to do some research, it sounds like. All of the US multihull manufacturers I've spoken to over the past two years have reported significant growth in their segments. Takes a while in this ridiculously slow-moving and slow-adopting sport, but no one in the business doubts it is happening.

-----
More from Block:
Participation in US racing is up in quite a few areas both geographically and sectionally. High school sailing is one of the three fastest-growing high school sports for the past 5 years, and stakeholders seem to be coming up with ways to keep the kids in the sport after school. The success stories these days are coming from areas where a few clever people are doing innovative and successful things for sailing, often tapping into the folks who feel most excluded by sailing - latinos, other immigrants, GLBT, etc. Growth is not so much about the product, like it was in the 70s with the Laser and H14. It's about the people.

The way the majority of older folks sail - regional handicap racing on cruisers or cruiser/racers - that's drying up, as you'd expect in an informationally rich age like this one where people can see what they are missing and easily move to something comparatively fast and competitive. But beware the fallacy of calling a demographic shift that cuts out your peers "a slow, inexorable death spiral in participants" when all you really mean is 'people I know are sailing less than they used to.'
-----
From "NacramanUK", a principle in a UK multihull business:
The buzz for full foiling has lit the blue touch paper in the uk........no new interest in displacement boats all new boat enquiries have been for foiling boats......

 

I have immense respect for Bob Fisher's journalism and agree with much of what he has written.I can't agree with him regarding the relevance of a television audience as without that audience the sponsors,whose departure he mentions,wouldn't be seen and would have no reason to fund the campaigns.

It also needs to be said the the televised AC events in keelboats were hardly rivetting entertainment.As a keen sailor I found them tedious and can't imagine a casual viewer bothering with an event that made watching grass grow look appealing.

The multihull event from Valencia was hardly great television but it was sufficiently dynamic that I watched with interest.The last AC was genuinely entertaining and I cannot imagine anything other than fast multihulls being chosen in future.Much better for developing sailing technology,but if you are a middle aged sailor looking for a few lucrative years of sailing,you are in for a disappointment.I also think it is much better to have events decided on the water rather than in the protest room and I don't remember the last contest being swung by protests.

I could not possibly disagree with the Fish's comment about the standard of management of the current challenge as he is irrefutably right.You need to do better fellows.