Breaking News - New America's Cup Class

[BR3]

The next America's Cup will be contested in a new design of America's Cup class boat. The new class will be 90ft LOA, draw 6.5m (21ft 4in) with a lifting keel that will reduce the draft to 4m (13ft 1in) to allow the boats access to ports.

http://www.ybw.com/auto/newsdesk/200...icascup07.html

A new rule that DOESN"T allow canting keels and/or on-deck sliding ballast, wide racks and hydrofoils is just so much wasted paper. And will insure that the so-called "new" boat is etched firmly in a niche behind the fastest of the newest monohull keelboat technology. And that would be a shame.......

[national]

I am going to stick my neck out here for the barrage of abuse!
The previous rules provided us with the most exciting racing that has been seen in ages even if it was not the fastest of boats. You cannot argue that it was damm exciting Doug?

[PI Design]

Call me a cynic, but I think the proposed new class is just a way of strengthening Alinghi's position. 2009/2010 is not a long time to have worked up, developed and fully tested a boat for the AC, to a complete new set of rules. So Alinghi have a head start as they've probably been working on the new design for the last year.
Secondly, at 90ft the boats will be harder to design and build, suiting the rich teams and those with time.
Thirdly the extra crew will need recruiting and paying, which just costs money without making the event one iota (sp?) more exciting. Advantage rich teams.
Why do the new boats need to be bigger, more expensive and more to the liking of the ultra elite? It just smacks of making it as difficult as possible to set up a serious challenge.

[Stephen Ditmore]

What we really need to know: displacement range of the new class. The ACC currently rewards displacement too much, resulting in too much ballast under the current boats.

[SailDesign]

I say we go to Optimists on a large pool, with a battery of fans at one end. Skippers can then match race to their hearts content without boring the rest of the world stupid. If you're gonna be slow, be SLOW...

I'll tell you how I REALLY think later.

[xarax]

We need to believe in Brad Butterworth words:
"I think the rule will be reasonably tight, like a box rule, but obviously this rule is pretty complicated. It would be nice to open it up a little bit more. It will be encouraged to come up with new innovative ideas. This is a design contest - a technology race. I think that’s the way the Cup has always been, and we are going to keep it that way."
It would be nice if :
1. The new, box rule ( hopefuly...) limits somehow the maximum ballast ratio. At the end one should have a boat hull self-righting with the help of a ballast, not a ballast floating with the help of a boat hull...
2. The maximum draft is at least one fifth to one fourth of the LOA, so the boats have lighter keels.

Originally Posted by national

I am going to stick my neck out here for the barrage of abuse!
The previous rules provided us with the most exciting racing that has been seen in ages even if it was not the fastest of boats. You cannot argue that it was damm exciting Doug?

I didn't get to see the races but I wish I had. Seems like at least two were great.
I didn't propose the new rule but I commented on what I'd like to see incorporated which includes:
1) a self-righting 60' Moth with canting keel and sliding on-deck ballast.
2) reinstatement of most of the nationality rules...
--------------
It seems absurd to me that adding boats with such stunning visual appeal and an element of high speed danger/excitement could be viewed negatively. But some people see the Moth as ugly-go figure.....

[oldsailor7]

Now I am going to stick MY neck out.

The recent spectacle of a giant Catamaran racing against a giant Trimaran in the AC makes me shudder at the prospect of throwing back to those gross monohull sinkers.
Please don't resurrect the age of the Dinosaurs.

[dskira]

Originally Posted by oldsailor7

Now I am going to stick MY neck out.

The recent spectacle of a giant Catamaran racing against a giant Trimaran in the AC makes me shudder at the prospect of throwing back to those gross monohull sinkers.
Please don't resurrect the age of the Dinosaurs.

This the beauty of yachting, you call them dinosaurs, some call them ultimate beauty.
Everyone is wright, and nobody wrong.
Do you know an other sport with so much freedom and diversity?
And on top of that we can fight for our beleif

Daniel

[oldsailor7]

A Yacht----any Yacht is a thing of beauty under sail.
Some of the loveliest sailboats on the water are monohulls.

However I am talking about the AC.
The original race was intended to bring out the fastest sailing ship on water.

Technical advances in ocean sailing have produced the fastest sailboats in history.

All the major ocean sailing records are now held by Multihulls.

The last AC demonstrated the superiority of Multihulls in racing.

Why go backwards.

[ancient kayaker]

Actually, I kinda like the old stuff and so do a lot of others. I would love to see a race between 1930's era racing cars for example, ancient Bentley's and Alphas batting it out on skinny tires but I digress ...

Let's talk about size first. A big boat will always beat a small boat at the same technology level unless there is something peculiar about the course or conditions, so all the use of bigger boats gets you is a faster race and a lot more money needed to enter. Since the speed increase does not keep up with the size increase, the race seems to get slower and slower as far as the spectator is concerned, until the boats hardly seem to be moving and they will seem to creep regally and inevitably from one end of the course to the other. Yawn ...

In the light of that, there would seem to be a choice of three things in the future of the AC:
1) make the boats smaller and have lots more of them so it acquires spectator interest, which would eliminate its uniqueness
2) forget about spectators altogether and plunge ahead with the event as it receeds farther and farther from the public awareness
3) invent a class of boat that is different from the mainstream of racing boats and spectacularly beautiful.

Choice 3) seems attractive and would keeps the AC unique and in the public eye. After all, does anyone really care if a AC boat is faster than some totally different kind if there is excitement, achievement and reward for human effort in winning? The original AC was a challenge involving privately owned yachts; it woudl be nice if it returned to its roots but how many of those are there these days?

[Chris Ostlind]

Originally Posted by dskira

Do you know an other sport with so much freedom and diversity?

Yes, Daniel, I can... Mountaineering

[dskira]

Originally Posted by Chris Ostlind

Yes, Daniel, I can... Mountaineering

My brother who do both, from high sea to the Everest, agree with you.
I never climb mountain, so I can comment on that, but everybody who does it are in love with it.
Daniel

[CT 249]

Originally Posted by oldsailor7

A Yacht----any Yacht is a thing of beauty under sail.
Some of the loveliest sailboats on the water are monohulls.

However I am talking about the AC.
The original race was intended to bring out the fastest sailing ship on water.

No it wasn't.
The original winner, America, was easily outsailed in trials by Maria before she left the USA.

Steven's first challenge to the British fleet was to race against schooners only, not to prove "the fastest ship on the water". It was only when he could not get a race that he agreed to race against cutters, which the British considered to be a faster type.

Similarly, quite a few times the AC boats were slower (theoretically and/or in truth) to other craft. For example, in the cutter era, boats like Meteor and Satanita were rated faster than the AC challengers, and Meteor's performance indicated that she was probably considerably faster than the defenders.

From the first match-racing challenge, the AC was sailed either on corrected time under rating rules, or under class rules. The AC was NOT about finding the fastest boat on the sea. For example, Herreshoff instituted new measurement rules after the extreme "Reliance" won the AC, in order to slow the boats down and make them more seaworthy.

From then on, the AC has been about class racing with just two exceptions, those involving multis.

Sorry, your historical basis for the statement is incorrect on the facts.



Technical advances in ocean sailing have produced the fastest sailboats in history.

All the major ocean sailing records are now held by Multihulls.

And for years, all the speed sailing records were held by windsurfers. Did that make inshore multis any less wonderful, fascinating and relevant? Hell no.

In exactly the same way that boards were not "better" than inshore multis when boards held the speed records, multis are not "better" than keelboats because they hold the offshore records.

Is Thrust SST or a Le Mans car "better" than a Formula One car just because they have better top speeds?


The last AC demonstrated the superiority of Multihulls in racing.

Why go backwards.

What superiority? Sure, the multis were faster. We knew that and have known it for decades. But pure speed is not what counts in ANY class. Every class has rules, and in every class it is speed compared to other boats in the class that counts.

Is the D Class (which has almost never raced as a class) superior to Tornado class in racing because it's faster? Hardly. Is the NZ 8.5m class superior to the Hobie 16 in racing because it's faster? Surely not. The foiler Moth is often quicker than the Hobie 16 - is the Moth class, with its 200 or so active boats, "superior" to the Hobie class with its thousand of active boats? Is the dying Laser II class superior to the hugely popular Laser class, because it's faster?

Just like in almost every other sport, what counts is speed against the others in your event, and pure speed is of little or no importance. After all, if pure speed was what counts, what the hell would we be doing sailing? BMWO went around the course slower than a 65 year old man can go around a hilly course on a $600 bicycle.

Fast boats are not more popular. Fast boats are not the way the sport is heading, if you look at the trends in popularity over the past few decades. Fast boats are not "superior", except in the same way that a speed board is "superior" to a Tornado or Hobie.

It's still saddening to see the hate and contempt that is expressed against monos, or any other boat.