34th America's Cup: multihulls!

Amen.

 

34th AC

Think of the history we are seeing here:
1) longest Americas Cup series,
2) biggest comeback ever,
3) fastest Cup boats in history,
4) first foilers in the Americas Cup,
5) Best TV coverage ever,
6) first access for The People to the finish line,
7) the largest number of lead changes in any America's Cup ever.

Thanks Larry and Russell and Jimmy and Ben and Kyle and to the whole team! Win or lose, overcoming an unfair, unjust and overreaching penalty has already been done and the charge of "bringing the America's Cup into disrepute" has been unalterably reversed by the sailing and coverage so far.

Go Team USA!

 

I think you should say thanks to Kiwis too. If these boats are foiling, it is thanks to their idea.

 

34th AC

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You're 100% right and I have numerous times in this thread and other threads and on other forums. TNZ deserves a bunch of credit for advancing sailboat design to an unheard of level: thanks TNZ!

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=...n;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=...n;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=undefined;

Place your bets !

 

I was one of them. Precisely, I said that it wouldn't (not couldn't) happen because crew wouldn't dare to do close-quarters battle at 40 kts. Yep, I was wrong in that one. The crews did dare on few occasions.
Too bad the speed difference between boats (initially in favor of TNZ and now in favor of Oracle) didn't allow them to keep doing it. We have enjoyed only once (and a half, perhaps) the real uncertainty till the last leg, for the rest it was always one team leaving the other with little possibilities for reaction. Well, we have a couple more to go, perhaps the future still keeps some surprise for us...

 

Perhaps you mean the Kiwis who had the idea to hire the US designers Gino Morelli and Peter Melvin. Morelli and Melvin provided the technical input to the rule creation, then went to work for ETNZ (not Oracle).

Interview published in September 2013 Gino Morelli about writing the rule: http://www.sailingworld.com/blogs/racing/americas-cup/writing-the-rule

Excerpts from the interview with Morelli:

You and Pete were part of the team who wrote the Class Rule then went on to design ETNZ’s boat. What was the benefit to ETNZ?

GM: Obviously we had an insight as to why it was written the way it was. ............​

Wasn’t the Rule designed to discourage foiling?

GM: No, that’s a bunch of crap. When we were writing the Rule we were really pushing Oracle and Mascalzone Latino to take all the constraints off the daggerboards and rudders and let it be the Pandora’s Box: Let’s have active control systems and wands, let’s see what people can come up with. Oracle was quite supportive of that, and we wrote a Rule. One edit that survived 2 or 3 weeks stated that there were really no constraints on daggerboards and rudders—you could have articulation, flaps, moveable systems, you could have moveable extensions like a Moth or a tri-foiler.

............
​

Also, an interview with Peter Melvin published in 2011 before the team they were working with was made public: http://www.cupinfo.com/en/pete-melvin-AC72-rule-wingsails-11008.php

 

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Don't forget Steve Killing often referred to as the "co-designer" of TNZ.
TNZ were the first to foil and deserve that notation in history. Team USA were the first to foil faster than TNZ and hopefully they'll bank on that tomorrow.
UPDATE-at the press conference they just said that the forecast is for more like today and the chance of racing is real good:

Note-starts about 4min. in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb-gkSXZAXk#t=1437

 

Another quote from the interview with Morelli http://www.sailingworld.com/blogs/racing/americas-cup/writing-the-rule?page=0,1:

The joke was it was like giving us an airplane that could fly but with a dead stick. You don’t get to change its angle of tack or control with the rudder. It put all the emphasis on changing the flying on the daggerboards. At the time I think they felt that was going to be a big enough constraint to keep the boat costs down by not having all these crazy systems—wands, sensors, crazy hydraulic pressures—and that would make it hard to fly. Oracle and Artemis made early assumptions that you may not get there from here, but we knew we could fly—we’d had experience with three or four other cats.​

 

And Steve Killing is a Canadian who lives in Midland, Ontario, not a Kiwi.

Would the suggested nationality requirement also apply to the design team for future AC's?

 

I hope there will be no nationality requirements in the future AC's.

 

http://www.sailingworld.com/blogs/racing/americas-cup/writing-the-rule

GM: I think the excitement that has been generated in this Cup has way more to do with foiling and flying than the wing. If we used the same platform with soft rigs and rotating masts with fully battened sails, then first you can reef them, second you can launch them at your leisure like a normal boat, and third you eliminate the wing-building team and the problem with the handling of the wing, the hydraulics, and control systems. In reality the difference between the performance of the boats with a wing on foils and without the wing on foils, won't be much. They’ll still sail at 40-plus knots. Maybe they don’t sail at 165 degrees downwind, but at 163 to 160, and they’ll probably still fly in as little wind.

 

34th AC

Fantastic post from the Multihull List:

On Sep 23, 2013, at 1:58 PM, ********wrote:



I have read all the pissy comments out there in the
SOURGRAPE********-O-SPHERE about the AC and to me it is just more cyber
pissing in the wind. To me this America?s cup is the greatest thing I have
ever seen. I would swim naked through 10 miles of horny box jelly fish
just to kiss the hull of one of those cats. Those MACHINES are the most
incredible works of ball blasting art I have ever seen. They are exactly
what us multihull sailors have dreamed the cup could become. These are
incredible days for us multihull sailors, what a time to have a pulse. The
money spent refining the technologies on those boats is nothing. It?s a
fracking joke. Look at what Microsoft invested in it?s Surface product and
it doesn?t do anything that the rest of the tablets don?t do. Think about
the R/D and marketing for something that works JUST LIKE other products.
No step change, no tech breakthrough, just a wrapper. The AC money has
been money well spent and we will all reap the technological benefits in
one way or another as the sport incorporates this knowledge. Tell me foils
won?t be options on just about every high speed racing boat in the future?
This is a paradigm shift. Everything without foils has instantly
become*old slow technology
*. Step change! BAM! Checkmate! Does anyone know of a boat that has a
faster VMG to windward than the AC72? (I am honestly curious).

Long live the mind blowing foiling multihull and titanium nutted titans who
had the vision and made it happen. Making **** happen is what is about,
talk is cheap. Now it is time for me to make some **** happen and quit
shooting my mouth off.
--------------------
Inspirational!

 

I've lurked the tech threads and multi-threads around here for a while, and from the perspective of a fluid dynamics/composites aficionado, the tech on display in this AC is utterly fantastic. Before foils really become the "future of everything", though, I feel like there are some safety innovations that will be needed. Number one in my mind is collision avoidance/survivability. While the VOR 70s occasionally find a shipping container at 10-20kts in races, it seems like the crash becomes quite a bit more severe for a cat doing 40kts 2m above the water. I had heard the Hydroptere folks put some thought into this, anybody know what the state of the art is? (sorry for the thread drift; I just read Doug's block quote above, including "...foils being options on just about every high speed racing boat in the future...", and had visions of lots of beautiful carbon cartwheeling across the water in a rapid deceleration from highway speed after tripping over any manner of submerged debris)

 

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I'm not sure but I think it's on hold. But you're right ocean going foilers whether cruisers or races need some that sees just under the surface far enough ahead to be able to avoid it. The #1 requirement for an offshore foiler, in my opinion.