34th America's Cup: multihulls!

Discussion in 'Multihulls' started by Doug Lord, Sep 13, 2010.

  1. motorbike
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    motorbike Senior Member

    Hmmm, there is one word for it and it begins with cluster and ends with k.

    If ET wins it will barely be worth it, as the damage has been done to the AC. If OR wins it will be a phyrric victory, hollow, ugly and lacking respect.
     
  2. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    ===============
    No-the self -righteous must stand guard and protect the rest of us from that nasty Gary!
     
  3. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    35th AC

    ==============
    Lets hope you're wrong! This AC has produced the most extraordinary and fastest America's Cup boats in history-boats that trully are the state of the art+ in sailboat design. The AC has always, to me and many others, represented the pinnacle of the sport of sailboat racing but there have seldom
    been AC boats that represented the pinnacle of sailboat design as these do.
    I hope the event works out well( with Oracle winning, of course) and that the vision that put these extraodinary boats in our midst continues to be refined and improved.
    Seldom has the "trickledown" of AC technology started before the event itself but in this case it has thanks to the incredibly innovative foil technology pioneered by Team New Zealand and adopted by all the boats. The combination of curved/angled(surface piercing for altitude control) and "L" foil have produced a foil system that works reliably and is very fast. This combined with a three foil system featuring a single main foil has already been adopted by three C Class race boats and at least two potential beachcat speed boats that have produced efficiencies at least as good as a Moth in terms of speed as a multiple of wind speed.
    The 45's and 72's have ushered in a whole new era of high performance sailing which is great for the America's Cup and for those that get to sail AC technology on the numerous small boats using it and that will be using it. And I'm profoundly gratefull to have been witness to this fascinating development which will inspire many people for years and years.
    The ugliness will pass and the event will blossom into the greatest Americas Cup ever.....

    Go 17er's
     
  4. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    34th AC

    Great stuff from a friend and great man, Paul Cayard: ( http://artemis-racing.americascup.com/news/4567 )

    Paul Cayard, CEO of Artemis Racing

    The 34th America’s Cup is about to get under way in San Francisco. At Artemis Racing, we have had our heads down, working hard to finish a new boat and wing in order to get back out on the water and compete in this event that we have worked hard on for three years.

    In general, when you are as busy as we are, you don’t have time to get involved in media and spin. However, some of what is being said is erroneous, insulting, and downright disrespectful. I need to stand up for my team and state some facts.

    On May 22, Iain Murray, Regatta Director for the 34th America’s Cup, issued 37 Safety Recommendations. These are the product of interviews of 25 personnel from all four teams, which were conducted by a panel that included just one member associated with a team: Jim Farmer of Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ).

    The first person to commend the Safety Recommendations was Grant Dalton, CEO of ETNZ. He publicly congratulated Murray for his work and said “you won’t get any push back from ETNZ on this”.

    Now, five weeks later, Emirates Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa (LR) have lodged protests over two of the 37 recommendations and seek for these two Safety Recommendations to be eliminated. The two rules are permissive rules. They work hand in hand with other rules, which place new requirements on the size of the elevators. The inclusion of these rules excludes no one. Yet, excluding these rules, and keeping the other 35, will exclude Artemis Racing.

    So I ask, who is trying to force whom out of the 34th America’s Cup?

    These rules are not about one team. They are about bringing safety to the fleet and the event. The Regatta Director and his panel conducted a thorough and unbiased analysis, and were inclusive in the recommendations and rule changes. There are accusations being cast about that the Regatta Director’s Safety Recommendations are a conspiracy to promote Oracle or Artemis Racing. These are slanderous and paranoid. Iain Murray is a man of the highest integrity and everyone in the sport knows that.

    In making the Safety Recommendations at this late stage, Murray needed to make sure all teams could comply with his rule changes. The AC72’s in the fleet are not identical. They are not one design like the AC45’s. So some of the rules, such as minimum draft and the area of the elevators, are requirements. Other rules, like the two in question by ETNZ and LR, are there to create room for teams to comply with the requirements at this late stage of the game.

    Artemis Racing doesn’t like all the Safety Recommendations, but we recognize that many of the recommendations work together. Therefore, we have said that we support the entirety of the recommendations.

    On May 24, in good faith, Artemis Racing began modifications on one set of its rudders and elevators to comply with the Safety Recommendations. These are long lead-time projects. So now Artemis Racing has two sets rudder elevators: one that complies with the Safety Recommendations in their entirety, and one that complies with the rules as they were before the Safety Recommendations were issued. Artemis Racing cannot comply with the third case, which ETNZ and LR are now trying to force on the competition.

    The fact is that if ETNZ and LR get what they want, Artemis Racing will be excluded from competition.

    The two teams took a similar path to exclude Artemis Racing three weeks ago when they proposed a schedule change that would have started eliminatory racing on July 19, rather than the previously scheduled August 6. They tried to camouflage this move by saying that they were helping Artemis Racing by delaying the start of the Louis Vuitton Cup. It was quite the opposite.

    Finally, contrary to what has been said in various sailing media, there never has been a ban on elevators on rudders in the AC72 Class Rule. All AC72’s have rudder elevators because the Class Rule allows them. And ETNZ wasn’t the first to figure out how to foil without elevators. No AC72 has ever foiled without them.

    For Artemis Racing, our priority is safety and our goal is to race. Our challenges have been great but we are a determined team. We look forward to being out on the water soon!
    =============================================


    Sailing World article-inside Artemis: http://www.sailingworld.com/racing/americas-cup/americas-cup-34-access-in-alameda
     
  5. Earl Boebert
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    Earl Boebert Senior Member

    Since this is a technical and professional forum, I'm probably not alone in saying I would appreciate it if people would take their political and inflammatory rhetoric over to Sailing Anarchy where it would find plenty of company.

    As far as the current state of the event is concerned, it is usually wise when spinning up an ad hoc decision-making activity to get an agreement on process first and then use that process to get an agreement on substance. This is especially important when the environment is charged with the emotions that accompany a fatality and the people you are trying to get to agree are engaged in an expensive zero-sum game. The RD clearly failed to get an agreement on either process or substance and the participants are now engaged in a classic furball dispute in which issues of process and substance are all mixed in with ego, spin, and self-serving behavior. These things seldom end well, and I doubt this one will either.

    In going over the recent events (probably for the last time -- this has ceased to be amusing) I was struck by something distinctly odd. Successful inquiries, that is, those that get it right and have an impact, proceed according to a pretty standard pattern. They issue findings of fact, which describe what they know and why they know it, they issue recommendations, which are intended to fix whatever it was that prompted the inquiry, and they employ outside peer review to minimize the chances that they tripped up. And in the Internet era the hive mind often does a pretty good job of finding holes in your work.

    Now this expert panel came up with a finding with regard to safety in a remarkably short period of time. They're not sharing it with the outside world, so the only thing we know about it is that it frightened the RD severely enough for him to insist on a change to the class rule, which anyone familiar with yacht racing would recognize as a nuclear option. Even more remarkable, the finding (whatever it was) came accompanied with a highly specific recommendation for the rule change. Normally the path from finding to recommendation in the safety domain is long and arduous, for the obvious reason that you don't want to increase risk in one area by what you do to reduce it in another. It's a classic systems problem, not something you settle by asking around and picking the most plausible-sounding expert opinion.

    Finally, this finding/recommendation pair has been issued with no evidence of outside peer review that I could find. I spent the better part of thirty years participating in these kinds of inquiries at both the corporate and national level and I've never seen anything so far outside accepted practice.

    Earl
     
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  6. motorbike
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    motorbike Senior Member

    Earl, thankyou for your considered response. I agree with you fully, the rhetoric and polemic attitudes are inflamed by some who think volume of opinion outweighs evidence. Eventually everyone takes sides and discussion becomes naysaying.

    Disregarding evidence and second guessing motives is all about pushing an agenda rather than discovering truth. Artemis have been extremely quiet on the reasons for the crash, that is cause for concern especially when they intend to launch and race these high risk craft with virtually no experience. If I was the RD I would focus on that as a major safety consideration.

    The evidence appears to indicate that OR is using the proposed new class rudder design, and has been for months. Moreover their rudder is reported to be 850mm from the stern not the class legal 1.0m ( I cant quite accept this as fact as it seems such a flagrant breach)

    An undisputed fact is that the class rule can only be changed by unanimous agreement. Despite Dougs desparate conspiracy theories, this is not tiddlywinks, its about 120 million dollar campaigns, years of time and above all winning. No team is going to let their hard won and mind boggling expensive edge become erroded by an arbitrary class rule change that favours another team.

    In all of this sportsmanship is the casuality, no matter what happens Larry and Russel will not enjoy the respect they crave.
     
  7. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    34th AC

    ===========
    You're way off base here!I have put in a lot of effort posting opinions from all sides of the issue. I have an opinion based on the facts I've run across and I don't appreciate it being mischaracterized.
     
  8. Richard Woods
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    Richard Woods Woods Designs

    So if Oracle win the AC who will they race next time? Certainly NZ and LR will never, ever race again in a competition in the US. So that leave Artemis, who has some unsettled business for sure, but who will sail it? The best sailors will go back to their Olympic campaigns.

    No one else will join in, or they would have done it this time round. Now that teams and sponsors know how much its going to cost them they certainly won't enter

    Or NZ wins, in which case they will say "see! whatever you try to change to favour you, we are still better than you"

    Racing in NZ will (presumably) be in a new monohull and although maybe that will encourage entries it will be, yet again, a whole new ball game with lots of pitfalls for all.

    So I don't think there will be a real winner. And I don't think the AC72 will be sailed again. And unlike the 12m, J's and even the last IACC monohulls, all of which have had a life after the AC I cannot see who would want the boats come September

    And I still think the media and pundits (but maybe not the teams) have been concentrating on the high speed offwind drag racing and not on match racing. I think it would be quite easy for a very manouverable boat to get a foiler completely tangled up and very late for a start with a couple of rule infringements to cope with as well

    We'll see

    But I'm glad I didn't book a holiday in San Francisco in Sept as I had originally planned. I think the best sailing for spectators has already happened

    Richard Woods of Woods Designs

    www.sailingcatamarans.com
     
  9. SteveMellet
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    SteveMellet Senior Member

    "The teams, especially Artemis, had various questions but there was little time to digest the information as former Oracle Racing COO Stephen Barclay, who now heads the Event Authority (ACEA), revealed the document had already been made public. "

    Doug, the above is quoted from one of YOUR posts. What part of "little time to digest the information" are you struggling to understand. To believe that all the teams, at announcement of these new rules, unanimously agreed to them, is to be completely naive, and if Ian Murray said they did, then believing him 100%, as you claim to, is equally so.

    I think Earl and Motorbike in their two successive posts above, make the most sense.

    Imagine you arrived at the J24 Worlds with a completely class-legal boat, only to be told that, for safety reasons, all your competitors would be sailing J88's. Would you be happy to accept that the rules had been changed such that you would get your Ar$e handed to you on a stick ?
     
  10. michaeljc
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    michaeljc Senior Member

  11. boradicus
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    boradicus Senior Member

    What time does the race actually start? I looked at the website's schedule but I did not see a time, just a day. There was a big link on the front page showing that team TENZ would be on you tube - but there was no mention of whether anyone else has changed their mind and decided to sail or not - any news yet about who is sailing now? It would be really disappointing if nobody else sails. In light of Bart Simpson's recent tragic death, you would think that there would be a little more honor and sportsmanship. Like it seems to me that Richard is saying, there is more damage done to the entire sport than to any given team for a win or a loss for this one race.

    As for the thread trolling, it would seem to me that some of the more recent posts are along the same lines as what I have seen in other threads shut down by moderators on the forum. I have not been here that long on the forums, and I don't really feel like going back to see what people have said in the past, but I do think it best for everyone to set aside any differences and show a little more respect for the thread.

    Even if the competitors for the cup are having trouble with their sportsmanship, we can still be the good sportsmen. Fair enough?
     
  12. boradicus
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    boradicus Senior Member

    Cool & thanks! I just saw your post on Team NZ :D !!!
     
  13. boradicus
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    boradicus Senior Member

    That was a great video! I think it was great how Team NZ had such a good attitude about treating the race as if there were other competitors. I have never seen a multihull race before - but that was awesome!!!! :D :D :D Thanks again! :D
     
  14. michaeljc
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    michaeljc Senior Member

    Lets hope that it all comes together. The entire course took around 45 min so much of the time they are not fully foiling I guess. Dalton says that the faster they go the safer it is. It may come down to who has the biggest Bls. A race will be engrossing for sure.
     

  15. michaeljc
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    michaeljc Senior Member

    Ha! The video reads: "The uploader has not made this video available in your country"
     
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