34th America's Cup: multihulls!

34th AC / Artemis

From Magnus Clarke of the Canadian Little Americas Cup Team(C-Class), found in the Artemis? thread on SA :

They don't get paid much at all? Are you kidding me? Top team top sailors are getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to do as you say, what they love and have fun at. Closer to the back of the boat the numbers are even higher. This is the pinnacle of the sport, they are paid accordingly. These guys are not showing up for a T-shirt and a beer after racing.
As for wanting to be in an extreme sport, well, any single one of them can say NO, and leave the team. Last I checked every time a new boat hits the water most of what you hear about is the huge **** eating grins of the crew at the "amazing performance" of the boats. Sure the performance is scary, but the big boys get paid the big bucks to tame the big beasts and to chase the big prize. That is the point of the exercise.
What's the first rule of sailing? It's every sailors and skippers responsibility to determine if they should even be on the water at all in the first place or if they should continue to race / sail etc. We all make that choice every time we go on the water, we all (Should be anyhow) assessing the risks and deciding if its what we should do on any given day. Part of that assessment is understanding what happens or can happen when it goes pear shaped. what supports are in place, what is the worst that can happen etc. There are of course no guarantees that things will unfold without ill consequence even with fantastic safety mechanisms in place, such is life.
Flados is correct in my opinion that it is insulting to think that somehow the small boat sailors were magically unaware of the TRUE risk of sailing boats like this. ********. they are pros who are able to understand what is going on complete with a reasonable assesment of risk.
To be sure it is tragic that a life was lost, it's an outcome nobody wants to see, least of all Mr Simpsons wife and child, but again it is all part of the risk assessment that every sailor must make, every day they sail. Every time I sail my wife reminds me not to get killed, it is an explicit ackowledgement on her part that death by boat is a distinct possibility, if somewhat remote, but a possibility nevertheless. I remind her of the same thing when she goes off to sail.
We as sailors have a responsibility to look out for our bretheren on the water, I take that responsibility seriously and I rely on others to do the same. I would rather have people on the water around me who have a realistic understanding of the risks and not an, "I told you so attiitude"

I cut it twice and it's still too short

 

34th AC / Artemis

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/s...-enter-americas-cup.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&

 

I never go on SA for fear I'll never get any work done again, but should you correspond with Magnus Clarke or anyone else involved with these boats, including Tom Speer but especially the composites engineers like Dirk Kramers, I hope you'll point them to my post #1169. I'm very interested in their responses.

 

Stephen, "sufficiently strong" for what conditons? The ocean in a hurricane?
San Fran the other day was relatively calm. I'm not convinced that a standard could be written for boats like these w/o severely impacting performance and stunting development. Now, for out and out unlimited boats such as these maybe there ought to be a definite requirement as to the design and engineering team. Artemis has one of the largest design and engineering groups in the AC so it would be hard to get much better than that. Lots of considerations...

 

I wonder if the rules should be amended so that the owner/syndicate head and the principal designer are required to be on board while racing.Not necessarily as part of the sailing team,just present to experience what the boat goes through.

 

Picking up the pieces: http://www.pressure-drop.us/forums/content.php?3496-Artemis-Rises

 

I'm convinced a standard CAN be written, if the same people who do the engineering put their heads together and WRITE IT! Then all competing boats can be designed to a single structural standard, so none can gain an advantage by being weaker and more dangerous. Progress need not be lubricated with sailor's lives. There are plenty other areas for design innovation, as you (of all people) know.

There's nothing wrong with the concept of a safety factor if it is intelligently implemented and not a substitute for proper engineering.

 

I agree with you Stephen I don't think that the pursuit of ever lighter structures can necessarily be viewed as innovation. All that is really done is an attempt to work out the lightest scantling that will survive the conditions for a short period of time. It makes for faster boats but at some point you need to say what is the risk/benefit of an extremely light structure and it's capability under loading. It also has longer term problems for multihulls in general as we get back to all this "fragile" nonsense. Racing multihulls are the most visible and every multi takes a knock in the general populace's eyes when a multi suffers a structural failure as appears to be the case here.

Large boats like the AC72 seem to bring the problem into focus they carry the loads in terms of sail area of an ocean going multihull but are scantled for near shore conditions of relatively low wind strengths and sea states. However when one capsizes or fails structurally the risk to the crew is much greater versus a beach cat or a C class catamaran.

The ORMA organization was so concerned that in the end the answer was going One Design with the MOD70. It's an interesting parallel actually I know the racing is different but they had their big wake up call in 2002 when the ORMA fleet suffered an absolute pounding in 80knot conditions and many boats failed structurally or capsized. Luckily nobody was killed (though there were some close calls) and they were never quite so cavalier with safety after that point.

I'm not bagging the AC72's and it is amazing to see what is being done in terms of performance I just hope that this AC is not a step backwards for multihulls in general.

 

Just found this picture, look to the left of the guy on the crossbeam, you see a rise by a few inches on the beam. That is the spot the beam looked like split at in some of the new pictures. Could it be where they patched or reinforced it after the tow test?

 

34th AC

Extraordinary Oracle video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oT1EBIBjs4&feature=player_embedded



The most magnificent sailing machine in the history of the America's Cup if not the history of sailing! A tribute to the designers, engineers and sailors that have made this gigantic leap in sailing technology possible.

 

Another amazingly powerful post by Magnus Clarke on SA:

Yes people demonstrably get killed sailing these boats, people demonstrably get killed sailing all manner of boats around the year around the globe. My point was exceptionally simple EVERY TIME you go on the water you PERSONALLY take responsibility for your own life, full stop. If some one does something egrigiously wrong to cause injury (Drunk driving sheriff mows down innocent sailors in high powered motor boat comes to mind), then sure it's a slightly different matter, but this was very straight forward regardless of how tragic, sailor goes into rough water to sail high power high performance one off prototype boat in brisk conditions, things appear to have come unglued either figuratively or literally, bad outcome ensues.


I have sailed high powered boats in rough conditions too and nearly killed myself, complete with literally waking up 4 feet below the water after having suffered a concussion, I was lucky enough to have the time to sort my **** out, get untangled from a hell of a mess and swim my *** to the surface. The risk is pretty ******* real to me, there but for the grace of God I actually woke up and sorted my **** out and did not pass off my mortal coil at the ripe old age of 17. Yes on some level many might argue it is insane that I would continue without calling for helmets and PFD's and support boats and all manner of nanny state incursions into our fair sport. Rather, I simply looked at it and said after returning from the hospital, "****, that was close, beware of that in the future" Indeed that one incident informed many decisions on many subsequent sailing days in my life and no doubt saved my bacon later on down the line.



I have participated in an extreme sport too, riding a bicycle on my city's streets, I have stood over the grave of one of my best friends after he was mowed down by a drunk driver while on his bike on a City street. I personally chose to stop riding on City streets on my bike because I am surrounded by asshats, as you chose to stop skiing in high risk environments. My personal risk assesment of AC 72's is, that I would trust my own team, and the racers I race against and the available support teams, to go sailing on the boat in SF bay, part of that is knowing what my skill set is, on any given day, perhaps I might have to give it a pass in light of having children, in light of what I thought about the quality of my team mates, the build of the boat, and so on. I have stepped away from things before, I will do it again, I embrace risk, but I manage it too, it's the fundamental expectation of any sailor.



So I maintain you equivocate by saying, "What they see as possibilities". If you think for a minute they don't or haven't previously seen the possibility of being killed or seriously injured while doing that job, you are ******* delusional. You are suggesting they are so arrogant, or so stupid, or so blinded by money, that they are unable to see that they could get killed on that patch of water in what are arguably the most high performance course racing boats of all time? Yes to be sure someone getting killed drives home the point, but form day one it was a possibility. As much as it is in a Volvo Ocean race or a Fastnet or Vendee Globe.



We are men, we go down to the sea, even if only to have a gentlemenly contest of skill, but we do it with the full knowledge of all those before us that we take our lives into our hands when we do, as we take into our hands the lives of our brothers and trust our lives into their hands. This is what separates us from playing ******* bridge at a table, this is the essence of the commeraderie that sailors enjoy over other sports, our lives are in each others hands and this is serious **** and the stakes are as real as they get. It's special because it really is ******* dangerous, it's not a game, it's life in technicolor and 3D. when you forget that that, then you are in danger.



To be clear I am not suggesting that sailors should be expected to take stupid risks, nor am I suggesting that changes should not be made to make things safer for the sailor if it is clear what can be done to do so, but lets be clear, when a boat shits the bed in the middle of the bay and a yard sale ensues, it's really difficult to suggest or speculate with any manner of precision what the possible outcomes are. In F1 they could figure out that crash boxes that dissipated kinetic energy saved lives and so they changed the rules to ensure you could dissipate the energy of a crash to save the life of a driver. How do you determine how a boat might fold up after a cascading failure and in turn where exactly the crew might be during or after said event?



Some here cry about the inevitablity of a pitch pole, but by current accounts this accident was the result of a structural failure of the front beam which ended in a boat taco. Lowering the rig would not have changed for one second the performance imperative of saving weight and cutting it close on the main beam specifications. So OK, you can allow for some more carbon on main structural elements, but you all know you will end up chasing it all over the boat as teams try to eek out a performance gain here or there.



I would submit that its a fair bit easier to design a safe F1 than it is to design any boat as "safe", if only because in F1 you have one driver doing a very narrow set of activities in a fully enclosed cockpit, with a very predictable set of outcomes in crashes, repeated many many times. Do you want all the crew strapped into pods on either side of the boat? Well OK, great, you can build crash cages around them and make it safer in some regards, but more dangerous in others.

 

Powerful in what sense? Is he even clear what he's arguing? There are some things Magnus says I agree with, but taken as a whole I'm not sure where he's going.

I've quoted Olin Stephen's remarks to my Landing School class [from memory] before in these forums, but at the risk of being repetitive:

The first consideration for a designer should be that a vessel is strong enough, and the second should be that it's controllable. Hull drag and other speed relatated considerations should be third, at most.​

 

This can and sadly will only be addressed by those that take part in such racing. It is "self governing" in that sense.

Look at F1, endless accidents and deaths in the 60s and 70s. It wasn't until Jackie Stewart started to really bang the drum about safety that slowly the cars were changed to satisfy safety concerns. To the point that the cars are very safe today. Will it prevent all deaths, no, but it has gone a significant way in eliminating most possible scenarios. On top of that, there is now rigourous testing and "standards" which have been implemented by the F1 ruling body.

And that's the crux.

It is not the role ISO, or any other. It is down to those that set these rules and govern the rules for racing. Since they are ostensibly "outside" of the norms of maritime and local law.

That is what ISO has tried to address, for the pleasure/recreational and to some extent commercial market. But is not a guide for extreme sailing, just like the EU rules for side impact and head on crashes and deployment of air bags for commercial cars are not the same set of design rules for F1 cars. Nor are crashes at 200mph the criteria for commercial cars!

This needs addressing and quickly. To not do so verges on being unprofessional and caviler with peoples lives for the safe of "excitement". A professional world wide body needs to be set up and address the issues...failing that, local Maritime authorities step in and demand such boats to comply with XX or YY...which of course will be followed by cries of fowl and horror....so, sort it out now!

 

I have been on the ISO stability and buoyancy committee for over 20 years as a/the multihull expert. I know those on the scantling committee, but have not been involved directly with their work. However we have discussed the stability of racing multihulls (including the AC45 and 72) in our group, so no doubt racing multihull structures was discussed in the scantling committee.

However I would say that ISO would not be the body that would write the necessary scantlings. For one thing the money isn't there. Nor is it part of their remit. The ISO work started, and was funded, because of the RCD, which specifically excludes racing boats

I personally agree with much of what Magnus Clarke says, we aren't talking stamp collecting here. But I also think the original concept was flawed because the AC committee that decided the 72 rules didn't have enough big multihull experience. I think Russell Coutts implied that after his capsize last year.

To me, and to most even casual observers, Artemis1 was poorly designed and an accident waiting to happen. I suspect there might have been a bit of "we're retiring this boat this week and using the new one next, so lets see what happens". So Thursdays tragedy is not really a reflection of the AC72's as a class.

It's obvious from the photos and videos that anyone caught underneath two 70ft hulls with a crossbeam and rig on top would never survive. After all, people have drowned after being trapped underneath an upturned Laser, never mind under a beach cat trampoline

The AC45 class is giving great sailing, but so far I cannot see that 72ft boats that can burn around at high speed in open water will make for successful very-short-course match racers.

I recall one of the reasons why Dennis Conner lost in 1983 was because he didn't do enough real match racing in Liberty before the AC.

It will be interesting to see if the New Zealanders have a boat that can cope with the choppy and gusty San Francisco bay conditions.

(Sorry I took too long to write this so Ad Hoc got there before me)

Richard Woods of Woods Designs

www.sailingcatamarans.com

 

Thanks for chiming in, Richard. But I don't see why a single scantling rule couldn't be written for all performance multihulls. Do you know of a technical impediment to that? VLVP, Nigel Irens, Multiplast & Morrelli-Melvin all design performance multihulls, and so do you. Is there some reason the top people couldn't come up with a book of formulae for doing structural calculations? Is it too much to ask the people who sponsor sailing at the highest level to kick in some funding and direct their experts to contribute their knowldege to the cause? Perhaps enlist the support of a major university, preferably one with naval architecture, aeronautics, and composites expertise on the faculty? If you have knowledge of the workings of ISO, why have they taken so long to proffer scantlings for multihulls, and why are the preliminary formulae producing numbers far in excess of where the top ocean racing multihulls are?

Those are my questions specific to multihulls. But my view that raceboats should be built to a scantling rule is not specific to multihulls, and is not a criticism of multihulls. It's what I believe is in the best interest of sailors, sailing, racing, and professionalism among naval architects.