34th America's Cup: multihulls!

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

  1. Leo Lazauskas
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    Leo Lazauskas Senior Member

    I doubt that you'll get an apology from New Zealanders who feel that they have
    been shafted by legal technicalities or rules. It goes way back to a game of
    cricket in which Australia beat New Zealand using a brilliant and perfectly legal
    tactic.
    You should have heard the uproar. The NZ'ers squealed like Apple fangirls who
    have just broken their iPods and can't get a refund.
     
  2. powerabout
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    powerabout Senior Member

    I remember it well
     
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  3. Gary Baigent
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    Gary Baigent Senior Member

    Leo, you're pro underarm bowling?
    Hardly a brilliant move, just an example of the sporting mentality of children of the convicts when up against their ANZAC neighbours.
    Cheers to you, mate.
     
  4. gypsy28
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    gypsy28 Senior Member

    Even as an extremely biased Aussie cricketer, I have to admit I'm with the Kiwis on the shamefull underarm ball, its just wasn't cricket.

    Now back to the sailing, Good Luck Team NZ from your Aussie bro's :cool: hopefully Oracle Team AUS (or USA you pick - sorry Doug ;)) put up a bit of a fight and don't embarrass poor old uncle Larry
     
  5. Leo Lazauskas
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    Leo Lazauskas Senior Member

    Not if it was used against Australia.

    Get a grip, Gary. :)
    You are confusing and conflating life and death situations, like war, with childish games like cricket and sailing.
     
  6. michaeljc
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    michaeljc Senior Member

    What this reads to me is that the 2 challengers are permitted to race as they meet the 'minimum' safety requirements. Can we assume that the 'minimum' they will be racing with complies with the original un-amended rules?

    If this is the case then the only reason to amend the rules in the interests of safety is solely for the benefit of Oracle, the designers of which did not design a safe boat under the original rules.

    This is simple indisputable logic. Please cut the BS
     
  7. michaeljc
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    michaeljc Senior Member

    I remember that ball oh so well - and Rodney Marsh behind the wicket shaking his head in disgust. There are still some gentlemen left, even in Aus :)
     
  8. michaeljc
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    michaeljc Senior Member

    Lets be positive and look forward: Oracle gets what it wants. How much of an advantage will this be in terms of performance in the finals?

    Will the challenger have time to minimise any advantage or adopt the changes to its own advantage?

    Oracle gets the stability it needs: will it be a faster boat?

    Do the challenging boats have a design conducive to these changes?
     
  9. CT 249
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    CT 249 Senior Member

    Yep. The fact that the Kiwis brought up the adjustable foil issue months back and were told that it was not permitted underlines how bad the rules change is from a fairness perspective.

    A rules change to deal with something unforeseen and left field is one thing. A rules change that was foreseen and asked for but denied and then required is another. Especially when only one team has had months of experience with the new setup.

    The fact that Murray did not consider performance issues cuts both ways. If he wasn't considering such things then he was not considering whether Oracle will now be handed an advantage. It's not proof that Oracle won't get an advantage (which is how some seem to be spinning it) it's proof from the horses mouth that whether or not Oracle was advantaged was not considered.

    To not consider whether one team is getting an advantage at such short notice appears to be rather against the norm in competitions.

    I've only met Murray once or twice (and one of those times he beat us in the last race and won the Etchells regatta we had been leading :( ) but he's good a pretty good rep from those I know who know him. However that does not mean that he has 100% correct recall of what Dalton said to him at the meeting, or that he is 100% correct in his decisions.

    It's funny that the points I said a few posts back - the ones that said that development classes should not change their rules - were paraphrases from what one of the Oracle fans here said. It seems that some people are in favour of rigid rules unless it suits 'their' team.
     
  10. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    34th AC

    Several of you are simply ignoring the facts. Leads me to believe you didn't even read some of the information available-like the FACT that Dalton and Sirena AGREED with all 37 recommendations on May 22nd. I know that doesn't fit in with the lynch mob agenda some are going with-well, I think that is really pitiful. You "are entitled to your opinion ,but not your own facts". I went to a lot of trouble to post most of the dialog and the facts -the least you could do is read the damn stuff.
     
  11. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

  12. Earl Boebert
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    Earl Boebert Senior Member

    The real fact that has come out in all this is the extreme incompetence of the event management. First, they write a box rule that was intended to type form designs to 20kt semi-foiling boats and ETNZ figures out a way to fit 40kt flying machines in the box. All kinds of assumptions underlying things like size of course, venue, etc. get changed, structurally the boats now have to handle 4x the kinetic energy if things go pear-shaped, and so forth.

    Then management compound that ineptitude by writing an ambiguous protocol, so that any rules issue gets thrashed out out at two levels: what the decision should be and how the decision should be arrived at. The result is a perfect furball of unfocused dispute with no clear path to resolution.

    Finally, the enterprise sustained a fatality which exposed just how far the event management had bumbled their way into a high-risk situation and how unprepared they were to handle it.

    It is, in my experience, essential that those responsible for initiating change after such an event be very careful and very analytic lest their changes make things worse. Sadly, in this case the person in charge (who by all evidence is a decent fellow) was close to the victim, subject to intense schedule pressures, highly motivated to prevent a recurrence, and clearly unfamiliar with the requirements of an effective inquiry.

    We then witnessed an ad hoc exercise that omitted basic steps such as outside peer review of findings and recommendations. Even worse, the exercise produced recommendations without stating the findings of fact which support them. When you do that you open yourself up to everything from mild skepticism to the wildest of conspiracy theories.

    Finally, the person in charge, probably from the best of motives, is attempting to convert the recommendations into regulations by force majeure, a step which generally alienates the people who agree with you and outrages those who don't. So now the furball has expanded to include whether the event will even take place. Positions are hardening and the self-images of proud men are at stake, a situation where events can easily spiral out of control to an outcome nobody wants.

    The consequences for the Cup may be profound. An Oracle victory is likely to be so tainted by perceived unfairness to inhibit future challengers and sponsors. Also, I find it difficult to visualize any rational owner or challenger getting involved in a regatta to be run by the same people that engineered this multi-million dollar train wreck.

    Earl
     
  13. Richard Woods
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    Richard Woods Woods Designs

    I agree with most of your comments (and your previous ones)

    But getting back to design

    As both Groper and I have said, it would have been easy to write the rules to completely outlaw foiling. But that wasn't done, so the implication is that the rule makers expected people to try foiling and it was likely that someone would make it work.

    However some rules seem to assume that no boat will be foiling. Of these the rudder size is the most obvious. A 2m deep rudder makes sense if the lee hull is in the water, but it isn't, it's maybe 1.5m out of the water. That means a 72ft catamaran travelling at 40 knots is being controlled by a rudder smaller than that used on a Hobiecat

    Couple that with the fact that at the most crucial time (gybing or worse, a bearaway gybe) the helmsman leaves the helm for 5-6 seconds as he runs across the boat and you have to wonder just how much in control the crew are.

    In theory the most likely person to fall overboard is the helmsman who trips when running from hull to hull. Indeed in practice that is exactly what has happened. Fortunately he is the least likely to get hurt if he hits the rudder foil (probably he will fall behind it and it will be still deep in the water)

    Richard Woods of Woods Designs

    www.sailingcatamarans.com
     
  14. Earl Boebert
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    Earl Boebert Senior Member

    I think the inconsistency in the rule you point out is pretty damning.

    WRT the helmsman, it does seem a bit surprising that the safety recommendations didn't mandate two "stay put" helms. That mad scramble across the boat just looks, well, kinda dumb.

    Cheers,

    Earl
     

  15. high on carbon
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    high on carbon Wing Nut

    Nobody "leaves" the helm for 5 seconds, the tactician usually leads the team across the boat to the far side, the helmsman initiates the turn, then the tactician takes over and the helmsman begins their 44 foot sprint to the other side, then they take the wheel again. Keep in mind, that every tactician in his own right on these boats is a highly expert helm who could just as easily sail the whole race should the regular helmsman become incapable of doing so.

    Foiling, well no, I don't think (Well actually I know for sure) M+M and company who wrote the rule thought people would be fully foiling. Foil assist was always a possibility which is both good and safe. The general thinking was that without the ability to actively control flight surfaces with flaps etc that nobody could ever get to stable flight within the rule as it was written. So the baseline assumption for all involved was that teams may well push for a degree of lift off the foils, simply not 100% lift fraction. Not long after everyone started doing the math and said, "holy baby Jesus, look how much faster you can go IF you do manage to foil, maybe we better take a much longer harder look at this". Despite the difficulty, it was such a huge potential gain that it HAD to be investigated and played with. Kudos to ETNZ, they challenged the basic assumption, did really hard work, and made it all work.

    Rudder, having not too much rudder in the water is not a huge deal when you are doing 40 knots. As long as you can prevent ventilation the thing has plenty of grip for control of the yacht. All I would be concerned about is sufficient immersion for at least one of the two elevators on the rudder. If you lose both of those, well then it can get a lot more exciting very quickly.

    As for skipper falling off the yacht while running across? he is no more likely than anyone else to fall off, I would say he is the least likely as he is expending the smallest amount of physical energy of anyone on board as he is the only guy not grinding all the time. your coordination starts to degrade as you get exhausted, then you can fall off. Besides, falling overboard is just a very Darwinian approach to human resources, you fall and you're fired.
     
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