34th America's Cup: multihulls!

I don't completely understand the question, but let me try another explanation.

Both the Reynolds device and the Oracle gizmo (as I understand it) managed the relationship between two angles. One angle value was a "set point" and the other angle value was the "actual" angle of an arm of interest. The objective was to keep the two angles equal.

If they were unequal, the devices turned on an actuator (Reynolds electric, Oracle hydraulic) which moved the "actual" arm of interest until the angles were equal at which point the device turned the actuator off.

The difference between the two is in how the "set point" is determined. In the Oracle device it is set manually. This, to my thinking makes it a "semiautomatic" control: the operator manually gives an input and the device decides whether action needs to be taken, takes the action if required, and stops without human intervention.

If it were possible for the arm of interest in the Oracle device to move in an uncommanded fashion, and the device sensed that and turned on the actuator to move it back to the set point, then I would characterize it as an automatic device, one that maintained a fixed relationship in a variable environment without human intervention.

Both these characterizations contrast (in my view) with a fully manual device in which the operator must eyeball the difference between the two angles and manually turn the actuator on and off.

In the Reynolds device, the set point was determined by a wind vane that sensed the apparent wind angle and adjusted the sail angle to a predefined relationship. This makes it a full automatic feedback control system. By all accounts it worked very well, so well that automatic sheet control was banned in all the early radio control classes. Later generations have forgotten about the thing and allow it by implication. Someday someone with a perverse sense of humor may put a digital version on some RC boat belonging to a high-visibility class and enjoy the resultant controversy.

All the above is opinion only, YMMV.

Cheers,

Earl

 

He has all ready started the design process added a foiling center board to wild oats and he gets to decide what the type of boats race next and format with larry. Do you think with all his hobart racing experience, wins and crew he will vote for multi's? Venue nothing wrong with pear harbour with easy access for the public viewing of the races. Bondy got into financial difficulties after chasing the Americas cup glory dream. Where is Bondy now, has he recovered financially.


Blogs unlimited.

Australia's return as an America's Cup challenger is expected to be confirmed on Tuesday morning (AEST), according to Fairfax Media reports, with current holders Golden Gate Yacht Club due to make an announcement in the United States.

Australian winemaker Bob Oatley and son Sandy reportedly submitted an official challenge with Team USA, owned by Larry Ellison, as soon as Oracle crossed the line to retain the Cup last week against Team New Zealand, winning the series 9-8 after overcoming an 8-1 deficit.

The challenge papers are believed to have been lodged with an official for the Golden Gate club with which Oracle Team USA is registered and which, under competition law, is the official Cup holder.

Rob Mundle - media manager for the Oatley sailing operations, widely known for the successful Sydney-Hobart maxi-yacht Wild Oats XI - said there would be an announcement on Tuesday morning by the Golden Gate Yacht Club.

"I know Bob and Sandy would love to see Australia back in the ring, as would people all over the world."

Reuters reported on Monday that immediately after Oracle won the final race, Ellison received a challenge, but declined to name who had issued it.

If the Oatleys are behind the challenge, it is likely to be the Hamilton Island Yacht Club.

Bob Oatley, whose America's Cup interest has apparently grown in recent years, attended Thursday's Sydney lunch to mark the 30th anniversary of the America's Cup triumph by Alan Bond's Australia II.

Australia have not entered a campaign since losing to the US off Fremantle in 1987 in defence of their 1983 title.


OC

 

You understood it perfectly !
Now, here comes another question.
Let us suppose that the "set point" you described ( someone else, in a previous post, has called it the "target" ), is set manually by the trimmer. This can be done in two distinct, IMHO, ways :

1. The trimmer looks at a pre-drawn "chart" ( as called by a previous post, too ), and follows "blindly", automatically, the "instructions" this chart dictates to him. In a sense, he "pushes the on-off button" just to make sure the pointer, which shows the "actual angle" of the foils, point at the proper (each time) point on a pre-drawn curve on the chart. Doing this, the trimmer does not "decide" anything ! He is a puppet-sailor, a mere button-pusher operator who plays a decorative role only - and his role could had easily been substituted by another mechanism, had we liked to make this system fully automatic.

2. The trimmer looks at the wing, the distance of the hulls from the water, the inclinations of the platform, the wheel of the helmsman, he senses the speed and the direction of the wind, and decides if and when to push the on-off button. There is no "chart" which dictates his action, he uses his experience, his intelligence, the orders by the helmsman, his judgement - he is not a puppet-sailor, he is the helmsman of the foils !

Do you believe that we can define a "theoretical" difference between those two modes of behaviour of the trimmer of the foils, and call the one system more or less "automatic", and the other more or less "manual" ?

 

Steering and trimming to design polars is exactly what the boat drivers do. The boat has sensors for wind and speed that get processed into a target for the driver and crew to aim for. When foils are added it is only one more variable to add a target for.

The software to call sail selection and trim settings based on boat performance is nothing new. Why would you allow the "traditional" crew assistance from instrumentation and worry about the foils as a separate case?

If you want to remove all instrumentation say so. Different classes have difference rules. Why would anyone be concerned with instrumentation that shows the foil position and boat speed? We don't ban tell-tales for sail trim, we don't ban reference marks on halyards and sheet leads.

I'm not seeing a problem here. Genoa trimmers on my boat are puppet sailors. "Keep the leech 1" off the spreader" and that is all they do. Same for the driver to some extent. Upwind there are targets for angle and speed, driver points the boat at the right angle and the trimmers adjust until the speed is correct.

How is having a crew adjust the foils to a set target any different to the target settings for every other adjustment on a well setup boat?

 

------------------
Oately is behind the Challenge-see the 35th AC thread.

 

I guess I view neither option as affecting the categories I discussed.

Cheers,

Earl

 

Imagine how many parameters this "target" the foil should achieve is related to. Each time something - ANYthing - on and/or around the boat changes, the target of the optimum angle of incidence of the foil changes, too. It is a very "dynamical" target, far more elusive to be reached than the more or less "static" target of a polar diagram. As I have said, I do not believe that the difference can be defined with precision, but I feel/suspect that the great quantity of the parameters that should be incorporated in this "chart", and of the times per minute the "actual" arm should be adjusted to them, transform the quality of the total system -they make it something like a "program" that is dictated to, and "blindly" followed by, the puppet-trimmer. It may well be my false impression, but I see some form of automation, of "computing" here, that goes beyond what we are accustomed to...

I believe that the "information" that arrives to the puppet-trimmer by using such a complex mechanism goes beyond what "instruments" offer - it is somehow "processed" - the actual movement of the foil sets in motion a quite long sequence of interconnected devices the one after the other, and the puppet-trimmer stands at the end only of this sequence, and pushes a on-off button. The "thinking", the "processing" of the "raw" information inside this complex mechanism ( the mere actual position of the foil ) has already be done, so the mechanism resembles a "mechanical computer" more that a tell-tale of a sail or a pointer of an instrument

If I had seen a tiller or a wheel and a trimmer turning it, and I knew that each and every time the trimmer turns the tiller or wheel, the foils turn to a corresponding degree at the very same instance, I would nt had any doubt that it would had been a manual foil control system. When so many paraphernalia are inserted between the trimmer and the foil, and I do not see neither them nor the trimmer, I can not be sure that there is no automation involved... If you could see the rudder, and Spithil s arm, you could easily see that each time the arm turns, the rudder and the boat turns as well, and vice versa. Have you seen any trimmer turning something on board of US Oracle, anything, frantically, many times each minute, so he would be able to adjust the "actual angle" to the each time different "target angle", and eliminate pitching ?
I would really be glad if it turns out US Oracle s designers made such a superb job the TNZ designers failed to do, so they had no need of a SAS-like semi-automatic foil adjusting system ! That would mean that the "three foils configuration" is a superb innovation, indeed, able to cope with much higher speeds that the speeds it was designed and supposed to cope at the first place. Also, that would mean that, if real-time rudder foil adjustments will also be allowed, the boats will be stable enough to travel through stronger winds and taller waves, with absolute safety.

 

Did the Americans cheat in 1851??

Did the Americans cheat in 1851??

Most people know that the America’s Cup is named for its first winner, the Schooner America, and not for the country from which she came.
But not so many know that the Auld Mug could still be named the 100 Guineas Cup and that would mean that the British would actually have won the thing.
When the gun went America was hanging back but she quickly moved through the fleet until there were just four boats in front of her. But she was being
jostled by the pack and Brown decided to head for clear air and sailed her inside the Nab light vessel that marked the eastern end of the course, thus giving himself the lead.

The race had taken seven-and-a-half hours.

The next day the owner of Brilliant formally protested America for going the wrong side of the mark. However the Commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron, the Earl of Winton,
explained that ‘by mistake’ America had been given two sets of sailing instructions and anyway there had been an observer from the Squadron on board.
The protest was diplomatically withdrawn and the Cup was awarded to the New York Yacht Club.


Sound familiar ::

OC

 

No.

What does sound depressingly familiar is a poster from NZ making excuses for getting beaten on the water 11-8.

 

Not required. Look at the videos of the foiling C Class Cats ... with only two crew they cannot have anyone fussing with the foils "frantically, many times a minute". Yet they are surprisingly stable on foils. The mass and size of an AC72 would tend to make it more stable than a C Class Cat, not less. If the C Class Cats can foil reliably without such frantic adjustments what makes you think the AC72 require it?

 

First Foiling AC

The beauty of the TNZ originated (and Oracle refined) three foil configuration with a single main foil is that it is a hybrid surface piercing foil + fully submerged foil. Traditional surface piercing foils control altitude with speed, the hybrid does it with speed backed with:
1) the effect of leeway on the inboard side of the vee("L") foil,
2) the emergence of the inboard foil tip from the water,
3) manual angle of incidence adjustment used when the speed increases or falls below the designed speed range of the curved daggerboard coupled with 1& 2 above. There is video that shows the Oracle foil being adjusted-very quickly- just after they got on foils.(angle of incidence reduced by moving the top of the board forward)
----
It's simple,brilliant and effective and is a breakthru design for catamaran foilers-and it can be refined and refined and refined. In the LAC, Groupama, Hydros 1& 2, and the Canadians used variations of this system. Groupama was more like the original TNZ foil with a very wide range of speed before it required adjustment. Hydro's variation required much more active control.

Rough sketches- rotate the foils in the left sketch 10-15 degrees clockwise to get their approximate "as sailed" orientation:

 

I hope I have just done that. See comments in text.

In an earlier post, I compared a scaled down AC72 to a Hobie 16.

To remind you, here is a brief summary of what I came up with, using the imperial system, instead of the metric one.

Weight of boat and crew = 170 lbs.
Sail Area = 121 sf
Crew weight = 24.6 lbs
Rig Height = 28.8 ft

Though this scaled down AC72 would have slightly more than half the Sail Area of a Hobie 16, it would be one forth it total weight and have less than one fourteenth as much moveable ballast in the form of crew, assuming the Hobie 16 did not use a trapeze. And the rig height of the scaled down AC72 would be slightly taller than that of the Hobie 16.

If soft sails had been allowed, a dispute would have soon arisen as soon as the wind piped up, as the soft sail would have been able to reef and the wing sail would not be able to.

Could there have been races which Team Oracle would have forfeited, due to the wind?

Would Team Oracle have won anyway?

We will never know.

This situation would have made a far more interesting series, as real design choices would have been possible, much as they were with the old 12's.

For example:

With the 12's, you could make a longer, slack bilged boat and pray for strong winds (as you would pay for this extra Length in Sail Area), or you could make a shorter boat, with firmer bilges, pile on more Sail Area, and pray for lighter winds.

With the AC72's your stuck with the narrow confines LE and/or his hired consultants mandated. One of which, I will forever contend, was patently dangerous. And should have immediately seen as such, for the earlier mandated sailing conditions (Later reduced by the race committee. After two capsizes).

I'll state again that I have nothing against the AC72's foiling. I think that was an interesting addition to the sport. But, the wing sails are especially useful for high apparent wind speeds, which foilers are bound to experience.

Mandating both wing sails and a maximum weight all but mandated foiling, too.

Even more interesting would be a race between a foiling and a non-foiling catamaran around a triangular course. Could the non-foiler win?

It seems to me that LE and/or his consultants ruled that possibility out.

It is for this reason, I believe LE practiced poor sportsmanship.

 

I have watched all the videos of those races I could find. The stability of the boats was not even close to that of US Oracle sailing upwind ! In the C Class cats, the movement of the bodies of the crew ( even their body parts, arms, legs ) fore and aft almost every second was able to stabilize the boats ( as much as it stabilized them...) without the help of ny other mechanism.
Come on, the US Oracle sailing upwind seemed like a train, not a boat !

 

Yes I know I posted it well before you did. Also he is not behide he is in front as in 3rd place & larry as in 2nd place.

and

I would like to see the monohull 104 ft foiling center board as the vessel design as the challenger has this proven winning design and it would keep his costs in check and the only cost would be larry's. No other challengers and the race would be around all hawaii islands with full race time helicopter filming for live tv viewing for all to see, to save the spectactors adding further unnecessary man made global warming emmission as the viewing public probably would in the main be all Kiwis and Aussies as was for the 34 th cup.


OC

 

I did not get beaten and I'm not making excuses. I supported Sir Russell Coutts And Sir Ben Ainslie. so get real.

and I,m not a poster but a living person. Posters are things than get glued or hang some where from a poster holder.

OC