34th America's Cup: multihulls!

Thats also what Yachting Australia observes.

http://www.yachting.org.au/?Page=58965

"The main barrier for future participation is the perceived cost of sailing. Boat ownership, maintenance, storage costs, and annual membership payment, are expensive, especially for a family. "

If you dont get families and kids involved, sailing has no future.

 

Simplify. The concept of the optimist was a cheap starter boat that would get kids into sailing..... That simple boat now costs a fortune if you get your kid to champs.
Expensive everything and new everything next season. Not encouraging in this economic climate? Foiling is great and big boat racing is great, but even the likes of formula one are realising that cutting back on cost is the way forward. At some point, technology for technologies sake won't do it anymore...
While foiling is interesting and an avenue which sailing will take, it isn't going to be mainstream, simply because fewer and fewer people can go down that road.

 

34th AC

TNZ and LR in a practice race. I went to SA and found it again-don't understand how it could have been taken down originally.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=teVvCe7pDHs

 

Video been pulled. found this


http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/2013/03/08/emirates-team-new-zealand-march-8-2013/

OC

 

Sliced twice? I think the average viewer would be entertained by the team effort involved in getting a big boat around the bases at those speeds. Interesting to see LR stay so close to NZ. The speed difference is made in the transitions on the course.

 

The video of practice racing is back up. Don't know what happened.

 

34th AC

From Scuttlebutt tonight-letters to the editor:

From Adrian Morgan:
From the remote fastnesses of the Scottish Highlands, one can see for miles, both backwards and forwards, and from my perspective, 1000s of miles from San Francisco it looks like the America’s Cup is shaping up to be just like those contests in the early 1900s.

It was during that era when hulls like that of the absurdly over canvassed Reliance were built of exotic materials such as aluminum and Tobin bronze, lasted for a few months before self-destructing, and money was no object. Come the America’s Cup match this year, with realistically just Oracle Team USA and Emirates NZ in the running, they may well self-destruct during the races, will be redundant soon after, and cost a bomb. Just like the old days.

This is more like it, I hear myself saying: a proper, elitist, exclusive and ruinously expensive America’s Cup in mad boats set against the backdrop of a global recession. Forget bringing sailing to the masses by making it more accessible; forget the spectacle of dozens of boats racing on the Bay; this is an old fashioned grudge match between two old adversaries, with the other two teams there only to make up the numbers.

And who will win? My prediction is that the billionaire who bought the Cup last time around will, with the help of a bunch of renegade Kiwis, win it on the water this time.

 

I must say I have to agree with this Adrian Morgan fella.
The sooner the Cup reverts to 6knot slowboats that are so frail that their masts explode when the bow drops into a trough, or the whole boat folds in half in 15knots, the better.
This is what the viewing public truly wants to see, not 72ft wingsailed cats that foil reliably in 25knots of wind, and average 39knots downwind (including gybes) in 17knots.
No sir, you will only get the sponsors to come back when you slow it all down to the point that the couch-watcher can get up, go pee, fetch another beer from the fridge, and not miss any of the action, for in the 5 minutes it took him to do that, NOTHING happened.

 

34th AC 39knots/45mph--TNZ WOW!

This is a "bloody" exciting video-TNZ is looking good!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljeOYlCuzBM&feature=player_embedded

 

34th AC

From Scuttlebutt,letters to the editor tonight:

The fascination of sin
Published on March 11th, 2013 | by Editor


From Iain McAllister, Peggy Bawn Press:
As Adrian Morgan suggests (Scuttlebutt 3792), bring it on! Charles Paine Burgess, son of America’s Cup defender designer, Edward Burgess, brother of the J-Class Ranger’s designer, Starling Burgess – and himself an aeronautics engineer, rig designer and naval architect – wrote in 1935:

“In the charter of the New York Yacht Club there is a statement that one of the purposes of the Club is to promote the science of naval architecture. The implication is that developments in yacht design are considered applicable to other branches of naval architecture. It is true that part of my father’s work was the improvement of the Gloucester fishing schooners by applying to them the science he had developed largely through the design of racing yachts.

“On the other hand, the modern America’s Cup racer bears no slightest resemblance to any useful craft in the world, and she does not even contribute to the development of yachting as a true sport apart from the satisfaction of an illogical national vanity. But having damned them, I must confess to an absorbing interest in the problems set by these extraordinary craft. They have the fascination of sin.”

 

34th AC

Look at this video carefully toward the end-unless it is some form of camera distortion the mast is canted to weather. "Mr. Clean" on SA who was aboard TNZ says there was no mast cant???!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wGQ3uQ5OH_M

 

34th AC

This is the enthusiasm I have for the privledge of watching these fantastic boats--let alone sailing them:

From AC-Anarchy and Russell Coutts's FB page:

"The experience of riding on the AC 72 when it's foiling is incredible. In fact, I liken it to riding on a bobsled where the motion (and sound) are similar especially when you are riding inside the leeward hull. Seriously.....who would have thought the AC 72's would be foiling! It's amazing to think how far these boats have developed in a few years. We all thought Alinghi 5 and the trimaran were incredible machines....and a few years ago they were, but the AC 72's have taken this to a whole new level. Tommy Slingsby told me the other day that he just can't wait to get out there each day - who wouldn't? It's just such a rush sailing these boats. For the future beyond this AC I can see the AC 45's will also need to be foiling. Those Red Bull Youth AC guys may be coming into this game at just the right time!!!"

 

I reckon the photos of LE and Jimmy at the Oracle Base are a crackup... "Jimmy please keep the boat at this angle not vertical or upside down thanks!"

 

34th AC

Quote from Glenn Ashby of Team New Zealand: (posted on ACA)

Glenn recalls the first time they got up on the foils downwind. “I’ll never forget looking through the tramp at the daggerboard going through the water – and knowing it was supporting the entire boat and the crew at close to 40 knots.
“It had been something that we had been working on for a very long time and to see it at AC72 scale was pretty awesome and a great feeling.”

 

I'll let people more fascile than I with differences in Reynolds numbers, density, compressibility etc. address the question directly, but of course righting moment is roughly (distance between lifting centers of L foils/2)*boat weight + (transverse distance between lifting center of leeward L foil and center of total crew weight)*total crew weight. It's in equilibrium, so heeling moment equals righting moment, so force on the rig equals righting moment / heeling arm.