35th Americas Cup: Foiling Multihulls!

35th America's Cup on Foils! TNZ

Practice Day Team New Zealand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUiPkNHvRKQ

 

35th America's Cup on Foils! ---ACWS Portsmouth

More "action" on a foiless Saturday-Sailorgirl Interviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9SUHAtHoGM

 

Surfing the web and ran across this. Of course there are many such videos now on the web, but this one is short, to the point, and has some good shots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbPTnF6liF8

 

35th America's Cup on Foils! ---ACWS Portsmouth

Team UK won Portsmouth-series results show Oracle 1 pt behind them

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CoIpfAkW8AEl2uV.jpg

 

35th America's Cup on Foils! ---ACWS Portsmouth

Sailorgirl wrap up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ19yuFQhbo

 

It's funny that many people were claiming that the AC would become vastly bigger and more popular if it switched to multis. Now that it has not just switched to multis but gone further to foiling multis, some people are still complaining and still demanding that it won't be exciting enough unless the boats are foiling all the time.

 

35th America's Cup on Foils! ---ACWS

There's a whole lot of us saying that choosing light air venues and or having the luck of the draw result in a light air non-foiling series is nuts. Most of the people going to or watching these events want to see foiling not sea-huggers poking around.
And it would be so simple to guarantee foiling throughout the windrange starting at 5 knots of wind. It would cost but make no mistake there is a cost to
having so little foiling in this series.
For crying out loud if a 23' keelboat can foil in 5 knots then surely a cat can as well with the right foils/rig:

 

35th America's Cup on Foils! UK wins Portsmouth ACWS

From Scuttlebutt tonight: http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/2...m_source=Email Newsletter&utm_term=click here

 

That doesn't address the fact that after many people said non-foiling multis would be great for the Cup, people are now complaining about non-foiling multis in the Cup. If people are getting bored by seahugging cats then it proves that the people who said that getting cats into the Cup would not live up to the hype were right. And to say that these cats are "poking around" is an extremely odd thing when they are probably close to being the fastest light-wind sailing machines in existence. By those standards, a Formula One car is also just "poking around" the Monaco racetrack.

Secondly, it's bizarre to call Portsmouth a "light air venue" when so last year the second day was canned because it was too damn windy! How on earth can you complain about a place that is, on record, TOO windy 25% of the time having too much light air? It's life - wind tunnels don't exist in reality. When the whole concept depends on getting just the right wind at the right time, success is rare.

By the way, if Chicago is "the windy city" how come it's a "light air venue". Sure, NY, Toulon and perhaps Oman are light-wind venues, but having 40% of your regattas at breezy spots is pretty good considering the commercial reality. You've got to go where the sponsors and crowds are, not where the wind is best.

It's no use going to a place like Garda, as has been said on SA; there's not enough people, there's nowhere to put the boats and none of the other logistical requirements, and people from Rome and the south think it's too far away and too cold.

What other "windy place" can you go to? Sylt? No place to keep the boats, nowhere to launch, and no way to get the spectators and the corporate supporters. Scheveningen? No place for the boats or launching. The French Atlantic coast? Too windy and rough, probably.

And on top of all that, even in many of the so-called 'windy venues' you regularly get significant periods of very little wind. Try going to the famously windy Garda with a TV schedule that requires you to get a consistent 5 knots and you'll get skunked a lot of the time too.

The basic concept of high-speed sailing on live TV is flawed and has been since it was first tried in 1983. Continually saying that success is just around the corner wore thin years ago.

 

Why? Jibs on America’s Cup Catamarans

If those mighty wing sails are so efficient, why are they putting a jib out front?

…particularly when sailing upwind, close hauled (which they do very often when creating those conditions with their big foiling speeds) ??

Why would they put that ‘soft sail’ out front? (not the code sail, but the jib)

 

35th America's Cup on Foils!

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Don't need a "windy place"-just 5kts and the right rig and foils.
Foiling is what the people want to see.....

 

Nice hour long HD round up of the Portsmouth weekend

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b06cb980?suggid=b06cb980

 

I really don't understand the criticism of foiling cats for the AC.The non-foiling part is one component that makes it interesting,after all a significant lead can be lost in a very short time if a trailing boat gets foilborne.In the leadmine era the televised racing was deadly dull and I can't imagine a viewer with no familiarity with racing rules sticking with that for very long.The more dynamic style of the foiling cats is much more spectacular and unpredictable.Its also allowing designers to explore new concepts and advance the whole sailing process.I don't see a future where we will all be sailing foiling cats,but I won't be surprised if the developments trickle down to other branches of sailing.

 

Why do some of us criticise the foiling cats? Let me the ways;

1- the shift to multis and foilers has failed to achieve what those who decided on it claimed that it would.

It hasn't created more entries - it's created fewer. It's not cheaper. They can't sail in high winds like they promised - they cancel races. It's not rating well on TV as they promised - they had to pay TV to take the AC. It's not increasing participation in sailing as they said it would - participation is down by many metrics. It's not apparently even increasing participation in multihull sailing like many people said it would.

If something fails to achieve what its own creators said it would, then it's very easy to understand why it should be criticised.


2- The two major studies about why people don't sail (the North Sails/Laser Sunfish one and the Yachting Australia one) says that they are turned off by the perceived danger, difficulty and expense. They do NOT think that sailing is boring.

The "extreme" nature of the new ACWS and AC makes the perception problem for the sport worse. It emphasises the problems of perceived danger and inaccessibility, all to get rid of something that wasn't a problem. We have effectively taken the biggest event in the sport and turned it into a showcase for the things that non sailors DO NOT LIKE about sailing. We have spent big bucks getting independent researchers to ask people why they don't sail, and then gone completely in the direction those studies told us NOT to go. The fact that the current direction is a problem is also supported by other research into the factors underlying sports participation.

The objective data created by independent professionals tells us that the new AC and ACWS are hurting the perception of sailing as a participant sport. What's not to criticise about that?


3- "the racing was deadly dull" - to who? You can't compare the ACWS to the last mono AC because one of them is an ultra-short-course made-for-TV series that often takes place in fluky areas, and the other was a long-course event sailed in steady winds.

The same applies to the last AC and LV series - they were kept artificially close by the course restrictions and yet still most of them were complete snoozefests. I find the new AC racing dull, and I'm a multi sailor. I actually find it more than dull - I find it objectionable to watch, because of the damage it is doing to the sport I love, for reasons noted above.


4 - Some of us simply don't believe that a sports event created by one discipline (and the multi sailors repeatedly said that multis are a separate discipline during the Olympic Tornado controversy) should be taken over by another discipline. It seems to be almost unheard of in other sports. The C Class sailors and fans complained long and loud about the inequity of taking the Little America's Cup away from the C Class and giving it to the F18HT class. So why was it OK to take the AC away from the most popular sailboat racing discipline (ballasted monos) and give it to just about the smallest one (big cats)??


5 - To the extent that there is any trickle down from the AC (it's actually almost always trickle up from small boats to the AC) it's now going to a much, much smaller part of the sport than it used to, therefore the sport is losing out.


6 - Looking at other equipment-intensive racing sports shows a very important fact - the smaller the difference between the pros' kit and the weekend warriors' kit, the more popular the sport. Look at cycling - its spectator numbers make sailing look silly, it's the most popular equipment-intensive racing sport in English-speaking countries and (AIUI) in Europe, and yet the Tour de France pros are on SLOWER gear than you can buy off the rack in a good local bike shop.

The bikes they ride in the Tour are 40% slower than the fastest bicycles - and yet it's the world's biggest annual sporting event. The Tour is also interesting because the interest centres on the big climbs, where the average speed is down to 10% of the maximum speeds of the event. That says a lot about whether people really want to watch 'extreme' events, or events they can relate to.

 

Why complain about the expense when the America's Cup has always been ridiculously expensive? It is what it is, and if you don't like it, you need to set up a rival competition using boats of a more affordable kind which ordinary people can realistically own too. If you don't want the difficulty and danger of foiling in your CT Cup competition, go for something simple like a Laser. If you want it to be a team competition, have each country put between six and a dozen boats in the race for each country. Come to think of it, you could have a range of different, ordinary boats in the race, covering a wide range of classes from Optimist to Tornado, each country having one of each type used by their team. This would make it look much like an ordinary club handicap fleet and should therefore appeal to normal people and encourage them to take up sailing. You should be able to find sponsors for this competition with ease, given that it will boost the sale of boats, so stop moaning about the AC and do something positive to change the sailing world. Just imagine a competition of such high status in which a child in an Optimist can be the key to their country winning the biggest cup in sailing. Do it!