AC 36 Foiling Monohulls

Discussion in 'Sailboats' started by OzFred, Sep 13, 2017.

  1. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    From Scuttlebutt: (I was afraid of this.....dl)
    Small Field Anticipated for Americas Cup

    Emirates Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton has all but confirmed there will be just three seriously-funded challengers for the 2021 America’s Cup in Auckland. Challenger of Record Luna Rossa, Ben Ainslie’s Ineos Team UK and the New York Yacht club are the big players confirmed for the monohull event. There are enough bases for three more challengers at the Auckland waterfront but they are unlikely to be completely filled.

    America's Cup: Grant Dalton's 2021 entry numbers talk falls short https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=12061895
     
  2. AlexanderSahlin
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    AlexanderSahlin Junior Member

    It surprises me that anybody is challenging for the America's cup 2021 before any prototype of the AC-75 has been demonstrated on the water. With the practical experience of foiling sailboats ETNZ have, I am quite sure they can predict the performance of the boat when up on foils reasonably accurately. But how much wind is needed to get up on the foils? The take-off procedure is likely to be quite tricky, as Tom Speer describes in post 370. The advantage of a multihull is that you can get much power from the sail and have a low hull-drag below foiling speed. This allows the multihull to reach take-off speed in quite low wind. The AC-75 has less righting moment than a multihull below take-off speed and much more friction drag of the hull. This means that you will need much more wind for take-off. There will be days when you can sail on the foils, but if you drop the hull in a tack (e.g. because too slow shifting of the foils) you may be stuck with the hull in the water for the rest of the race, while the competitor continues on the foils. Such a race is not very exciting, but it is much more likely to happen with the AC-75 than it has been with foiling catamarans.
    I think one reason for the shift to monohulls was that they were expected to give the kind of close racing you can get with heavy keelboats, where you have small differences in speed. But with the kind of boat the competitors will be forced to sail the opposite is more probable.
     
  3. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    I think that by using both main foils in the water initially with differential lift(possibly), takeoff shouldn't be a problem.
    I think a scaled up version of the foil system on the Quant 23(the first foiling keelboat) would have been so much simpler and less costly-and still provide decent speed with light air takeoff.

    Quant 23 flying - Copy.jpg

    Quant 23 production boat.jpg
     
  4. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    Bertarelli: America's Cup: Alinghi won't be part of 36th America's Cup https://www.sail-world.com/news/205857/Bertarelli-to-sit-out-Americas-Cup-in-NZ

    Partial quote from the article:
    "The America's Cup has become a game for engineers. I will not be there," Bertarelli told la Stampa after competing in the foiling GC32 regatta on Lake Garda, Italy.

    "They [theAC75’s] are catamarans dressed as monohulls. They will be slower boats than we could have by keeping and developing the catamarans we had seen in the latest edition of Bermuda, probably less governable and safe".
     
  5. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    Continuing the downward path, sadly.

    In the later 12 Metre years there was an average of 11 teams.
    In the IACC years there was an average of 10 teams.
    In foiling years the average is 3.5 teams.
     
  6. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    The problem certainly isn't foiling-it's the management that changes the boat every AC and in 35 it was changed twice*! The flying 72's in 34 put on the best show in the history of the Americas Cup-the little boats in 35 just didn't capture the magic like the 72's did in San Fran.....
    *from the 72 to the 62 to the 50
    --------------------
    AC 34-3 teams challenged
    AC 35 -5 teams challenged
    ---
    Average: 4---Despite the management boat changes the participation increased from the first year of foiling boats to the second by 1.67 times. Had the boat not been changed for 36 there would have been another increase in participation.
     
    Last edited: Jun 1, 2018
  7. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    In the past, there has been NO comparable drop in team numbers when a new class came in. When the IACC class came in, for example, the number of teams dropped from 17 to 10 for the next two matches and then increased. When the AC72 arrived, the number of teams dropped from 12 to 4.

    Two points stand out - for one, historically there has never been a drop in the numbers remotely like the one that happened when the AC72s arrived. Secondly, any inference that there would have been a quick increase in numbers appears to have little foundation, since that did not occur during previous changes.

    Thirdly, keeping the AC72s was not an option even before they raced in the AC. People like Coutts himself said the AC72s were unaffordable, and surely he knows more about the costs of AC campaigns than you or I do.

    Fourthly, there are doubts about whether the AC72s actually caught the public's imagination all that much. Here's some quotes on the issue;

    Midway through the 2013 match it was noted that "the racing was indeed a spectacle of epic proportion, but with TV ratings of about one million viewers it was still far from worth the estimated $100 million price required to field a team, Reuters reported." Oracle Team USA's new America's Cup boat is so fast 'It doesn't quite feel like you're in control' http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-makes-big-speed-gains/?r=AU&IR=T

    Afterwards it was noted that "Television ratings for the event have been abysmal, as NBC has relegated it to the sparsely distributed NBC Sports Network. After the opening races, the event managed a .08 rating, meaning only about 110,000 people in the U.S. watched it on television. By comparison, at least 10 times that many Americans regularly watch bowling on TV......It wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time, America’s Cup was a pretty big deal – in the U.S. and across the Pacific."

    Outside also notes that Coutts himself said that "in hindsight he would have opted for smaller, cheaper craft" which underlines the lack of success of the AC72s in terms of attracting entries and publicity. Too Fast to Fail | Outside Online https://www.outsideonline.com/1917901/too-fast-fail

    Most of the AC72 racing attracted only 175,000 viewers; Velocity Made Good https://www.soundingsonline.com/features/velocity-made-good

    Oh, and in the couple of years since the Brits, for example, returned to the AC with high-speed cats, young people in the UK have turned AWAY from sailboat racing - source, Y&Y Webinar.
     
  8. OzFred
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    OzFred Senior Member

    I think you should start your own thread about participation. ;)

    The America's Cup isn't intended to increase sailing participation, or even interest in sailing. It might be argued that the poor viewer numbers are a failure of marketing and the fall in competing teams purely coincidental with the change to multihulls. To have any evidence other than coincidence, you'd have to survey the principals of the teams that are no longer competing as to why they've dropped out, or eligible sponsors why they don't sponsor teams now.

    There's no doubt that the boats are stupidly expensive, but an AC campaign has never made business sense. Most of the teams been sponsored by mega–rich sailing tragics whose only goal is to win the cup, regardless of the cost. The drop in numbers may be a reflection a loss of prestige of the event, particularly given the years of courtroom shenanigans that have marred many AC regattas. The change of boat at each new event hasn't helped either.
     
  9. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    My post was following on from two posts (376 and 379) that were also about participant numbers in the AC, so it wasn't thread drift.

    As regards expense, it's interesting to look up costs from earlier eras and see the way that campaign costs have now increased 10-17 times or more, even allowing for inflation.
     
  10. wet feet
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    wet feet Senior Member

    I must admit to not doing any kind of scientific survey on the topic,but I have yet to encounter a young ex-sailor in the UK who was moved to give up sailing because of the type of boat used in the America's cup.I do know a few who had been encouraged by their parents and simply weren't interested in the same thing as their parents and consequently gave up.It is a competition that attracts very few sailors and those participating are of the hired gun variety switching nationalities and teams according to commercial reasons and pressures.The new format was heralded as moving back in the direction of a nation's sailors on the boat and this alone will limit the teams able to muster a first class crew of their own nationals.We also have to take into account that nobody has sailed on or even seen one of the new boats yet and it may be that witnessing the new arrivals in action will encourage a few more billionaires to join in.Alternatively the whole affair might be the death of the AC and we can be sure that somebody or other will say "I told you so".On balance I would prefer to see wealthy team leaders hiring clever designers and good sailors to take sailing into new and even frivolous territory rather than attempting to squeeze 0.002 knots from old concepts such as dragging lead or depleted uranium around the ocean at displacement speeds.I am also fairly sure which concept would be easier to sell to young sailors.
     
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  11. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    Why be sure? It's a very complex issue and many statistics and studies indicate that youths are NOT actually turned on by high-performance gear. However, to avoid derailing the thread I will leave it there, despite the fact that the issue of participation does seem to relate directly to the OP's question about trickle-down from the AC.

    By the way, depleted uranium was used once in a yacht, I think, in 1972. And any inference that the alternative to foilers was moving at displacement speed is clearly incorrect, as any look at a modern high performance mono shows.

     
  12. Doug Lord
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    Doug Lord Flight Ready

    ==================
    Yeah,you must be right*-I guess just middle aged video announcers are turned on by high performance**.
    * such incredible nonsense!
    ** and old guys like me(and every kid at the yacht club(s) where I grew up racing)--yee ha! :
     
  13. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    Perhaps of some relevance is the fact that the Gonen monofoiler was second last in class in its first race. That may be because of teething issues, of course, and it did finish ahead of one Melges 32 and the Esse 850s, etc.

    It was a very light race and the foilers were generally beaten by non-foilers. The Easy to Fly catamarans were well behind the "seahugging" cats in their class. In fact in the class where most of the foilers competed (M2) the seahuggers took the first 11 places. The remaining (ie last) 7 places included all six of the foilers and just one seahugger.

    Incidentally, in the small cat class, the seahuggers dominated and appear to have placed 1,2,4,5,6,8 across the line. The foilers seem to have finished 3,7,9,10,11. Most of the 18 and 20 ft foilers were beaten across the line by the little seahugging Viper F16.

    Given the tendency to publicise the times when such craft do well, it's only reasonable to also note when they do not do well, as that would seem to have a lot to do with how much the technology will trickle down.
     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2018
  14. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    The reasonable way to reply would be using facts rather than empty indignation. A reasonable response would be to show studies on the factors involved in youth motivation in sport; trends in youth participation; numbers in the high-performance youth classes; and other data showing that one had an idea for what was happening in the real world.

    What is important is not people who say how exciting it all is but then stay firmly planted on shore, making excuses. What is important is people who actually get out there and sail.
     

  15. CT249
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    CT249 Senior Member

    Note to the OP; I stayed off the topic of participation until it was raised by someone else on this page. I then said twice that I was trying to stop the possible de-railing of the thread. I'm trying to close the possible derailing down but when people keep on bringing the topic up it's hard to close it down, especially when people are effectively saying is that their personal opinion is worth more than all the objective data and studies that can be found.
     
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