America's Cup declining?

IMHO, one design is the only real competitive racing, as the boats are very restricted.

Handicap racing suffers from an incomplete understanding of what makes a boat faster or slower, and/or the fact that such elements are very hard to check, measure, and account for accurately.

The IOR, for example (as much as I know about it) failed to anticipate the value of just plain Beam, even if it's not carried well into to either end of the boat, in a light D/L boat. Especially one well endowed with crew to act as living ballast. It also may have failed to anticipate such boats, with their light D/Ls, surfing or even planing under the right circumstance.

I think 'box rules' are a very good development, because they are quite comprehensive in what they limit and are relatively easy to understand.

Are there any examples of older ones, dating back to the early 20th century?

If my proposed Sum Rule were to exclude multihulls, I would put a fixed limit on the amount of ballast allowed, as well as restrictions on keel design.

Any proposed rule should be vetted for loop holes by an army of 'sea lawyer' designers before ever seeing the light of day.

I challenge you to propose a preliminary design freak to my proposed rule that I can't pick apart.

 

I have never tried to say that the Simpson tragedy was a trend, as a single point of data is hardly a trend. The two capsizes may be starting to be a trend, but I'll leave that discussion for now.

What I have done (as the same comparisons came up on SA) was to show how long and often the big cutters raced, to put their record into perspective. The 12s and IACC boats seem to have even better records (1 AC-related death for about 270 boats built over 100 years, with something like 150 boats still active). The fact that these boats had thousands of starts over some 120 years (as well as many offshore miles) for two single-boat AC-related fatalities indicates that death has been extremely rare in AC type boats.

It would be interesting to see if there was any way of comparing the extent and magnitude of the changes instituted in reaction to the Artemis tragedy to the changes that resulted from other incidents such as Senna's crash and other motor racing incidents, the '98 Hobart and other sailing fatalities, cycle racing deaths, etc etc.

 

Sharpii wrote "The Square Meter Class limited Sail Area only."

No, there were always some additional requirements. In addition, the rule was revamped from 1916 onwards to introduce hull measurements because the original rule created boats that were comparatively weak, expensive and slow for their size. The "B" Classes with limits on construction and more stringent hull measurement restrictions were also introduced. The open hull rules did not work.

And I suspect the other examples you mention left other huge loopholes. One big potential one in my proposal is that the actual Sail Area is not really limited at all. I can imagine huge square top mains.

Yep, unrestricted sail area boats are innefficient from many angles. There's some classic examples in dinghies where increasing the sail area, righting moment and cost by up to 250% increases speed by only 3-20% - compare an Int 14 to a MG14 and NS14, AC to IC, Cherub or N12 to 12 Ft Skiff, etc. The unrestricted-rig boats are (despite the hype from some of them) almost certainly LESS influential because their design is so much accented around the rig size that fewer lessons can be passed on to other classes. So why follow such a model?

Re "Do you really think such a boat with its vast WL, ridiculously short rig of, perhaps, 8 m tall (probably would have to be a schooner) would have a fighting chance in a match race against something of more sensible proportions

If it capsized every fourth race, how could it possibly win a seven race series? Unless, of course, it did so with little or no damage. And what about tacking duels, that are the meat of match racing. Try out tacking a good sloop with a long schooner, no matter how fast. I believe the America's Cup was finally wrested from the USA by a shorter, probably slower boat that could tack quicker."

If it capsized every 4th race and won the rest, it would win the series by R 5. And tacking duels do not work if one boat has too much of a boatspeed advantage; you rarely see a 45 footer keep ahead of a competent 50 footer just by covering them. As far as AC history goes, read Conner's "Comeback" and the coverage of the '87 AC. He specifically went for a slower-tacking but faster boat and cleaned up.

Yes, as I noted I was just pulling numbers out of the air, but the point is that open rules can lead to impractical boats.

Re "The America's Cup is not what I call an ordinary race. By its nature, it is quite exclusive. Maybe now, too much so. The idea of my proposal is to only make it a bit less so, and to encourage designs that are more likely to be more relevant to ordinary sailors."

The simple measurement systems used in the past have not created designs that are relevant to ordinary sailors. That's why people like Herreshoff created more complicated ones.

Look at dinghy sailing - loose box boats (Raters, Frei Renjollen, Suicides, 12 Foot Skiffs, Rs, old 18 Foot Skiffs) are dead or less popular than tighter box boats (NS14s, MG14s, N12s, MRs, Int 14s, Cherubs, 16 Foot Skiffs) and one designs (Laser, Europe, etc) are more popular still.

Look at yachts - the more open 40s are dead, the more restricted shorthanded 40s with fixed keels etc are popular, the more restricted IRC types are even more popular.

Look at cats - the loose box boats (C Class, D Class, B Class) are dead or rare, the tight boxes (F18) are popular. The A Class is a pretty loose box but tighter than the C,D or B and like the Moth (the only other popular open box boat) it's small enough to be affordable. An AC boat is not.

Look even at windsurfers - boxes have been tightened (see slalom, RB and FW rules) because stuff that pros can handle and afford is stuff that ordinary sailors cannot handle and cannot afford.

Re
IMHO, one design is the only real competitive racing, as the boats are very restricted.

Dunno, I've sailed some extremely competitive championships in restricted classes in which I've worked my guts out. Yes, in all of them newer gear had an advantage, but that's partly because I tend to concentrate on ODs and therefore have old development-class gear.

re The IOR, for example (as much as I know about it) failed to anticipate the value of just plain Beam, even if it's not carried well into to either end of the boat, in a light D/L boat. Especially one well endowed with crew to act as living ballast. It also may have failed to anticipate such boats, with their light D/Ls, surfing or even planing under the right circumstance.

That's an example of one of my points. The Law of Unintended Consequences runs wild through sailing rules, and the wider the rules the more powerful the law IMHO.

Plenty of the best designers in the world used decades of experience with earlier rules to create the IOR, and it ended up creating boats they did not dream of - not just lightweights, but also heavy Resolute Salmon type centreboarders, cat ketches, cat rigged lightweights, super-heavy maxis, bilge boarders, etc etc etc.

If the best designers with years of experience cannot work out what is going to come out of a rule designed to create boats pretty much like the ones they already had, then how are you going to know that you are not going to create freaks or (for the cash/hassle/safety/fun/etc) dogs with a rule that no one has used and for which no boats have been built?

Re I think 'box rules' are a very good development, because they are quite comprehensive in what they limit and are relatively easy to understand. Are there any examples of older ones, dating back to the early 20th century?

I think so; Itchen Ferry and Clyde types etc in the UK, Canoes in the UK and USA. Some of the former ended up pretty bizarre and quite slow in some ways, the latter ended up almost dead because the competitive craft were expensive racing machines that were too hard to sail.

Re I challenge you to propose a preliminary design freak to my proposed rule that I can't pick apart.

It's not what you or I can pick apart when we are dealing with back of the envelope designs, it's what the worlds best can create with gozillions of bucks and years.

Someone posted today that Iain Murray, who started designing open rule high performance boats in the mid '70s, underestimated the performance of the AC72s by 40%.

If someone with his background and access to technology and highly trained minds can't work out how fast a boat would go (and therefore how fast a boat fitting into your rule would go) then how can we?

And going back a bit, why are you assuming that a wide open rule for the marquee event is a good thing for the sport? In the early days of the 12 Metre rule there was a lot of concern that the boats were too big, expensive, single-purpose, and elitist. The fact that 12s - smallest and cheapest boats to ever race for the Cup - were often considered too elitist is interesting because it shows how strongly people in those days felt that the sport should be accessible. The '50s-'87 period when the 12s ruled was the greatest boomtime in the whole sport.

Now we have the fastest boats ever the Cup is the smallest for years. There is no evidence that a Cup for speed machines is good for the sport. In most popular sports, the marquee event uses pretty much (or exactly) the same equipment rules as weekend hackers.... if sailing's elitist way is the right way then why is sailing a smaller sport and a shrinking one?

Historically, the Cup (despite all the hyped BS) was NOT sailed in the most advanced boats, or in boats that were much (if at all) faster than the non-Cup big inshore boats, or in the biggest boats. So the idea of the Cup as a balls-to-the-wall leading-edge event is (1) not faithful to the history that has made the Cup what it is and (2) goes against what is shown to work in more popular and growing sports. And to throw in a 3rd point, as the cat sailors said when the Tornado was (wrongly IMHO) dumped from the Olympics, multihull sailing is a separate discipline to mono sailing and in sports it is (IMHO) completely wrong and (AFAIK) completely unknown for one discipline to take over the marquee event of another discipline. Therefore IMHO, as someone who sails cats and tris and everything bar kites, multis should not be in the Cup any more than board should be in the Little America's Cup or F1 cars should be in motorbike races.

Some people will doubtless attack me for the above, but since they will just use abuse and leaps of logic instead of evidence then there's no way to reasonably discuss the issue.

May I ask how many development class championships you have fought out?

 

Larry Ellison is almost as universally hated as Bill Gates, for basically the same reasons. (seen as finagling little turds who have 'stolen' tons of money 'forcing' people to buy lame, soul crushing 'products')

Like with Bill Gates, there is a large group of people who will go out of their way to avoid Larry's products for "moral integrity" and other reasons.

So his involvement instantly destroys nearly all the coolness of the whole thing. Like when Micheal Jackson got a hold of The Beatles music copyrights and instantly sold them to a raft of crappy commercials, but different.

It is like if Hillary Clinton decided to throw a "wild and crazy" rock concert. Only civil service drones would show up.

Then you got the new SF Bay venue, which does seem like about the most awesome possible place for such an event...till the deep crappy nature of the ultra "liberal" cess pool of SF rears its ugly head.

Turns out we now have a typical case of rich guy (Larry) wooing local idiot politicians (every elected/appointed pol in SF area) with shop worn tale about how if they spend tax dollars throwing a big party for him (Larry) so many dumb people will show up to spend 'dumb money' on overpriced crap it will "fix the budget" and get all these politicians off the hook for decades of criminal stupidity and embezzlement.

Unions assumed they would **** the race organizers......

http://www.zennie62blog.com/2013/03...ers-fails-to-pay-full-contracted-wages-33944/

but now I'm hearing the Unions screaming because the race will have lots of "unpaid volunteers" from out of town and even from 'off shore' doing many jobs. Whether these are actual "yacht people" and race fans or are just 'typical' Hispanic illegal alien labor being paid cash by Larry and told to deny any payment is unknown. Maybe both. But I can't blame anyone for doing "What ever it takes" to avoid the San Fran "Union event staff" regime. LEGALLY hiring someone to anything in SF is even more of a pain-in-the-*** than rest of USA.

While geographically the SF Bay is great with strong winds and great viewing, 'Frisco itself has recently lost any "charm" it was clinging to.

For those who haven't been recently it is much like the dystopian grim urban setting seen in "Blade Runner". Wet concrete jungle of what was an American city now overrun with largely Chinese shuffling crowds in a "world slum", with various gaudy commercials flashing, and filth and immorality the norm.

 

The answer is none.

I'm lucky to even get on a sailboat with my parson like pay and weekend hours.

I do appreciate your impute, because you are truly a man of of much experience and deep knowledge.

I did look up the '87 America's cup series.

It appears Connor went with the old strategy of the fastest boat in a straight line, as well as the most weatherly.

Due to the greater winds where the race took place, a quick tacking covering strategy was useless. The more weatherly American boat could get ahead up wind, then the game was over.

I did conceive of a freak for my own proposed rule.

The boat would be shortened maybe as much as 5.0 M with maybe 0.5M going towards the draft and the rest going to rig height.

This probably wouldn't slow the boat down much and would allow for a more upwind efficient rig.

Since the boats now hydrofoil and there is no minimum weight specified, the 9.5 x 14 M boat may also end up being faster.

I think there is more than one reason the America's Cup is not as popular. The more expensive, more exotic boats may be one reason. Another reason, IMHO, is that it is no longer a competition between nations, but a competition between filthy rich men.

Also, I intended my Sum Rule to be a starting point, for making the race more affordable, not an end point.

More stipulations could be added, such as a permissible range of B/L ratios for any multi's of, say, 1:2-1:3, for starters. Maybe sails that can actually be lowered could be another. A high enough minimum weight limit would effectively kill hydrofoiling.

As for mono's, I would consider limiting the B/L range to 1:3-1:5, keeping the requirement sails must be able to be lowered and adding the stipulations of a hard limit on external ballast and a ban on canting ballast. The same minimum weight would still apply.

To make the race more of a 'national' event, I'd stipulate that the crews will have to live in the country they are sailing for for at least one year.

As for development classes, I'm inventing two of my own.

One is for a very narrow straight sided scow, where the sail area is limited by the weight of boat and crew. I will announce it on this forum after I build and test the first boat. The design rules comfortably fit on two pages.

The other is for a tiny, single channel, RC boat that will be built of facets, so someday boats may be built out of materials that are otherwise suitable, but that no one dare bend.

 

sharpii2, I'm amazed you'd want a rule to kill foiling. Never going to happen...
(in the AC, I hope). These foiling cats are the most significant technological improvement to Americas Cup sailboat design in it's history and I think that will prove to be a significant milestone in the Cup. Never to go back, God willing and the creek don't rise.

 

Can't say I agree.

It seems foiling boats are good for nothing but foiling.

So far, I have not seen one I would want for any other purpose than to go at speed boat speeds under sail.

After that, unlike multihulls, which have several other advantages, foiling boats have only disadvantages.

The first foiling power boats appeared well before the middle of the 20th century. And some have found some commercial applications.

So far, I have not seen or heard of any foiling pleasure powerboats, probably because the very vulnerable hydrofoils like deep water berths, don't trailer very well, and aren't that much faster than other technologies.

With sailboats, the situation is clearly different. A foiling sailboat, particularly a multihull one, is significantly faster than just about any other sailboat technology that can be scaled up.

That being said, still does not mitigate the huge practical disadvantages. Two of which are:
1.) the extreme vulnerability of the foils, and
2.) the very limited weight to sail carrying power ratio needed to get the boat of the water and onto the foils.

I'm not so sure AC boats should not foil. I was only answering CT's arguments, that AC boats should have more in common with every day cruising size sail boats, to make the competition more popular.

I'm not sure I agree.

It seems the AC competition has gone full circle.

Once it was a game, complete with all kinds of legalisms, between two or more plutocrats.

Then it became a similar game between syndicates of super rich men who were (sensibly, IMHO) taxed out of being plutocrats, who had to make nationalistic appeals to help fund their efforts.

Now it has returned to what it once was, with the only difference being that today's plutocrats can make far less convincing claims of bettering the lives of ordinary people than their 'robber baron' predecessors could.

If you despise the players, it's harder to like the game.

Having said that, I will say this:

I do not believe AC boats should be of a technology that is significantly slower than that of the fastest cruising sailboat technology of our times.

They probably should be multihulls.

Foiling could be then seen as just another do-dad that will never end up on ordinary boats, but enhances the competition enough to make it worth while.

There were all kinds of such do-dads on the old 12s, including articulating keel flaps and fantastic ballast/displacement ratios that went as high as 90%.

 

Foiling around

Ever heard of Dave Keiper? 20,000 cruising miles at sea in a....foiler!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1cYXxZiL4B8

 

Thanks, Doug.

Quite an achievement.

And way back in the '70's, when even multihulls were relatively new?

How come there isn't fleet of them now?

Maybe because, throughout the whole clip, I see the crew standing on the windward deck.

Multi's brought speed and comfort to the sport of sailing.

Foilers just bring speed, and probably at the expense of comfort.

Still, you've made a good point.

Thanks for showing me this.

 

You're welcome. Sometime if you get a chance go to Tom Speers site(tspeer.com , I think) and check out his Basciliscus project. He has mostly designed a modern version of Keiper's boat- still using ladder foils. Held up by what holds most of us back....

 

While I can perfectly understand the idea that AC boats should be the quickest things afloat, they have not been so in the past and it's also perfectly normal for the gear used in a sport's major event to be quite restricted and slower than other gear.

AC boats have been about 80% of the speed of the fastest gear for about 40 years until the AC72s arrived. A multihull cruiser/racer like the late '70s Kelsall 53(?) "Three Legs of Mann" would have blitzed a 12 Metre in most conditions. A charter tri like the big Crowther "Avatar" would eat an IACC boat for breakfast. The J Class and the earlier big AC-style cutters were slower than "cruisers" in some conditions, as demonstrated by the performance of Westward, Atlantic etc.

In most other "racing vehicle" sports, the gear used in top events falls into two categories. The most popular category seems to be gear that is highly restricted to make it accessible, and much slower (but more popular) than other gear that only a minority use. A sport like bicycle racing fits into this category - Tour de France and Olympic bikes are much slower than 'bents, but almost no one races 'bents.

The second category is gear that is also highly restricted, but where no one bothers to make faster gear. F1 cars seem to fall into this category - it wouldn't be hard to make something faster than an F1 car but no one bothers to because they all play by the accepted rules of the sport.

There seem to be very, very few sports in which the fastest known gear is used for the major events. That seems to offer a lesson to us, but sailing these days seems to be ignoring that lesson which is probably why sailing isn't doing well as a sport.

Here is a list of the most popular of what I could call "vehicle" sports in England - that is, sports in which participants move by the use of pieces of gear bigger than shoes. Note that this is sports funded by Sport England and motor racing is not included - it's a touch more popular than sailing IIRC.

Next to each sport I have noted the speed difference between the world's fastest gear and the gear used in the main events.

1- Cycling. "Marquee event" (Tour de France) normal road cycling gear is 55% as fast as the fastest gear. Gear that is legal in about 20% of "marquee event' rounds (ie UCI time trial bikes, permitted in about 3 of 19 Tour stages) is 62% as fast as the fastest gear.

Olympic track gear is even more highly restricted. I'm not sure about XC MTBs and BMXs; I think they are like CX gear in that the nature of the course means that "cruising style" gear (by which I mean gear the average person may use to get to work or the shops) is almost as fast as the gear used in pro racing and the Olympic games.

2- Snowsports. I don't know of any speed differential, but ski designs are restricted and only approved (production, IIRC) gear is allowed.

3- Sailing.

4- Canoeing/kayaking. Marquee event (Olympic) gear about 80/85% as fast as unrestricted gear as far as I can calculate.

6- Rowing- The gear that finished 1,2,3,4,5 in the worlds in the '80s was banned...dunno how much faster it was.

7- Waterskiing. Marquee event (world champs) ski racing boats are highly restricted, about 75% as fast as unrestricted boats IIRC.

8- Triathlon- Marquee long-distance event (Ironman etc) tri bikes are about 62% as fast as the fastest gear. Marquee shorter events (Olympics) use gear that is about 57% as fast as the fastest gear AFAIK.

BTW one marquee event in the fastest sport of all, air racing as in Reno, uses 70 year old designs that go just 11% as fast as the fastest planes. The other marquee event in the fastest sport of all (Red Bull Air Race) uses gear that about 6% as fast as the fastest planes, and slower than gear of the 1920s.

So in the most popular "vehicle" sports, the gear used in the biggest events of all is around 69% as fast as the fastest gear. Secondly, in the most popular such sport there is no difference between the gear rules for the "marquee event" and the typical stuff used by club racers and leisure riders, and the gear used for the "marquee event" is significantly slower than cheap plastic gear that can be used for commuting to work.

Analysis of major open-entry events like the biggest sailing race in England shows that multis are making up a smaller proportion of the fleet than they did in the '60s, down from as high as 4.3% in '66 to as low as 1.3% in 2012. Similarly, there appears to be no growth in the proportion of Aussies racing multis inshore or offshore and many US small cat fleets have shrunk or died. I am NOT saying that is a good thing, but it is one of many indications that prove that multis are not taking over. BTW so far I have not found any indication that the selection of the AC72 has increased the number of people sailing multis.

So there is nothing unusual about "marquee event" gear being fairly slow, and the sport in which "marquee event" gear is slowest (comparatively speaking) is the most popular of all "vehicle" sports by a long way. The facts are in - sports in which the major events use slower and more accessible gear attract more participants.

Why shouldn't sailing do what the most popular "vehicle" sport does? In many ways the funny thing about sailing is not that it has restrictions on the gear used in major events, but that it has such open rules.

PS - the percentages above are fairly close as far as I can see, but I'm not claiming that they are valid to the last percent.

PPS - Why should AC boats be multihulls when the event was created by monos?

Would you throw motorbikes out of Moto GP races and put cars in because cars are faster and more popular? Do you dump Olympic kayak races for rowing races because single sculls are faster and newer?

I still haven't had a logical argument from anyone to say why an event that has been contested in one discipline (the most popular one of all) for 150 years should be moved to another discipline. There's been plenty of simpleminded abuse, but nothing like a logical discussion. Nor has anyone shown an example of this occurring in another sport (although I know of one such example) which seems to indicate that most sportspeople would find such a thing unthinkable or abhorrent.

 

Hi CT.

"Why should AC boats be mutlihulls when the event was created with mono's," is like saying "Why should the AC be externally ballasted sloops when the event was created by internally ballasted cutters and schooners?".

Progress happens and we must move on.

The old 12's served us well, but I remember people complaining that they were getting a bit long of tooth when I was a boy.

I've even read complaints that the race is usually more like a two boat parade, as the boat that gets ahead, in the early part of the race, tends to stay ahead.

Multi's have been around for a long time and have proven themselves to be ocean worthy, when sensibly designed and sailed. The are usually 30 to 50% faster than mono's of the same length and technology. The only exceptions I know of are mono's with huge hiking wings, and mono's with canting ballast.

Multi's also have a wider speed range than mono's, being capable great bursts of speed. This could end the 'two boat parade', as the trailing boat could suddenly become the leading boat, if it gets a zephyr or gust the lead boat doesn't get.

Other than that, I do see your point.

But, having watched the AC for most of my life, I have witnessed very expensive, high technology, being thrown into inherently slow boats. For years, there has been a noticeable giggle effect, for that reason.

So, I think it is much different than the examples you cite.

 

In 1987, Freemantle, the Louis Vuitton Cup consited of two hundred and twenty three races between 13 syndicates.

The present AC is a joke....practice your giggle

 

$1 fitting ?????

“We had a funny day the other day,” said Draper, referencing Thursday. “As soon as we started racing on the course we damaged a tiny little fitting on the boat that almost stopped us sailing the race. We managed to keep sailing around the course, but it wasn’t the smooth sailing we’d have liked.”

The breakdown gremlin could be the deciding factor. The AC72s may cost millions of dollars to put on the racecourse, but they also have inexpensive fittings that can cause troubles. The “tiny little fitting” Draper referred to is a $1 item on the daggerboard trunk. Emirates Team New Zealand also had to wrestle with a breakdown that nearly prevented them from completing the first race.

http://www.americascup.com/en/news/3/news/16487/saturday-morning-update

I have never heard of a yacht fitting for $1 ??? Are they talking about a single screw ?

 

A very good point.

But that may have more to do with the times than the boat type used.

Back then the tottering Soviet bear was still bad enough to scare the worst excesses out of capitalism, forcing, as I mentioned before, the creation of syndicates.

Though it still was a race of huge egos, it was also sort of a community effort.

As for the boats.

Do you suggest we go back to the 12's?

They could, of course, come up with a multihull to replace the 12's, but as CT has said, and I'm starting to agree with him, it needs to be in a tight box.

And the silly wing sails have to go. They're only good for this kind of racing (and maybe not even this) and, as far as I know, have not ended up being widely accepted by the cruising or racing communities.

Unless they have very limited area, they seam to be patently unsafe.