Americas Cup: whats next?

I always wonder why people have to be stridently one way or the other. I'm sure in some future incarnation the AC might well go to monohulls and maybe it will stay with multihulls. One thing is for sure attacking each other on a forum wont make a whit of difference as to how it's formatted or what boats are used. The ACWS is here now and AC72's are here for this cup, let them have their time in the sun.

IACC, 12metres and a multitude of other monohulls have competed for the AC over the years. If the racing is not to your taste you dont have to watch it, there have been plenty of mono challenges for you to enjoy and no doubt there will be more in the future. If it was my choice the AC rule would allow all sorts of interesting variations like monos, cats, square trimarans or oversquare trimaran flying foilers and pacific and atlantic proas or even a gigantic mono foiler like Doug dreams about but we have AC45's and AC72's and for this edition they will do just fine.

The argument that anyone is trying to take anything away from you or your favoured form of yacht racing is just bogus. It's not like monohull racing is going to go defunct due to this edition of the AC being raced in multihulls.

 

To me, the America's Cup is and has always been about having the fastest yacht. Whoever spends more money and comes up with a more clever design has historically always been the victor. With today's technology, the fastest boats happen to be wing-sailed catamarans. As an engineer, I find it fascinating to see what the teams come up with and what the top of the line race boats look like.
If you're the type who enjoys watching great tactics and seamanship, you'd probably be better off with something like the Olympics. A one-design class eliminates any advantages other than the sailor on board and is arguably a more traditional sport.
-John

 

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John, welcome to the forum! Despite what some uninformed people have said the AC 45 racing has shown that match and fleet racing in fast, high performance multihulls require excellent tactics which have been demonstrated time and again. Leebow situations have occured numerous times as have almost every tactical situation seen in monohull racing especially covering(and wiggling out from under a cover) in match racing. It's been exciting,rewarding and eyeopening for many who didn't think multihull racing could provide such a showcase of tactics.

Great comment from Julian Bethwaite today on DA under the flapper/gyber thread:

"None of us pay anywhere near enough attention to this arena. I look forward to the advent of foiling AC's and the wash down effect to all of us.Cant attached the photo, its too big. I will get one of my sons to reduce it and then post it, maybe a few, great stuff.

Julian
Sydney (mostly) "

 

You can't please everyone and no race ever will.

 

To correct any misunderstandings,I believe that multihulls have some very useful qualities.They also have some limitations,and like any other type of vessel they have some disadvantages.I would much rather see an AC won by a boat which has the speed to beat an opponent rather than seeing a sailor win by forcing his opponent into a disadvantageous situation on the race course.Any racing boat operating at the limits of technology may be prone to sudden and catastrophic failure;I seem to remember Dennis Conner taking a swim a few years back when his boat folded in half and sank.
I have doubts about very much of what is being developed for boats of the AC72 type being applicable to any other form of sailing.Who wants to employ a team of people to babysit a boat 24 hours a day to prevent the wing mast taking control?Similarly,the materials and construction techniques are suited to light and very fast boats with a large and expert crew,and ideally a chase boat not too far away.In short the whole AC scene is a fascinating diversion which has very little relevance to the overwhelming majority of boaters.It also serves as a platform on which a few hundred people make a living.All in all not much has changed since the era of Reliance as far as the relationship with most sailors is concerned.

 

Wet Feet.
I agree with everything you said except :- "In short the whole AC scene is a fascinating diversion
which has very little relevance to the overwhelming majority of boaters."
I think it was Arthur C. Clark, the great science fiction writer, who said.
"Any new advance in science is tantamount to Magic".
Anyone who sees the pic of a 72 ft Catamaran apparently flying with BOTH hulls out of the water may have, (and has), considered it unbelievable.
The implications of that --filtering down to our levels of boating-- is of very great
interest to most of us reading this thread.

 

Whats Next is NOW!

It has been confirmed that the Kiwi's are 100% flying their AC 72! Most extraordinary development in Americas Cup history....

click- the picture on the left was said to be photoshopped by some rather uninformed people. The next two are subsequent to the first one.

 

It will be interesting vis a vis the ad hoc results determined in the C Class catamarans. Fredo and his team quickly came to the conclusion that the foiling cat was not competitive.

Looks like there may be battles upcoming regarding what exactly designates "sailable" condition like Spain. Given the fragility of Alinghi's cat versus BMWO, there were conflicts on what was acceptable - and the window was small. Then again, these ARE Kiwis and not Swiss lake sailors.

--
CutOnce

 

The Canadian team found that ONE specific cat did not perform well and I am not so sure that they "quickly came to the conclusion".

They knew that their foil configuration (they had four T-foils in the water) was not optimum, and they knew that it would take a lot of effort to make substantial improvements.

The C Class crowd is absolutely sold on their wing configuration, but no one has been able to put this technology to an advange in the A Class (yet). One or two examples of "did not work out" does not prove much.

When you have enough wind, getting the hulls out of the water using the right foil setup can give you better top speed and a better VMG. There is no question about this fact.

Getting a single foil setup that goes faster across the full range of expected conditions, is the goal and is something that has not really been done yet. Depending on the class rules, large multis (of the non Open water variety) probably have plenty of potential for adjusting their configuration on the fly to get the best of both worlds.

I do not think that the planners of this round really wanted to end up chasing the "full foiling" configuration. However, if one team can do it, just think of what is going on in the closed door planning sessions for the other teams.

As an aside going back to the title of the thread, there are several choices that could be very interesting for future rounds.

For any attempt at something really different, I would suggest that at least the first round be something neither small nor huge, lets say 4-5 man crews.

A try at a Moth-zilla round could result in something fun, but I am not sure if we could deal with the results (just think of what we would have to put up with from Doug).

A full foiling multi round to intentionally try to put Longshot/Trifoiler/Rave technology up against surface piercing (Hydroptere) technology would be interesting.

To make sure that the results are not sneared at too much from the rough & tumble crowd, why not throw in one or more qualifing races in open water settings. I like the top end performance concept, but I also think the boats should have enough platform structural margin to be able to handle more than just average day lake conditions.

 

Now!

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Big differences between the C Class foiler "Rocker" and the AC 72's:
1) Rocker had 4 foils always in the water-two of them using wand altitude control systems,
2) Team NZ and Oracle are using 4 foils with 2-3(if three two of the three are very small and probably set at zero degrees angle of incidence) in the water and no wand based altitude control system.
3) Using the foil to fly or not is an interesting decision. The foil is always there-in light air, going upwind etc. However, it is not always providing lift. When not flying a hull all the foils are in the water but by neutralizing the angle of incidence of the main foil there is no induced drag or very, very little. Does it pay to have the lee main foil lifting all the time or are they "engaging" it at a certain speed? I'd bet on the latter. The rudder foil is likely to be set at zero degrees all the time until its angle of attack is changed ever so slightly by the pitch of the boat. It doesn't need to be adjustable while sailing. It would be an automatic pitch control system similar to the Rave, Trifoiler, Skat and Osprey-all have fully submerged foils like the AC boats.
4) As Magnus says below the C class boats may not have enough power to pay off with foils. Team NZ ,when photographed fully flying, had its screecher/gennaker up-extra SA would have helped Rocker.

The C Class champion Magnus:

I've never really said it publicly till now, cause everyone knows I am "the wing nut" and I get all hot and bothered about wings, but from about 4 seconds after the rule was cast everyone who was anyone knew the design race would be won in the water with foils, not in the air with wings. You only need to look at a few rudimentary VPP graphs to see the difference between foiling and floating to know that you want to fly as much boat as you can, because the drag goes up so fast in float mode and it goes up a lot slower in foiling mode. The big problem is control, because you cannot have actuated surfaces to control ride height you have to figure out how to manage the whole package to keep it on its feet, in a safe enough mode you can put your foot on the pedal.

We went back to traditional for a couple of reasons, the biggest being it didn't work, in our chosen configuration. I am not convinced the C-cat has enough power to make it work well enough at all, at least for Fredo and I cause of how we like to sail the boat downhill. The 72's can unfurl a nice big code zero and that offers a lot of power to get up on the foils efficiently, now the trick is to ride a bike with no handlebars so to speak. Foiling without automatic ride height control really is, "Look ma no hands!".

My guess is the focus on foiling will be downhill as upwind they may have to trade away too much righting moment to make it worth it. I haven't seen any real numbers recently so it's difficult for me to say either way. For righting moment remember that your foil as it kicks in essentially moves the center of floatation of the hull towards the middle of the foil. When 100% up on a foil the boat is rotating around a point between the middle of the upright foil and the horizontal foil, well below and inside the center of actual bouyancy. As such you lose some leverage and therefore lose righting moment so you can apply a bit less power, so the trade off needs to be worth it to go for it.

So yes, my vote is anybody who is serious will be foiling, as soon as they are going downhill.

PS, I wager the big white tubes are inflatable structures.

I cut it twice and it's still too short [/QUOTE]

 

Really interesting, hard earned, hard observed in practical C Class (read world leaders), comments from Magnus. He is absolutely right. Sorry negativists and nay sayers and flat earthers, this is what yachting has evolved to, like right now, already here.
Have one comment that I found from amateur, low tech experience and that is, on a trimaran platform with foils and sailing to windward, it is easy to lift the boat out; the apparent wind climbs rapidly on this point of sail and the boat just lifts clear. Downwind (in fresh winds) it is also easy ... so the NZilla (the world leader with everyone watching, mouths agape, heh, heh!) carrying all the efficient and superb sail power, lifts out easily offwind ... and I expect them, when they get the foil balances right, to do exactly the same upwind too.

 

AC on Foils Now!

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I think you're right-and I hope you're right.....

 

Historically, though, there have been many challenges in which the Admiral's Cup competitors were far from the fastest boats afloat. From the first challenger, through to several of the big cutter challenges and into the J Class era, the AC boas were often little if at all bigger and faster than non-AC boats, at least in certain conditions.

Of course, through most or all of the 12 Metre era and all of the IACC era, the AC boats were slower (often much slower) than the fastest yachts of the day.

It would be interesting to count the number of challenges that included the fastest yachts of their day. Depending on the definition of "fastest" (i.e. is it around the AC course or over a longer course, or in British conditions or NY ones, etc) then it could well be that less than half of the challenges actually involved the fastest boats of the day.

 

How is it bogus to say that something hasn't been taken away from monos (which is the favoured form of yacht racing for many people), when one of the biggest events for monos WAS taken away from them?

The big monos had the AC as their #1 inshore event for over 150 years. Now the big monos can no longer race for the AC. How is that not taking away the main inshore event for big monos?

Irrespective of whether the decision was right or not, surely it has to be admitted that one form of the sport (racing in big monos) DID lose a major event. It's as if the biggest trophy in motorcycling was turned into a car race. A car race may (or may not) attract bigger audiences or sponsorship than a motorbike race, but such a change DOES represent something being taken away from those who actually created the event. How do you think motorcycle racers would react if one of their major trophies was changed into a car event?

It's as if the Texel race was taken away from beach cats and restricted to foilers - one doubts that the current cat sailors would just say "that's cool, Moths may be quicker and newer so they should have the event we created". Similarly, the C Class cat guys got (justifiably) very upset when the Little America's Cup trophy was taken from the Cs and raced in Formula 18 HTs. They basically said that the event had always been a C Class event and should be a C Class event. The C Class guys did NOT say "hey, let the F18HTs have a go and maybe we will get the LACC back one day".

I'm not sure how many times any other sporting discipline has seen a major trophy taken away from a STILL EXTANT AND STRONG form of equipment and given to another form of equipment. Can you fill me in on how often this has happened in a comparable way in other sports?

It probably won't forestall the usual abuse from certain posters, but in self defence I may note that I have a very strong multi family and, for example, did last season on a tri. I just have issues with the concept that a discipline of a sport that has built up what it arguably the #1 trophy in that sport should then have that prize given to another discipline.

I completely agree that what we say here will have no effect on the AC, of course.

 

Chris , you are just trotting out the same old predujdice that you have displayed on the SA threads.
It's not a matter of what type of equipment dominates any particular sport.
It's a matter of technological advancement.
Even Nat Herreshoff, who designed some of the finest AC monohulls, would applaud the ascendancy of the Catamaran as an AC contender.
And as I have said before on the SA threads, it was the luddites who resisted the move from spinning wheels to the much more efficient weaving looms----a move which underpinned the industrial revolution. This is much the same.
As Doug Lord says "It's a revolution".