time for a new ACC rule?

i agree and welcome to the forums bcv99
nevertheles alainghi is trying inflatable sail battens
witch are a new innovation that is permitted
and are likely to be seen in the main stream of sailing in the future
http://www.alinghi.com/en/32ndac/rules/
ii came acros that info pumping sails on my ladybird idea

also see http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Newsroom/X-Press/stories/053101/new_wing.html

 

"America's Cup is not about match racing"

Completely and utterly wrong. The Deed of Gift specifies that the AC IS about match racing. The lawsuits regarding the big boat v cat challenge centred on the definition of "match racing". All but the first 3 ACs have been one boat v one boat.

Sorry, but there's no credibility in a post that is so wrong.


Formula 1 cars, last time I checked, were not much (if at all) faster than Indy Cars around many courses and had a slower top speed than Le Mans cars.

Formula 1 cars are in some ways technically archaic, because they ban many things (traction control, turbos, superchargers, ABS) that are used in normal road cars, and they have banned many things formerly seen in F1.

Formula 1 cars are not popular- the worldwide car industry is worth 1.9 trillion dollars (if it was a country it would have the GDP of the world's 6th biggest country) and yet F1 gets only two dozen entries - well down on that of earlier years. For all the enormous wealth of the car and motorsport industries, they are not very good at getting people to compete. Why use them as a model to emulate?

In many nations (including, I think, the UK, USA, Australia and Germany) I think more people watch touring car racing than F1. The strongest local racing is not normally F3 etc, but Super Tourers, DGT, Supercars, NASCAR etc because most fans want to watch something that looks like their own car - not something that is super fast like an open wheeler.

There WAS a major series for no-rules cars....Can Am. It died long ago. There are "Libera" classes with almost no rules, but they are highly unpopular because people want fair and close racing.

We test each other against the elements, yes - but we have human competitors there to give us the yardstick for how well we fare against the winds. It seems very tough for you to say that anyone who has a different approach to you is immature.

 

If you looked at the direction of current sailing, you could make a good case that the "archaic" classes are what's happening. Many of the classes that are doing well are old style. Modern high performance boats are just a tiny minority of worldwide sailing, just as they have almost always been. Most Skiff classes have gone OD. Formerly diverse development classes like NSs and MRs are now close to OD.

If anything, modern sailing could be said to be showing a shift AWAY from development. So maybe the very idea that the AC boat should be fast and fast-changing is archaic?????

After all, we're dealing with a very slow sport, and ballasted monos are pretty much the slowest part of that very slow sport. Trying to make them heaps faster seems illogical in some ways.....it's sort of like making a racing campervan, or making F1 cars useful for picking up the kids and shopping.

 

Whilst I quite enjoyed watching the fleet racing elements of the previous ACTs, there is no doubt (as pointed out earlier) that the AC IS about match racing.
Canting keels would not be a great idea for match racing - pre-start manoeuvres would be hazardous with keels sticking out the side.
I am actually quite impressed that the ACC boats can sail at 9.5kts in 8.5kts of true wind, and sail upwind at 35 degrees TWA. Not bad for a class constrined by archaic rules.
The only thing I would like to see, from a purely personal basis, is rotating masts. And a few more home grown sailors on the boats!
If you want the America's Cup in quicker boats and with freer rules, there is always the Little America's Cup, sailed in C-Class cats, but sadly it has never really caught on, despite them being fabulous boats.

 

Hello CT,
"America's Cup is not about match racing" Completely and utterly wrong. The Deed of Gift specifies..."
It is really amusing when one has to show his grand-grand father s silver to prove his wealth. Are we living in a medieval society or something? Respect to tradition should be a way of keeping alive the good part of dead-now things, not the dead part of the good-then things. Are we going to humiliate the spirit of the sport again, taking the case to the court, like 1983? When I was saying that America s cup is not match racing, I was trying , through a hyperbole of course, to convey the feeling that America s cup, after all these years, should stand up to today s people expectations, and promote technological ingenuity at least as much as skill competitiveness. Nobody would like to abandon the sheer pleasure one feels at the sight of two sailboats whirling around each other, of the frantic movement on deck, of the childish innocent joy of victory. So please, do not look like immature to pretend that what I am saying is against the very idea of the sport. It is against the danger of a bureaucratic degeneration of this marvellous sport, degeneration that will surely spread if we keep following a dead tradition of posing more and more unreasonable and incomprehensible restrictions.
"Formula 1 cars were not much (if at all) faster than Indy Cars around many courses and had a slower top speed than Le Mans cars."
It is not about being seconds, or better tenths of seconds, slower or faster. It is even not about top speed at all! It is about technological development, science discoveries, engineering progress. Formula 1 cars are far ahead of any other type of racing cars today, and if one visits the pits of a formula 1 car he can immediately understand the difference.
"Formula 1 cars are in some ways technically archaic, because they ban many things (traction control, turbos, superchargers, ABS) that are used in normal road cars, and they have banned many things formerly seen in F1."
Turbos and supercharges are banned because they are found, at the end, to be less powerful than normal engines, if the comparison is made, as it should have been, between engines with equal fuel consumption and gas emissions. Equal fuel consumption and gas emissions are a reasonable rule that everybody understands. The car industry worldwide follows this rule without been forced to, and, at the end of the day, this rule produced engines far more powerful than before. Are you able to detect similar intentions in the ACC rules? I have to admit that I, for one, am not. Traction control and ABS were used and found that they diminish driver’s contribution to the steering of the car, making the cars too automatic and dangerously fast at the end of long straight runs and around corners. It was a technological innovation that was at first promoted, then used and finally abandoned, again for some reasons, right or not, that are reasonable and one can at least understand. If some technological innovation has been tried at ACC and has been found that it makes the boats something like radiocontroled toys, of course it should have been banned. Is that the case in ACC history? There is really no credibility in the view that modern technological innovations have been tried and then abandoned in ACC boats, because they destroyed some deep truth of the sport of sailing.
"Formula 1 cars are not popular-the worldwide car industry is worth 1.9 trillion dollars, and yet F1 gets only two dozen entries."
Popularity is counted mainly by the number of spectators of the sport event, not by the number of participants. It would be far more dangerous to have more formula 1 cars in the track. The worldwide car industry is worth of trillions, but the car producing companies are, for good or not, only a handful left. Sorry CT, this was also a not so good counter example, was it?
"Most fans want to watch something that looks like their own car"
This is a point where we finally agree on something. As I have said,” We don’t want an ACC sailing boat be a glider ". An ACC sailing boat should be something that looks like our own sailing boat, and, what I find more important should look like a sailing boat, period. Nobody would have liked radio controlled sailing robots, sailing kites or gliders hanging from the clouds, even if we had this technological capability.
"There WAS a major series for no-rules cars that died long ago."
As it should have been clear by now, I am not, and I thing no reasonable person could ever be, a proponent of no-rules sports. The war itself has, (or at least should have), some rules (like the fair treatment of prisoners of war, hold in jails in the victors own territory or not, for example... ) At the contrary, at the beginning of the thread I posted some elements of a strict box rule that I thing could liberate the sport. And in those elements, I proposed a maximum LOA, AND a maximum SA, AND a maximum draft, AND a maximum ballast ratio, which undoubtedly quite many people would find too restrictive! I proposed a maximum ballast ratio ( say, 0.50), just because I think it is good for the sport of sailing to have sailing boats resembling a sailing boat and not a sailing submarine, and because I am also a sports fun myself, and "most fans want to watch something that looks like their own boat".
I have also to confess that, although I follow the scientific and technological developments, I am no fun of the formula 1 race at all...I see no point in the development of cars that look like airplanes, travel with the speed of airplanes, and are driven by the best could-be-fighter-pilots. The restrictions in the formula 1 car race should have been MORE, as they should allow cars to look like cars and travel with a maximum car-like speed of, say, 250 klm/hr. Formula 1 engines are too powerful and allow unreasonable highs speeds. Does anybody believe that we should permit the use of technologically advanced rocket engines or wings that could keep the cars off the ground? Does anybody believe that ACC rules are reasonable rules that one can understand and respect for the sailing sport s own good? I think not. It seems very tough for you to say that anyone who has a different approach than THIS approach, and not the simplistic naive approach that would have been too easy to dismiss, is mature...

 

I never said that anyone who wanted rules was mature. I merely said that you can like the rules and still be mature.

I actually like the restricted class idea. Restricted classes, rather than those with unrestricted sail area like 18s, are where most developments come from.

However I think these are more complicated questions than you may be prepared to admit, and I still dislike the way you insult anyone who dares to hold a different view to you. Some or all or most of the guys who like the ACC class (which I don't, really) are highly intelligent and mature.

 

Can we find a different word for 'restr*cted' classes? The post gets flagged to my secur*ty officer as a potential breach of secur*ty for giving away secr*ts.

 

Please, CT 249, DO NOT yet again level charges of immaturity against those who do not agree with you. I purposely repeated the unlucky comments by you yesterday at 10.49, remember ? I would not address such impolite, to say the least, comments against people that do not agree with me EVEN ON SERIOUS MATTERS. We are discussing, friendly I hope, sport themes here, so do not throw gloves if you do not wish somebody, however immature you think he is, to raise them and accept the silly duel. If you read the messages, you will see that any such impolite comments I ever made were mere answers to people that do not seem to have reached the level of been able to express themselves with words and not exclamations and bellowing, ( like : huh?, etc.), or people that are so proud of their own "powerful mind" against our weak one, that should better ask for professional help... So, any advises for not slurring and insulting people are welcome, but you should have addressed them elsewhere. I respect people, like Grant Simmer and other leading lights of the ACC, but this does not mean that they are not wrong on this matter, as you or me might be. It is only a matter of opinion, and I think that I am not alone in defending the case of fewer, more reasonable and less incomprehensible restrictions on ACC class boats. Am I ?
"If it's not about speed then why did you raise their speed? "
As I already said, speed is not the only factor, and may well be not a significant factor at all, that F1 cars are the most technologically advanced race cars. I personally believe that, even if there were more restrictions in their engines, so that their maximum speed were at the levels of the faster production cars, they will still be what they are : The best designed and the best build cars around. The level of F1 technology v other race cars is not comparable, I can assure you. Of course some restrictions posed problems for newcomers, and they could be different or absent, but the progress in F1 is unquestionable. F1 is a private company, you know, and many restrictions are commanded by the clients needs, i.e. the spectators AND the advertisers.
"Some of us would find it utterly hypocritical to save .000000000000000001% of the pollution by ranking engines according to fuel consumption and gas emissions. So to me, it seems utterly unreasonable in some ways."
Two reasons : First, the hypocritical "ecological" reason you mentioned, that may be/is dictated by hypocritical advertisers who are selling ecological concerns alongside pure cancer to the public. Second, the simple reason that non-atmospheric engines are abandoned by the car industry because of higher cost of fuel and environmental restrictions.It is a good thing for the industry and the sport to use engines that are like our cars engines. So, you must admit that the whole thing, far from been finally settled, is at least not so "utterly unreasonable" as one might suppose in the first place.
"What happens if you say "here are these minimalist rules" and then someone comes along and creates something that DOES destroy the deep truth in sailing? When this happens, the "advance" will be defended by its creators - and often they will be successful and the "advance" that hurts the class will do its damage."
Yes, nobody who is not pretending that he is a sorcerer s apprentice and have looked into the crystal ball of future can deny such a possibility. But freedom has always its cost, there is no free meal even in a genuine democracy of highly civilized people respecting each other. If such a thing happens, and if it is not abandoned due to the prevalence of the true spirit of the sport right afterwards, THEN we should find what we will do. Somebody comes with the idea of a catamaran in a monohull race. If he is able to keep the trophy "legally", i.e. with the help of his own town judges, then he better is left alone with the trophy, and the whole world advance elsewhere.
"It’s because of the skyrocketing costs and other factors.
So my example definitely applies."
If your example applies, and as I, as I have already said, have no reason to defend one or the other sport s bureaucracy, it could be seen as an example for my case, too. You search for reasons, for real unavoidable factors that are behind this or that restriction. If you find something that has to do with the reality of the engineering domain, like rare or dangerous materials, or the reality of the economic domain, like the number of participants that can afford the costs of the event, or the reality of the social domain, like environmental factors, then you can understand and accept the rule. If you find something that has mainly to do with the self-reproduction necessities of some bureaucratic establishment, then you agree with me...
"However I think these are more complicated questions than you may be prepared to admit, and I still dislike the way you insult anyone who dares to hold a different view to you. Some or all or most of the guys who like the ACC class are highly intelligent and mature."
I like what ACC could very well have been, and that is why I am concerned about its future. Less "intelligent" and even "immature" people than these "lighting stars" that are so proud of their own glory, can still have their opinion, and you are obliged to respect that, whether you like it or not.
See you in Valenzia ! We will both be there, as two more "annoying spectators"...

 

You know a lot about boats, but not much about F1 . There are some countries, like USA and probably Australia where they are not popular, but in Europe, Japan, Brazil, Argentina and in many other countries, F1 is the top of motoracing and by far the most popular races.

More important is the fact that all the best pilots are there. A pilot that leaves F1 because he is not good enough will be a top pilot (and a winner) in any other world series.

F1 is not about getting people to compete. Is about getting the best competing in the fastest cars (there is nothing that can curve at the same speed). Only the very best pilots of other motorsport series manage to get there. F1 is the dream of any competitive racing car pilot. And the reason of its popularity is precisely that. People want to see the best competing between them.

The AC is not about that? Having the best competing between them?
Should not they compete on fast boats, boats that should be technologically developed instead of simply hugely expensive?

 

The boats are technically developed ... within the rule. Like NASCAR and F1, the ACC rule is written to provide good close racing. Not the fastest racing. The fact that the top two boats are only one point apart shows how close the racing is. If NZL and ESP win tomorrow, the top 4 boats will have 38,37,33, and 31 points. Almost every team has shown competitive speed on one or more legs of the course.

There is nothing wrong with the ACC Rule (unless Alinghi has found a loophole that allows a canting keel). To make the boats faster requires that they sail a higher percentage of wind speed. I don't think that is desirable for good match racing. It means the boats would plane in some conditions. Any race where planing conditions do not exist the racing could be good (as it is now). In a race where planing conditions existed over the whole course for the whole duration of the race, the racing *could* be good. It is the marginal conditions and changing condition races that would become a lottery and very bad racing.

Match racing requires that the trailing boat has a means to attack the leading boat and for leading boat's to defend themselves. ACC boats, sailing in displacement mode do a pretty good job of providing tactical opportunity. As soon as one of the boats can plane, all it would take is one lucky gust/wave combination and one boat could separate from the other and remove tactical options. I think this would be very bad for match racing and the ACC. IMO the ACC boats are too close winded and may be too fast as they are. The only change to the rule that I think would make for better racing is to find a way to increase the upwind tacking angles. This would make it possible to cover on both tacks (like the 12's could).

There are many sailing venues and classes that allow and cater to extreme boats and extreme speed. There is no need to race those boats in match races for the America's Cup. Millions of people have visited the AC venue and watched one or more races. There is nothing wrong with the event. I wish people that don't see that would stop trying fix something that is not broken. The boats may not be perfect, but they are a darn sight better than the boats that a rule written by non-match racers would come up with.

 

Xarax, the remarks of yours that I objected to were contained in posts by you. The first one (in post 9 - "But some people just never grow up to understand it...") came days before my first post.

I definitely agree that F1 can be used to support both sides of this argument.

As I said, I agree that a restricted (box rule) class may work, but the other point of view is not as dumb as you make out. I remember being on a boat (already succesful) when Simmer hopped on board and seeing the enormously refined level of his rig tune. His Farr 40 tuning sheet had different stay settings for every 2 knot change in windspeed.

From the perspective of such sailors, who know a lot more about this stuff than you and I do, there's still a world of fascinating development left in the ACC rule, even if they seem to be minute advances to us. Surely their perspective should be respected even if there may be better ways forward?

Vega, I agree I'm not an F1 expert. However, I never said that F1 wasn't popular in Japan, Brazil, Argentina etc. All I said was that it's not popular (ie there's only 22 or 24 active F1 cars in the world and therefore it's arguably a poor model if we want a sport to be popular at top level) and that in some countries, a very different style of motorsport is more popular. This is an undeniable fact in the USA and arguable in some other countries.

About the best drivers - we all know that there is a long history of mediocre "pay drivers" in F1. We know of the champs (Mansell, the Hills, Lauda) who almost lost their careers before they started because they couldn't get the cash.....what about the many who never had that luck and never got to show what they were worth???

 

Hello CT,
If this comment by me was the stormy petrel indeed, I gladly withdraw it and I apologize for it, and for the, a bit bitter, replies it might have provoked. However, it was meant only as an answer to the preceding comments (at 05-03-2007) :

The simple fact is that if AC was only about match racing, it would have been restricted into a one-design, (almost) identical boats like the boats in the Olympics. And even then, one would have the right to ask for a change, allowing the ingenuity of the engineers to flourish, as much as the skills of the sailors. Many people that understand the subject a lot more than me are also opponents of the ACC rule as it stands today.
Have a look at the Open 60 rule pages : The greatest part of them is about safety, the whole box rule is contained in just a few lines. Are the French the sole keepers of any Cartesian rationality left in sailing regulators? Simple, reasonable, comprehensible rules that produced a great popular sports event.
Americas Cup is still a great sailing festival, and it is really a pity if retrogressive thinking from the rules regulators hinders a much greater future development.

 

Match Racing did not exist until the America's Cup. The America's Cup IS Match Racing.

You might find the Vision Statement of the ACC Rule of interest:

The America's Cup Class is intended:
(a) to produce wholesome, fast and manoeuvrable day sailing monohulls of similar performance intended for spectacular match racing in a wide wind range while fostering design developments that will flow through to the mainstream of yachting; and
(b) for yachts that are raced "around the buoys" with tenders present, as opposed to off-shore in high wind and rough sea conditions.

What different rule would provide better Match Racing?

One Designs cannot be used, they don't add to the spectacle. One Design racing is not interesting to spectators or sponsors. Note that statement is not limited to sailing. One design racing in motorsports has never been popular. Even though NASCAR and F1 cars are more alike than different, their is an attraction for spectators and sponsors in the perceived differences.

In the AC as it is, you can choose to support a sailor, a boat, or a Country. Just as you can support a driver, brand, or team in motorsports.

Nothing you have said indicates that you understand match racing at all. Until you or someone else can point out flaws in the rule and the quality of racing it produces, calls for a rule change are born of ignorance.

The ACC is the most popular "class" of yacht ever to race for the AC. There have been more boats built to the ACC rule than any other rule that the cup has been raced under. If there is something wrong with the rule, why has the AC become more popular?

Why would you want to replace the most successful AC rule ever?

Just because you don't understand the rule (One whole line):

Length + 1.25 x sqrt Sail Area - 9.8 x cube root Displacement / 0.686 <= 24 meters

Is no reason to change it.

What would you change about the boats to make the Match Racing better?

The ACC rule is unique, the event is unique. It is not broken and does not require meddling from people that want to compare it to Open 60 and other ocean racing box rules. It does not need multi-hulls or one-designs, or canting keels, or hydrofoils, or more speed. It is just fine, the rule is written by and for the people that want good match racing. If they thought there was a problem, it is a simple matter to change the rule. The rule may well get changed after this cup, for sure it will get changed if Alinghi has found a loophole and has a canting keel.

You cannot compare the ACC boats and the rule that produces them to any other rule for sailing boats. The goals of the rule are not the same. Box rules produce boats that are similar, just as the ACC rule produces boats that are similar. The ACC rule must produce good match racing boats, until you understand what good match racing is, you are not qualified to have an opinion on the rule.

 

As I ceased playing with skull and crossbones long time ago, I rest my case, Your Supreme One and Only Connoisseur of match racing...

 

What case?

You have offered generalities and no specifics.

You have not stated how your box rule would improve match racing.

You have no case.