Auckland is gearing up for the start of the next America’s Cup race series. Like the catamarans, the 75 foot monohulls are giving the chase boats a work out.
This video illustrates the way the main adapts its camber to maximize lift on both tacks. It also shows new tricks in the next race series: the use of flaps on the submerged foils to produce more lift at slow speeds.
A great spectacle for these boats racing and the constant development has payoffs elsewhere, but I enjoy round-the-buoys sailing in my small boat with a beer in hand and prefer it in a more gentlemanly style, unrushed.
I could fit some foils to my ship, a barquentine, and get her moving a bit better.
Incidentally, she berths in Fremantle adjacent to the Western Australian Maritime Museum which houses (fully rigged) what we would argue is the most famous America’s Cup winner, AUSTRALIA II, with her once-secret winged keel. She was the first to break the evil, nasty, skullduggery of the red-trousered New York Yacht Club in 1983 which had succeeded in twisting their own rules and playing dirty (that’s our view 
) to keep the cup bolted in its hallowed halls for 132 years.
Our Prime Minister (a bit of a larrikin - held a beer-drinking record at Oxford) declared, “Anybody who sacks a worker for not turning up today is a bum” and thus effectively granted the nation the day off to celebrate. We needed it.
I seem to remember someone once asking the commodore of the New York yacht club what they would do with the plinth if they ever lost the cup. He is reported to have said the cup would be replaced by the losing helmsman’s head.
The world’s oldest sporting trophy has been more than lucrative for the legal fraternity as well.
Yeah, that’s about my speed these days; pitch poling at 45 kts is a waste of good beer. All that fuss in '83 about the keel shape on a 12 metre seems quaint when looking at today’s foils.
The Cup has likely spent more time being contested in court than on the water!
These doodlebugs generate little interest and zero passion on my part. If I want to watch a flying machine race I’ll go to Reno where they do it right.
Cheers,
Earl
Been there. Saw VooDoo win…highly recommend it!
If you ever find yourself South of San Francisco at Oracle’s headquarters in Redw[d City USA 17 is on display. I don’t think they will let you sit and drink a brew when you visit.
Some of them get sailed by tourists. They used to have one each of the “Stars and Stripes” and “Canada” yachts in Cozumel.
To someone whose earliest years were spent racing in a 7 foot cat rigged yacht designed and built in their thousands in New Zealand, watching a sail driven object reach speeds of up to 50 knots is incredible. When they start racing each other on a relatively tight circuit I think the interest will grow. That takes nothing away from the aircraft racing around pylons and I’m surprised that some of our top dressing pilots haven’t tried their hands at it.
The research leading to the development of these AC vessels will ultimately lead to other advances in the marine industry.