“These boats will be similar and more challenging than
an AC50 in an engineering sense.”
And not least because there is nothing to compare the
new machine with, something Simmer is quick to
acknowledge.
“It’s bold, it’s radical and it’s exciting technically and it
will be really challenging for the sailors because they’ve
just never sailed a boat like that before,” he said.
“We’ve been looking at what boats there are for our
sailors to train on to get used to sailing a boat like the
new America’s Cup class and we really haven’t found
anything yet.”
Boat on boat action
Handling these machines might be especially tricky when
it comes to canting the foils and will present a new
challenge for this Cup cycle. Squads of crew turning
handles or pedals to generate sufficient hydraulic power
to drive the boat’s systems didn’t go down well with the
teams or spectators in the last Cup.
But swinging a huge 1.5 tonne foil up and down though
tacks and gybes to keep the boat the right way up yet
doing it quickly enough to maintain some boat on boat
action is going to be a tough challenge. The answer is
understood to lie with an electro-hydraulic system
with power from battery packs to drive pumps on
hydraulic cylinders.
“What we’ve been told is that the canting mechanism
will include a shaft near the chine somewhere where the
board rotates or cants,” said Simmer. “That structure, the
hydraulics to actuate it and the hydraulics to drive that
system will be standard. That’s good news for us as we
Matthew Sheahan is the former
technical editor of Yachting World and
now head of performance sailing at
TV production company Sunset+Vine.
He is a qualified yacht designer, a
keen and experienced glider pilot and
a longtime America’s Cup
commentator who has covered five
successive Cups, including the
2017 edition in Bermuda.This image is from an
animation made by Emirates
Team New Zealand and shows
possible boat-on-boat racingAbove left:
An IMOCA 60
generates 30,000
kg.m in righting
moment. The new
Cup boat could
generate twice as
much power
Above: Oracle
Racing’s USA17,
the biggest and
most radical
America’s Cup
yacht of
modern timeswon’t have to invest a lot of money in the development in
this area.”
And therein lies one of two additional big challenges for
this Cup: money and time. No one is pretending this will
be a cheap boat. Such extreme design concepts cost
money to develop.
Then there is also the issue of time. The AC50s were the
product of five years of development and centred around
two broadly familiar areas: catamarans and foils.
The class rule for the AC75 is due to be published at the
end of March 2018, leaving just one year before the first
date on which a new AC75 can be launched. In fact the
protocol allows for another 90 days after March to refine
the rule, cutting the window even further for a boat with
no precedent.
When asked what the most pressing issue is for teams
Simmer is clear: “We will run out of time before money,”
he says with a smile.
My guess is few will argue with that.TH. Martinez Gilles Martin-RagetFebruary 2018 55