As an old codger, I am somewhat ambivalent about the current crop of foiling monohulls. I grew up when the America's Cup had all the stodginess of an English fox hunt. When a bunch of old guys in blazers and straw hats would slowly motor over to your 12 meter and solemnly announce, amid tight smiles and long faces, that you were no longer needed in the defender trials, or conversely, you had been chosen to defend the America's Cup, and the smiles were broad and congratulations poured out. When two leadmines would pirouette, and luff, and yell before the start and then proceed to bash their way upwind at what seemed to be a brisk walking pace. The dominant 12 meter would work out to a half boat length lead after fifteen minutes. But there was a certain charm, albeit far removed to what most of us considered the sport of sailing.
The modern America's Cup is all F1 motor racing. Speed, and more speed from spider-like contraptions. So much speed that serious injury in a major mishap becomes part of the sport, just as in motor racing. I've never been a big fan of watching motor sports on the TV, so I approach today's foilers with a shrug of the shoulders (although I marvel at the technology and recognize the courage and skill of the sailors). When every America's Cup foiler is going about the same speed, the gauge becomes lost except for a massive rooster tail of spray spurting off the main foils. I must admit I have some sailing friends that are very gaga over the speeds of this year's America's Cup monohulls so I may be in the minority opinion in this. As it was with the 12 meters, this sailing is also far removed from what most of us consider the sport of sailing.
From Planet Sail, here is an interesting video on the thinking behind the current technology revealed as the generation 2 of these monohull foilers launch into battle.
Chris Thompson, famed author of the complete small boat racing history over at Sailcraft blog, takes exception at my disparaging remarks about the old America's Cup (the 12 meters, the IAAC leadmines):
"With great respect, Tweezerman, I'll say that for many years the "old" wasn't actually all that far removed from what most of us thought of as sailing. When the Universal Rule was adopted, for example, as you'd know the AC boat were just big versions of the M, N, P, R, S etc classes that were sailed in their dozens at local clubs and regattas. I once calculated that the British AC challengers of the 'tween war period sailed at something like 20% or more of ALL British sailing clubs each year, if I recall correctly. Around the time the 12s were adopted, there were still Metre boats racing in the UK, Europe, USA, Australia, etc at clubs each weekend. The first press releases for the IACC class stressed that they were going to be like sportsboats, although they morphed into skinny leadmines. So the old AC was largely sailed in big versions of fairly common mainstream club and regatta boats, and I know that something like running the bow on a 12 isn't vastly different from running the bow on an IOR boat or Beneteaul from personal experience, you can step onto the pointy end of a 12 in a class race and feel pretty much at home. The foilers, on the other hand, are completely divorced from almost all club and local regatta level racing. There's only about 25 other ballasted full foilers in the world as far as I can make out, all of them on the European lakes. Go to Cowes, Newport, Sydney, Kiel or any other of the centres of our sport (apart perhaps from Garda or Lucerne once in a while) and you'll find nothing like an AC boat - although ironically you'll still often find boats that are small versions of AC boats of many years ago."
