Prada Cup Over; America's Cup postponed this week.

The America's Cup, scheduled to start this coming weekend, has been postponed due to a Covid-19 lockdown in Auckland. I watched the Prada Cup Finals on YouTube. As far as I could determine this was the only way to view it in North America. I'm not particularly invested in all the hoopla and idolatry of professional sailing, but I find the technology on these AC75 foilers fascinating. Aside from the racing clips, the most detailed technical analysis I have found has been by a Brit YouTube channel, Mozzy Sails aka Tom Morris with fellow RS800 sailors, Rob Gullen and Tom Partington. A tip of the hat to these three who are doing an admirable job of sleuthing via the Internet, since all three of them remain firmly ensconced in the U.K., not on-site in Auckland

Before the Prada series started, I wrote a somewhat negative piece about the new AC75 foiling monohulls. Well after watching the Prada Cup, what do I think now. (In no particular order.)

• These foilers are maneuverable. These are the quickest Cup class ever in the tacks, jibes, and mark roundings. Essentially you are spinning around on two, sometimes one narrow pivot point with no boat in the water (if you do it right)..
• These courses are narrow. After the start, the time to the boundary is equivalent to what you would see in a collegiate or frostbite short course. It does help in keeping the boats close, at least in the beginning. The start and the first tack become crucial.
• These boats are mega-complicated. Looking in from the outside, we probably only know about 1/10 of what is going on in getting these boats around the course.
• A key indicator of which team will win is probably the team with the best software integration. How accurate and responsive are your controls, which for the most part depend on computer control. Ineos UK remarkable turnaround from being the dog of the Practice series was attributed to a huge upgrade in her software control.
• It looks to be another blow-out win in this America's Cup. If the Prada Cup competition is any indication.
• Does the 40 kt. speed make for a better viewing experience? For me the jury is out. I'll wait for my wife to chime in.

America's Cup Update; October 2020

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.

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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."

Seen at the 2015 Annapolis Sailboat Show; The America's Cup

Oracle Team USA has been working steadily to bring the America's Cup to the attention of the masses. One part of that strategy is to publicly display the actual cup around the U.S. And there it was, tucked into a corner of the 2015 Annapolis Sailboat show, next to the old Fawcett building. As trophies go, impressive enough, very tall and ornate.

After snapping a photo, I got a kick out of talking to one of the security contingent. He was dressed in a suit, sporting an ear bud, looking identical to the Secret Service, except for the white gloves. He was based out of San Francisco and when the America's Cup went out on the road, so did he. As security gigs go, this one didn't sound half bad.

The security guys were amazingly tolerant about letting people close enough for group photos but physically touching the cup was a big no-no.

The car behind the America's Cup was one of the fancy Tesla E-cars, Tesla being one of the sponsors of the America's Cup tour. I took a look and, compared to our known fossil fuel vehicles , the Tesla was somewhat topsy-turvy. The powertrain and batteries were well hidden, out of sight, the front hood opening up to another storage compartment. One got the impression that the Tesla ran on some magical ether it collected from the air.

Boatbuilding: More Progress by John Z on his Classic Moth

Hull panel offsets for the Mistral can be found here.

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In the ongoing coverage of John Z's Classic Moth build, last week I stopped over at his shop to gauge his progress and have a beer. The Classic Moth modified Mistral design is now upside down awaiting gunwhales and a layer of 4 oz. glass over the bottom.

This photo, though perhaps a tad distorted, shows how deeply Vee'd the Mistral design sections are around the midships.

Transom view with a pretty swirly pattern from the okoume plywood.

John, with the about-to-be-opened bottle of stout peeking up above the keel-line of his Moth.

A man and his workbench. John graciously took down a Marblehead RC sailboat he built many years ago so I could take a closer look.

A man and his workbench - take 2.

From the previous photo, you can see that John has some interesting stuff hanging from his walls. This is the box containing his F1 rubber-band indoor airplanes. These are extremely finicky to make, with a minimum weight of one gram. John has all the various tools to test balsa density and strength; tools to strip balsa into extremely narrow widths; tools to check rubber band elasticity; molds to make the tricky propellers, and the various techniques to apply the ultra-thin microfilm covering.  To make a F1 takes a methodical, painstaking craftsman.

John also has two half models of the America's Cup, IACC keelboats, the class that precedes the current foiling catamarans. Surprisingly, it was through his wife's connections and not his Naval Architect circle of friends that these two half-models now grace his shop.

Louis Vuitton Cup - Aliens and other ruminations

I finally sat down at the TV last Sunday to watch some AC72 catamaran sailing. It seems very hard to get two of them in the same TV picture. There was some nice shots of one of them flying around the marks and gybing on stilts but they seem to be solitary craft - they don't like the company of another AC72; something the TV commentators continually make excuses for.

I did get to watch over and over and over again, Team New Zealand's face plant upon rounding a mark on the Saturdays race. Which brings me to Rumination 1 and 2.

1. For syndicates that spend umpteen millions of dollars, the rescue of the two sailors flung overboard at 40 knots left something to be desired. (I have a fetish about crash boats and rescues.) Hauling the two over the high transom of the big, expensive RIB, between four massive outboards was just wrong. Rescue personnel are very careful with car accident victims, usually keeping them very still until they can ascertain any injuries. With the ETNZ AC72's, the procedure seems to be; grab them under both armpits and heave them into the boat - we'll check out any physical problems later. And hauling them up next to the outboard motors just gives me the heebie-jeebies. This is highly operator dependent; the motors must be in neutral, remain in neutral, and never be engaged during the rescue - a risk I do not like to take. I would hope that if any of the two men overboard had a more severe injury, where they were incapacitated, there was a different procedure and a different boat.
2. The wind limits, as frustrating as they seem to the racing, do make a difference. ETNZ's nose dive was the same as Team Oracle's earlier this year. ETNZ was able to recover without a disastrous cart wheel over the bow because the wind wasn't blowing as hard as in the Team Oracle disaster.

Today Race 4 and 5 are scheduled. Let's hope the AC72's act more sociable. When you get them together they do look cool as this video of the two Oracle AC72's training together shows.

Oracle Team USA - Foiling Upwind !!! from pete carney on Vimeo.

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I use my wife, being a non-sailor, as a sounding board for how these foiling catamaran's might play with the general viewing public. Her comment, "I miss the graceful sailboats, these look too alien". Part of this is due to the Italian team's sailing outfits or as Tillerman puts it, "their chromeness". They look like a team of Tin Men, spawned out of the Wizard of Oz. All that is missing is redesigned helmets to look like upturned funnels and some chrome zinc-oxide face paint. But that just might be the difference between backward Americans and more fashion conscious Europeans. Below, a promotional puff video on the Italians (but interesting just the same).

Luna Rossa: Luna Challenge // Marmoset from marmoset on Vimeo.

America's Cup: What? You agree with Me?

In my previous post about the America's Cup, I opined that the AC 72 was much too big and it appears someone else agrees with me.

From the Sunday July 14, 2013 business section of the Washington Post, a reprinted article by Aaron Kuriloff of Bloomberg Markets had this statement from the second kahuna of the Oracle team;

Coutts, 51 said before the accident that his team's decision in 2010 to use 72-footers for the Cup was a mistake. He believed then that the 72s would look better on TV than smaller cats which are less costly to build and slower.

Coutts later discovered during the televised America's Cup World Series beginning in 2011 that 45-foot cats played well on the screen.

"We were paranoid this needed to look good on TV," Coutts says. "I thought the 45 would look too small. It doesn't. It looks fine."

Oh-oh! Not good when you admit you are probably sailing the wrong boats before the series even starts.

For more unbiased America's Cup reporting, I suggest you follow either Tillerman, or Joe over at Horse's Mouth.

If some of you young'uns are contemplating a career as a sail-race professional, I suggest you start concentrating on getting some trampoline combined with Rubik's Cube workouts, as the link to this following America's Cup training video shows.

America's Cup; What! Already!

I haven't been paying the America's Cup too much attention, other than the disasters, the pitchpole of Oracle and the recent tragic breakup of Artemis. This week I came to realize the challenger trials start tomorrow, Sunday July 7, so I'll add my two cents in before the series starts. (I'm a terrible prognosticator, I remember telling a friend of mine back in ancient history - 1987- that no one would want to go to Western Australia to challenge for the America's Cup; I think they ended up with around 10 to 12 different challenging syndicates in Western Australia.)

Though I applauded Oracle's decision to go with the catamaran (one can see here, my previous posts about the America's Cup), I now think the AC72 is too big, too powerful, too fast, too scary, and too expensive.

It seems the AC72 in the America's Cup may be in a Catch 22. On one hand, if the boats and crews can handle the conditions, we may have what I call the "human flying squirrel" phenomena; we'll watch the videos once or twice, say "Those guys are crazy" and move on. On the other hand, given the small field competing, if we have two catastrophic failures we may not have enough catamarans left to race the cup. (I also think the race track is much too small for the speeds of these beasts.)

But as I said, with the America's Cup my opinion is usually wrong. I hope it is. I would like to see some great racing in very unique racing machines.

A very good video of Team Oracle; interviews, AC72's in action (and in pieces) :

"We essentially sail in a hurricane all day....."

America's Cup (No Second Place) from RAPIDLIGHT on Vimeo.

Keeler from Russell Coutts

Despite this blog being mostly about dinghy sailing (and weird music videos), I normally sprinkle keelboat posts here and there just to maintain some diversity.

Back in 2007, Russell Coutts developed a mini IACC type keelboat class called the RC44 (RC=Russell Coutts..... makes sense). I guess the original idea of this class was to be the stepping stone, the triple AAA league if you will (American baseball terminology) for pro sailors progressing to the larger America's Cup arena. Well, the switch to multihulls squelched that idea but, from the following video, it looks like the class is doing just fine in Europe.

I like the action in this video of RC44 racing. Not an over produced promo film, this short features simple editing of onboard camera footage as we race around the course in a fleet race.

Russell Coutts and the New Order

It may have escaped the mainstream sailing press, but Russell Coutts is singlehandedly remaking the top end of our sport. I have no doubt Russell is the main reason the America's Cup is now competed in cats instead of monohulls. Sailgroove.org has put this fascinating interview with Russell up on YouTube and I get the feeling he is not satisfied with how this sport is run.(Let me say, I like where Russell is going with this). Not surprisingly, at the moment, Russell is concentrating on the professional sailing scene but his long range plan is , one way or the other, to definitely get sailing stuck in the minds of the non-sailing public.

America's Cup in Multihulls

To be expected, BMW Oracle's decision to race the next America's Cup in multihulls created much gnashing of teeth among the old guard. For me, multihulls will provide the excitement that the Ole Cup needs to remain relevant as one of the premier sailing competitions. Next year, teams start tuning up with 45' wingmasted cats before graduating to the 75 footers for the Cup. To get an idea what next years Cup tuneup will be like, one only has to view the Extreme 40 cat series they run in Europe.............

TOH to YachtPals.

What will it take for you to watch the America's Cup?

I read somewhere that Larry Ellison's team was to do a "video test" using conventional keelboats (RC44) and Extreme 40 catamarans in race mode. The idea was to see what camera angles worked best in bringing the action of the America's Cup to a TV audience. Some of the videos have been posted on YouTube.

Of course, once they upsize to normal America's Cup lengths (lets say around 80 foot yachts or cats), these current videos with sheets of spray inundating the decks will completely go away.

Extreme 40 catamarans shot from the crossbeam.........



RC44's pre-start circling shot with handheld, masthead, boom, and stern cameras.............



I've never met Russell Coutts but I get a warm, fuzzy feeling he is trying to make the America's Cup more exciting and more accessible for the general public. We'll see.........

BMW Oracle

Readers of this blog know that I find the current America's Cup not so much sailboat racing, as a jingoistic, billionaire big money soiree. Billionaires and Hollywood stars are alien, not human.... their souls long gone, not even to purgatory.

I find this schmaltzy, "I love the sea", "I love the USA", good ole red white and blue, "I started sailing from nothing" (even if I'm from New Zealand) video very watchable.

It looks like Larry Ellison was interviewed in this video on his super...mega...mucho grande yacht (are there are a ton of seats behind him, maybe it's an onboard theater, thats why Larry loves the sea!). The weepy music in the video, the violin crescendo, the heart rending interviews. Man, the heart catches in the throat as we watch the family members cheer and Larry, urging his team on from his RIB and finally, finally holding the Amerca's Cup trophy after a cool 100* million and who knows how much in lawyers fees.

America's Cup is Boring, Boring, Boring......

Certainly the just completed America's Cup in giant multihulls ranks up there with the other modern Deed of Gift match (1988 - Dennis Connor's cat vs. NZ Michael Fay's big Farr boat) as two of the most boring America's Cup matches ever. But the America's Cup as a visual sport, even with the old IACC keelboat class, is a dud. And with the professional's (technologists and sailors) driving the game, I fear it won't get any better. There's big money (meaning big boats with lots of technology) involved when the billionaires play the game. That's good for the professionals but not the game itself.

Let me detail what the Grand Poobah's directing the America's Cup have obviously forgotten;

1. America's Cup = Watersport - The America's Cup is a watersport; a basic fact that seems to be lost among the technology, the litigation, the bigger, faster is better mantra, etc. The most dramatic scenes in the America's Cup are when water intrudes into the racing. Who can forget TNZ dramatically bailing the water out during the opening race of 2003 America's Cup? Who can forget the dramatic sinking of One Australia in 1995? Or the near sinking of Larry Ellison's challenger? Most pundits agree the 1987 America's Cup in the ocean off Fremantle, Australia as the best ever. Why is that? You had the slow, heavy 12 meters bashing their way through the breezy ocean swell, spray everywhere, solid water coursing down the decks. You had watersport! Contrast that with the America's Cup that just finished. I groaned when I was subjected to those long video shots from the aft quarter of BMW/Oracle. A solitary James Spithill, back to the camera, on this huge arm, suspended above what? Was there water down there? Was he supposed to be steering? Well, we needed the faraway helicopter video shot to show we are indeed racing on that medium called water. And even with the IACC keelboats, did spray ever make it back to the helmsman, tactician? Even with the onboard video shots taken from the stern of the IACC keelboats, we rarely saw water make it over the gunwhales.
2. Sport = Action - Sport usually has humans running, jumping, kicking, throwing and so on. When sport has the humans as static drivers, it helps that the there is visual image of speed to attract the viewer (NASCAR, offshore powerboat racing). Sailing, unfortunately can be mostly static, both for human action and visual speed. I would say sailing is worse than golf (which in TV land has the ability to pan to many different golfers throughout the golf course, so even though the game of golf is mostly static, on TV there seems to be plenty of action to keep viewers occupied). When sailing explodes into action is in the course changes and where there are mistakes or breakdowns. So lets have racing with more course changes, in boats that require lots of crew movement, with the number of crew that are deliberately kept lean. I actually think you get more action with a boat like a 12 meter; large overlapping genoas that are a bear to tack, symmetrical spinnakers that require much more expertise in a gybe, that are low freeboard so that the crew must contend with solid water (see watersport above).
3. Match Racing = Boring - Let's give a synopsis of match racing tactics as seen in 2007 Valencia. In the prestart we have the dial up where both boats shoot head to wind and stop. There is much shouting, gesticulating, waving of flags by the afterquard, until, after an interminable wait, the weather boat bails out. This must be totally bizarre, not to say boring to most viewers! Now the boats must get back to the correct side of the line. We have a parade of the leading, trailing boats sailing dipsy doodles through the spectator fleet. Eventually both boats turn for the line and since both crews are very practiced at this, they start right on time with maybe 1 1/2 to 2 boat lengths separation. Then for the next ten minutes it's speed on until one boat forces the other one to tack onto port. At Valencia, most often there was a left hand shift so the leading boat wouldn't immediately tack to cover, instead the leader would wait for the shift, tack, and then it was game over. Game over usually in the first 20 minutes. The viewer would then be subjected to the rest of the race where the two boats were usually sailing in two different parts of the course. Boring! Bring back fleet racing to the America's Cup, where there are much more boat on boat tactical decisions, much more course changes (see above; sport=action). They had fleet racing in the IACC class during the off years before Valencia and what little I saw of it, I thought it much more exciting than match racing.
4. National Identity = Excitement - To sail for a yacht club in a country, you must be a citizen of that country. No carpet baggers! Most American sailors know there was only two Americans sailing on Ellison's DOGzilla winner. That puts a big asterisk out there. Multinational crews just reinforces the perception that the America's Cup is just a closed rich man's sport. I know, I know, New Zealand, Australia, England could stock two of three America's Cup with qualified professional sailors. What will we do with all those unemployed professionals? But National Identity is a big factor in sports interest to the general public. In Valencia 2007, one of the big stories was the Republic of South Africa, where if I remember correctly, the crew was all South African, inexperienced, but keen, and able to take some races off the big boys. I don't watch NHL hockey but I do watch Olympic hockey and the big factor in my enjoyment is the competition between nations and their citizens. Ovechkin plays for the Washington Capitals in the NHL. He plays for his country, Russia, and not the U.S. in the Olympics. Bring that back to the America's Cup.

There you have it. Let's have an America's Cup in smaller, less expensive boats that are close to the water (even in it at times), are hard to sail, give lots of action for everyone when turning. Let's have fleet racing as a major component of the Cup and let's keep everyone competing on the boats as citizens of the country they represent.

ABC News reports on Ellison's 90 foot tri

Have to put up with the advertising but this is sailing where no one has gone before.

Warning! - one seal was killed in the filming of this video.

ABC GMA video on Larry Ellison's BOR 90 project

Tip of the hat to sailing website SailKarma for digging this up.