AC update

LV Pacific Series; TeamOrigin plans for 2009 and some theorising about the make-up of the new rule

There is an keen sense of anticipation in Cup World at present on a number of fronts. Firstly the action, of sorts returns to the water at the end of this month with ten teams due to compete in the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series.

Among the thrills and spills of this events will be TeamOrigin racing in anger and also the two warring factions of the Cup - the defenders Alinghi and the would-be Challenger of Record BMW Oracle Racing, where Russell Coutts will be behind the wheel. With these two jockeying it out on the water off downtown Auckland, it is unlikely that this will simply be a fun regatta - it will be distinctly personal. In addition there are new teams such as a re-vitalised Luna Rossa with Peter Holmberg behind the wheel (and almost certainly featuring Robert Scheidt), a new Italia Challenge with Vasco Vascotto, a new Greek Challenge and a new China Team with a posse of largely Brits led by Ian Williams.

In addition to this we can expect the new rule for the AC70something to be published at the end of this month followed two weeks later by the competition rules for AC33 (assuming that the court case goes the way of the Societe Nautique de Geneve/Alinghi).

Then there is the court case itself. On 10 February the lawyers representing both sides will be in the Appeal Court making their casesfor the final time in person, with the seven strong panel of judges expected to make a decision on the fate of the 33rd America’s Cup at the end of March or beginning of April (30-45 days after the final hearing, reckons BMW Oracle Racing's Tom Ehman).

If Alinghi/SNG win, they will continue down the path of an America’s Cup in 2010 in the new design of boat. If BMW Oracle Racing win, Larry Ellison’s team will attempt to also go down a path of this sort with a multi-challenger regatta in 2010 (why are they in court again???), although Alinghi have firmly stated that if BMW Oracle Racing win in court they won’t go down this path and will only consider a Deed of Gift match in big multihulls. Are they bluffing? While multihull fans with no prospect of employment in the Cup are eager to see this clash of giant multihulls and particularly what their design teams have conjured up (BMW Oracle have shown their hand already with a 90ft trimaran, while Alinghi’s still remains a secret - the smart money is on a giant D35 type catamaran with a central flying hull – Grant Simmer says it could be ready in just over a month if they have to push the button on it) pretty much everyone else hopes that this doesn’t come to pass and that regardless of the outcome of the court case the 33rd America’s Cup will be a multi-challenger event in Valencia in 2010. One hopes that if BMW Oracle do win, the Alinghi/SNG will bow to pressure because if they go into a Deed of Gift match and lose…that is WAY too big a gamble. We hope that either way the 33rd America’s Cup will go ahead as Alinghi and the challengers are planning and that at some point separate from this, an AC 32.5 or 33.5 takes place between the big multis.

Regardless of the outcome in New York, the challengers and Alinghi have decided that there will be America’s Cup class racing this year in Valencia aboard Version 5 boats with regattas taking place in July and October. TeamOrigin Principle Sir Keith Mills says he hopes that they might be able to squeeze in another regatta too.

So what do we know about the new boats? The rule, according to Alinghi’s Grant Simmer evolved from the now defunct AC90 rule which in turn had developed from the America’s Cup Class Version 5 rule. “We developed a bunch of regulations together with the other challengers and competitors - that was the AC90. It was a very big monohull, a lot of righting moment, probably at the limit of technology of what we can build. That process had to stop because of the court proceedings, so the whole thing stalled. Then in July last year, we won an appeal in the New York court, so we restarted again. Since then we are in a very different economic environment as well and we decided we couldn’t go with this really big monohull, so we said it would be better if we restarted the process of creating a new class rule and also looking again at the Event Regulations particularly with the idea of reducing the costs of competition so that we could have more teams.”

As to the new boat itself, it is expected to be similar to a Version 5 boat in terms of its dimensions. Simmer says that upwind speed will be similar to a Version 5 boat but off the breeze it will be a rocket ship.

“It is a pretty cool boat, it will be a fun boat too, the sailors will all enjoy it and those of us in the design teams will enjoy having a new challenge.”



While the rule book of AC70something remains as thick as it was with V5, TeamOrigin’s design head Andy Claughton (above) says that the blank canvas it represents is much freer and should allow design teams to look at the big picture rather than the annoying incy detail that they have had to focus upon for the last iterations of America’s Cup Class boats. “I was involved way back in the development of the original AC class and then everyone wanted to prove they were a rocket scientist. The ethos in the room for the development of this class rule was everyone saying ‘we just want to produce a rule that will produce a nice boat, that the sailors can get on and sail and stuff that won’t cost the earth to build and to sail and just keep it simple'. I think also that the process was helped by the fact that for the first time ever the defender and challenger had a common enemy. So there was less challenger and defender headbutting because we all thought we are just doing this for the good of the sport and we hope that common sense will prevail against the real enemy.”

Grant Simmer confirms that we will see much greater differences between the boats: “I think the hull shape variations will be substantial and significant, whereas to the untrained eye you could look at all the boats in the last Ameica’s Cup if they were all painted the same you might get on the wrong boat, you could hardly pick a difference. The V5 was highly evolved and this is a new rule and actually a much more open design space.”

We can expect the end result to cost a similar amount to a Version 5 boat says Grant Simmer. Other than that we will have to be patient until the end of the month. It will certainly be lighter than a V5 boat, but probably not as light as it could be, almost certainly wider and we can expect a more modern look in terms of its bow and stern shapes, immersion and overhangs. Its beam will also be interesting and it should be remembered that since the boat will be much quicker on the downwind legs (capable of planing up into the early 20s at least) there will have to be more focus on the upwind performance as the boats will physically be spending more time on this point of sail.

The rule will also be simpler and will not feature the lifting keel, as was proposed on the AC90 and in the origin Protocol for the 33rd AC. (Interestingly in the course of our conversation Claughton says that the furore during the 32nd AC over Alinghi having a special mechanism whereby its shroud loads were somehow harnessed to prevent the keel defecting was “an absolute red herring. It is physically impossible!”)



“We had some discussions to make the boat quite radical and in the end we decided against that because we figured there was enough scope anyway with a new class and we didn’t want to have an event where there might be one technical development that dominated the event – there still could be but we want to try and contain that…” says Simmer. “It is hard to make a boat that isn’t venue-dependent. That is a difficult thing.” While he adds that the rule has been written with the intention of it being used well into the future, obviously from the outset it has been designed principally for use in Valencia.

One new aspect of the rule relates to teams only being allowed to build one new boat in this cycle. The rule is expected to contain much more restriction on the number of masts and keels that can be built - effectively unregulated for the 32nd America’s Cup. You are obviously allowed to build just one hull – but how much can you change it before it becomes another boat? Again this will be defined in the new rule. The rule also contains a clause about ‘surrogate boats’.

“You could go out and build something and say ‘it is not quite an AC33’,” says Claughton. “And that gets made more complicated because quite a few people are racing STP65s this year, so they would get caught by a rule that said you’re not allowed to race boats close to that size.”

Claughton reckons that in practice this will be relatively immaterial since with an all-new rule and the AC33 taking place in 2010, design teams will have their plate full and will have to focus fully on the new boat.

In the short term TeamOrigin is obviously down in Auckland attempting to kick butt in the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series. This will take place in the V5 boats of Emirates Team New Zealand and BMW Oracle Racing. With Claughton having been the Kiwi team's head of design and skipper Ben Ainslie their B-boat helm, one would hope that this might be an advantage when they get to race in the New Zealand boats. However it is expected that the boats will be substantially dumbed down for the competition.

“I think basically a lot of the sophisticated systems have been taken off the boats because they are just too prone to damage and you are putting some quite inexperienced crews on there and of course they don’t want any break downs,” says Claughton. “So the boats will be tuned as much as possible into something you might pick up off the beach and sail on your Sunsail holiday! So only two codes of jib, I wouldn’t be surprised if there as no fore and aft adjustment left in the jib cars. Some of the fancy traveller controls and things like the jumper sweep controls – stuff you can use if the same guys are using it day after day. So they will probably lock the jumpers. It might be that you could fix the mast ram and they might take the check stays off. But I am just speculating.”

Meanwhile with two regattas in Valencia this year, TeamOrigin will have to focus on getting Alinghi’s 2003 generation SUI75 (now GBR 75) up to speed. So how much work will this take? “I think it is a pretty good boat, truth be told,” says Claughton. “I am not worried we are going to have to do a heap of stuff to it. We are clearly going to have to make some new sails and some of the gear is a bit heavy - like the spinnaker pole and the boom. These regattas will just be like the CNEV one [last year] - they’ll race the courses close to shore and it will be about pressure and shift rather than whether you are half a boat length quicker.”

In addition to the events in Valencia, Sir Keith Mills says that the team will also be busy taking part in other regattas on other boats over the course of 2009. It is unlikely to include a TP52 campaign because, he says, this would demand too much commitment and it may include part of an iShares Cup campaign with events also also events such as the round the island and Cowes Week on the Extreme 40. The extent of their program for 2009 is expected to be announced in Auckland.

Obviously with many new teams coming into the Cup and wishing to compete in the regattas in Valencia, there are a number currently without boats. However as Claughton puts it: “You can’t give them away, so people will he happy to charter them!” It should be noted that unlike the Acts prior to the 32nd America’s cup, these regattas will no count in any way towards the AC33, so it unlikely that most teams will go overboard in getting tooled up for them.

In terms of starting work on the design of the new boat for AC33 Claughton says they have done some preliminary studies, but only in order to be able to make a meaningful contribution to the development of the rule. While the rule is more or less complete now, its development, led by Tom Schnackenberg, is now into attempting to ensure the rule 's wording is bulletproof. Likely TeamOrigin’s Juan K is involved in the process of helping with this… “That is one of Juan K’s strengths - looking at things differently,” says Grant Simmer with a wry smile. “Juan K has been a great contributor to the process and a lot of fun along the way.”

Just think - in a few months time it could all be back on track .