Artemis looked like a bit of a sideshow for much of the AC World Series, rarely troubling the scorers while they focused on the war rather than on the battle. But no one who knows Artemis skipper and team CEO Iain Percy, or who has followed a mightily impressive Olympic career that includes winning the Star World Championship at the first attempt, can have been surprised when the teams lined up their AC test boats in January and the Swedish team were only just pipped to the top spot by Oracle with a final scoreline of 16 race wins to 14


Foiled again – Part I


As Ken Read highlighted in the last issue, barring breakage or a major crewing error, the 35th America’s Cup will be, or already has been, decided in the design office. Nowhere is this going to be more true than in the areas of foil design and management and control systems. James Boyd is still digging away… 32 SEAHORSE


While most of the big ticket items on the new AC50s are one-design, including the visible parts of the wing, the elements that should get the juices flowing for us yachting technology geeks are the new- generation foils the America’s Cup catamarans will sport. The foils that raise the 15m long by 8.48m wide 2.4-tonne AC50


catamaran from the water represent the area where there is by far and away the most potential for performance gains in this America’s Cup. If you have been wondering why Cup design teams have not shrunk, given that such a large proportion of the AC50 is one-design, then it is because the development of the foils and their control systems represents one of the great- est and most complex challenges that have ever faced an America’s Cup design team.


The rules, the design space A significant difference between the 34th and 35th America’s Cup is that, while for San Francisco the class rule was written anticipating boats that wouldn’t foil, this time round the rule for the AC50 has embraced this.


The significant change – or what should have been a significant change, as we’ll see later – is that this time round the inverted T-shaped rudders are each permitted 3° of rake adjustment. Moving the rudder rake alters fore and aft trim, which in turn has a major influence on the angle of attack and trim of the main foils, stabilising the ride and minimising the hobby horsing we saw particularly early on with the AC72s. Under the rules the rudder ‘wing’ can


span no more than 1.25m and their area must be 0.17-0.19m2, symmetrical about the centre plane. It can be oriented no


SANDER VAN DER BORCH


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