efficiently, and that turns into ultimate performance. ‘Finding that balance between what you can and can’t get away with is what we are out there learning at the moment. Sometimes you think you have enough hydraulic power and then suddenly you don’t. Even a 1-2kt increase in windspeed can make the boat almost unsailable at times, if you don’t have your set-up right.’ This would explain the alarming spectacle of the occasional nosedives off the foils, or conversely attempting to launch them- selves into vertical take-off. Ashby likens it to Moth sailors preparing for a regatta. ‘Often before a Moth race you will see the top guys capsizing and going over the handlebars and you might wonder what is going on. But what the good guys are trying to do is find where the limits are that day and then getting their settings right. ‘For us it is about finding the limits and what set-ups and power we need and which areas we should focus on to get the absolute maximum performance in Bermuda.’
The new generation of AC50s have evolved so rapidly that they make the AC72s of the San Francisco Cup look like dinosaurs, says Ashby. Although they are only two-thirds of the size they deliver twice the performance. ‘The 72s would do high 20s upwind in about 22kt of wind. Now the AC50s are doing the same speed in 12kt of wind. Downwind they are faster than the AC72s in 10kt less windspeed. They are very exciting to sail, but very tricky to sail well.’
The simultaneous rise in excitement and degree of difficulty lies in large part with the evolution of foils. As designers have pushed further up the performance curve they have sacrificed sta- bility. ‘A very small mis-adjustment of the daggerboard rake can send you skywards or down the mine,’ notes Ashby. ‘When you are doing 35-40kt or more just 0.5° of daggerboard rake can send you up or down extremely quickly.’
Taking things this close to the edge feeds into an ever-tightening circle of demand for faster-reacting control systems. This is where the development moves into a kind of twilight zone. The perfor- mance bar keeps getting higher and higher. In 2013 it was first to discover whether the boats could actually foil and then the next big jumps were foiling gybes and then upwind foiling. Team New
NEW ENGLAND ROPES CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF EXCELLENCE
Zealand nailed the first two before anybody else but, crucially, Oracle solved upwind foiling and won the Cup. In the current testing cycle foiling tacks were a major target and SoftBank Japan claimed first rights to that one. Describing it as a ‘game-changer’, Dean Barker said, ‘Everybody knew this was the holy grail. The more sailing we were doing in Bermuda, the closer we were getting to figuring out how to do it. We had glimpses of it. Finally, we managed to pull it off.
‘There was no secret about it. We are under a lot of attention, sailing with Artemis and Oracle on a regular basis, and all the teams have people in Bermuda watching. It is a big deal, but we are still just scratching the surface. The next goal is to keep the boat dry and up on foils from start to finish. That seems a long way off now, but we have to keep pushing.’
That interview was in September and by November the rumour was that full uninterrupted flight around a Cup-style racecourse had been achieved. As Barker alluded, the open season on espi- onage means everybody in the game will be well aware that par- ticular box has now been ticked and on to the next one. The twilight zone aspect is whether any or all of these targets are being reached with class-legal systems… Talk of dark arts, like machine learning, artificial intelligence and gaming technology, is in the air.
Addressing speculation about computer wizardry, Barker says
teams are no doubt looking at different industries to find ways to best utilise advancements in technology, but the rules are clear that the control systems have to be manually operated. ‘They cannot be operated by computer. You can have a computer to help you figure how best to use the system, but you still have to have a human interface. That is the key point… or, if you prefer, the problem!’
In testing mode there is nothing to stop teams installing systems that do not comply with class rules to explore performance bound- aries. The trick then lies in how to emulate those results within the rules. It is unquestionably the area that is going to come under the closest scrutiny in the next Cup.
‘It is going to be cat and mouse between measurers and w
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SEAHORSE 19
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