Above: 2017 was quite a year for Paul Goodison. The 2008 Laser gold medallist may not have got to race on Artemis in the Louis Vuitton Cup but having kept his powder dry all summer he won the toughest Moth World Championships ever, period, and then went on to win the Star Sailors League Finals in Nassau. Paul Cayard (left) was racing in Nassau with his old crew Phil Trinter; had Kim Jon-un decided to roast the Bahamas in November there would have been a lot of vacancies at the top of the sport
when working on the foredeck. The scythe-like foil wings remind some pundits of the chariot race in Ben-Hur. Bernasconi points out the windward hull of a foiling AC50 was pretty ominous too. He des - cribes an ellipse or diamond-shaped virtual exclusion zone around the boats, visible on displays for the crew, umpires and audience. Some components will be one-design. The power source,
hydraulics and bearings for canting the foils are likely to be supplied equipment. The foil arms might yet be one-design. Foil wing design and flap controls will probably be designed by each team. We can imagine a variety of streamlined shapes installed around the ballast in the foil wings. The number of foil cards allowed by the rule has yet to be determined. The mast is another potential candidate for being one-design.
Hull design will be up to each team. The speed advantage of foiling over floating will drive the CFD specialists to focus on minimising lift-off speed. The boats will probably fly less than 1m off the water, so touch-and-go-friendly hull shape will be a design goal. Teams can splash their first AC75 at the end of March 2019
– one year after the promised release of the AC75 rule. But there are a few devils in the Protocol’s details. Presumably the venue will be Auckland, but RNZYS have until the end of August to confirm. That means potentially up to five months of uncertainty over racing conditions. The Protocol also gives the Defender and CoR 90 days to make changes to the class rule after it is released, for any reason. ETNZ promised a ‘fair and transparent event’, so any changes to the rule will probably be to correct minor errors. The AC75 will test the designers, boatbuilders and sailors to the
limit. Not to mention the simulator builders. It will be interesting to see who can build the best machina from which to extract a god capable of lifting the Cup in 2021.
RESPECT – James Boyd Assumption, they say, is the mother of all… mistakes, and this is easily the case with the Star Sailors League. It might first seem that the SSL is a device to keep Star sailors occupied and the class relevant since it was dropped as an Olympic discipline following London 2012. Instead, you have to take ‘star’ by one of its dictionary definitions: a ‘very famous, successful, and important person, espe- cially a performer such as a musician, actor or sports player’. Thus the Star Sailors League is the ultimate international ‘champion of champions’ event, and not just for Star sailors. At the SSL Finals in Nassau the field of 25 crews included offshore
sailors Loïck Peyron and Volvo winner Franck Cammas, Laser Olympic gold medallist and two-time Moth world champion Paul Goodison, Nacra 17 world champion Ben Saxton and others. That the boat used happens to be a Star is to some extent coincidence. Also unusual is how the League has been set up. Key to under-
standing it is that the SSL is based on the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) which since 1990 has organised the worldwide tennis tour for men. Typically sailing has tried to avoid having sailors run things,
although there have been notable exceptions such as Russell Coutts’s involvement with the America’s Cup and Philippe Jeantot, who originally set up the Vendée Globe. So while the driving force behind the SSL is Swiss sailor and reluctant businessman Michel Niklaus, the concepts for the SSL have come from sailors (all this followed an initial meeting held before London 2012 between Niklaus and the Star sailors when a five-minute meeting to float the project turned into three hours). Like the ATP, the SSL in due course will comprise four Grand
Slams culminating in Finals. Grand Slam events will be held on a mix of courses, just as the ATP includes tournaments on grass and clay. As Niklaus observes: ‘If they only played on clay, for 10 years only Rafa Nadal would be the winner…’ In the case of the Star Sailors League, one Grand Slam will be
a ‘windy’ event, somewhere like Garda or San Francisco. Another ‘light’ event is likely to be held on a lake, another on a City course and the fourth with a traditional sea course – perhaps the Bacardi Cup in Miami. It’s planned to have the full programme with four Grand Slams plus Finals up and running by 2020.
SEAHORSE 13
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