Update
SailGP racing is tough. Team France is led by Billy Besson and Marie Riou who won four consecutive Nacra 17 world titles together between 2013 and 2016. In addition Riou won the last Volvo Race as part of Charles Caudrelier’s crew on Dongfeng. But Besson’s is one of the teams with little experience of big foiling cats and, like other teams in the same situation, they cannot yet get close to the crews with AC50 experience – Australia and Tom Slingsby (formerly of Oracle) and Japan with Nathan Outteridge (ex-Artemis). But France stayed upright in Cowes, unlike Team USA which capsized and Team GB which thrilled crowds with an almost-catastrophic faceplant. For all the guys ashore who had to fix the promptly retired GB cat the incident was plenty catastrophic enough, thank you very much
NO NEWS IS NO NEWS – Jack Griffin The yacht Americawon the £100 Cup in 1851. The first challenger, Ashbury’s Cambria, didn’t appear until 19 years later. No news, other than the American Civil War in the meantime. After Lipton’s Shamrock IIIwas thrashed by Herreshoff’s magnum opus Reliance in 1903 we had no news for 17 years, other than the Great War, before Shamrock IV was dispatched by Herreshoff’s Resolute in 1920. After Olin Stephens’ super-J Ranger saw off Sopwith’s Endeavour II in 1937 we waited 21 years and endured WWII before the next match, the first of 10 in 12 Metre yachts. When Team New Zealand first lifted the Cup in 1995 we waited five years for their dominant defence at the turn of the century. So there’s no reason to complain about the dearth of news about
the 36th America’s Cup Match, planned for Auckland in 2021 – only four years after the last Cup, in Bermuda. By the time you are reading this there may be four AC75 yachts on the water. But right now the most exciting news we have is a video of Emirates Team New Zealand unpacking the crate with their foil arms… We are back to the historical model of tycoons and big yachts
rather than futile attempts to make the America’s Cup into a commercially viable sports entertainment business. Nothing wrong with that. We’ll be waiting for the first racing in the AC75s, currently scheduled for April next year in Cagliari. The Protocol calls for two more AC World Series events in 2020 but the venues need not be announced until 30 November this year. While we’ve had little news until now, that should soon change.
To what can we look forward up till the Match in March 2021? Lots of new experiences with the AC75s! We’ll need to be patient, as the teams progress from baby steps to full-on race manoeuvres. Luna Rossa have announced that they will launch their AC75 at
a low-profile ceremony in early September. Ineos Team UK, NYYC American Magic and Emirates Team New Zealand may be afloat by the end of September. No doubt we’ll have official and unofficial
12 SEAHORSE
videos showing initial trials of the yachts. Presumably initial testing will include capsizing and righting. In 2012 Oracle were genuinely surprised when they capsized their AC72, and they clearly had no plan for how to right it. The AC75 was designed to be self-righting. It will be interesting to see that theory put into practice. We’ll also see full-scale double-luff mainsails with their twist
controls. Those mainsails will probably not generate enough power for foiling in lower windspeeds, so the Code Zeros may be used upwind as well as downwind. The class rule requires that during racing headsails be stowed on deck when not hoisted… but may be retracted under a hard cover. In San Francisco in 2013 Oracle and ETNZ were still developing their aero packages right up to and during the Match. The AC75s will no doubt go through significant refinement between launch date and the serious racing in 2021. Auckland and the New Zealand government have been investing
heavily in preparations for the 2021 event. Hobson Wharf has been expanded to accommodate the Luna Rossa base. Wynyard Point has been cleared of oil tanks to make room for Ineos UK and American Magic. It appears increasingly unlikely that Stars & Stripes Team USA
will join them there. Their hard deadline is not until next April. The Protocol says, ‘Each Competitor shall be required to enter and participate in all events of the ACWS. Any Challenger that does not meet this requirement will no longer be eligible to participate in either the Christmas race or the Challenger Selection Series.’ This is one of the few places where the Protocol specifies a
penalty for non-compliance. We’ve already seen the leniency of the Arbitration Panel when the late challengers did not pay their fees on time. The panel applied Article 53.10 of the Protocol: ‘Where no penalty is specifically provided for a breach of any of the provisions of the Protocol, the Conditions, the Deed of Gift or previous decisions of the Arbitration Panel, the Panel shall determine and impose such penalty as it considers appropriate having regard to the nature and manner of the particular breach.’
RICK TOMLINSON
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